Why Do They Follow Him So Blindly?

A friend of mine posed a question to the hive mind: is it possible to change someone's mind about donald trump? That is, can you persuade a trump supporter to become NOT a trump supporter?

The short answer? No.

The long answer? No, because of tribalism.

Regardless of your feelings about trump, it must be admitted that he knows his audience and is a master at manipulating that audience. His support has gone from endorsing a politician to something resembling a cult. He is able to tell these people anything and have them believe him. Not just believe him, but adhere to him with the same ferocity and devotion usually afforded to religious extremists.

In other words, if you wanna piss him off bigly, tell him that his tactics are virtually identical to those used by ISIS: relentless demonization and dehumanization of those you perceived to be enemies of the cause, demanding that his version of ... well, anything ... be accepted as absolute truth regardless of whether or not it actually reflects reality, and create a climate of unending panic.

So let's take a look at these three factors and see how he has employed them.

Demonization and dehumanization

One need only look at his Twitter feed to see this in action. Anyone who is not trump-approved is never addressed by their true moniker, they are given demeaning nicknames. Sleepy Joe (Biden). Crazy Nancy (Pelosi). Crooked Hillary (Clinton). Lyin' Chuck (Schumer). As tempting as it is to dismiss these as nothing more than infantile insults, they are really shaping a narrative in the minds of his followers: that these people are all "less than" in some form or fashion and therefore can be dismissed as being unserious in some way.

What is surprising about this is just how malleable and fluid all this is. Recall during the 2016 election, trump launched attacks against Ted Cruz (who was at that point a front-runner for the Presidential nomination): he was given an diminutive appellation ("Lyin' Ted"); he disseminated a (completely baseless) conspiracy theory that Cruz's father had actually been involved with the Kennedy assassination; he attacked Heidi Cruz for, essentially, being less attractive than Melania (purely subjective ... I'm sure Ted thinks his wife is gorgeous). Fast forward to the present, and Cruz is one of trump's most ardent defenders in the Senate -- despite calling him a classless bully on the campaign trail -- and trump views him as a loyal consigliere.

Strange bedfellows, and all that.

The approach used by trump, and the approach that is embraced uncritically by his followers, is that anyone who opposes him is less than human and is therefore fair game for any sort of attack. Where this becomes a problem is that his followers can take this to extremes (the Charlottesville attacks being the most public example), and he will give either implicit or explicit endorsement of these actions.

Malleable truth
During the vice-presidential debate in 2016 between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine (and yes, I actually had to look that up; shows how memorable he was), Pence was asked by the moderator how he would respond to trump's characterizations of Mexicans as "rapists, bringing crime, bringing drugs." Pence's response?

"He never said that."

Even though there was a video record of trump saying precisely those words, his followers accepted Pence's statement as undeniable truth ... and (often successfully) shouted down and bullied anyone who would dare contradict this.

This sort of denial of reality in favor of the leader's preferred opinion of it is but one indicator of the fierce tribalism present among trump's supporters. It has become a part of the identity of his adherents: they are trump supporters. Not in action or words, but in being. It is not enough to for one to say that they support trump, or to attend a rally here and there, or even to vote for him. In order to be part of the tribe, one must accept his version of the truth, his vision of reality, without question ... even merely postulating an alternative is enough to be branded an outcast, one of the "deep state."

Constant panic

A common refrain heard from the trump universe is that someone "not trump" is going to take away/destroy/invalidate something dear to his supporters. The actual "what" of this changes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, based on the whims of trump himself, but the pattern holds regardless. Democrats are going to take away your guns. Liberals are trying to take away Christmas. Illegal immigrants are stealing your jobs. None of these are objectively true, but in trump's world truth doesn't matter as much as effectiveness... in this case, agitating his supporters enough to get behind his latest cause du jour.

In the past couple of months it has been impeachment. During the hearings in front of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican members did not ask any substantive questions. Instead, they attempted to follow the trump playbook: deny the wrongdoing happened, insist that whatever happened has been deliberately misinterpreted by Democrats as a way to "undo the election," attack the credibility of the witnesses; gum up the works with legitimate-sounding but completely baseless complaints about process. However, because these people are not donald trump and do not have his talent for reckless demagoguery, they ended up sounding ridiculous: Jim Jordan yelling the same completely baseless points over and over again; Matt Gaetz quite literally screaming at witnesses; Devin Nunes' bizarre and unhinged conspiracy theories.

All of these tactics are designed to accomplish one thing: keep supporters in a state of perpetual fear. The reason for this is simple: if they weren't constantly shrieking at shadows, some of the downright insanity of some of these things might start filtering through.

Take the stance regarding impeachment. One narrative that has been pushed repeatedly -- by Representatives, by Senators, by Fox News, by trump himself -- is that it was Hillary Clinton with whom the Russians were actually colluding. The way this line of reasoning goes is this: Hillary brings Putin into the election to rig it in trump's favor, causing her to lose, thus giving her -- and, by extension, all Democrats -- the excuse she needs to impeach him.

Any reasonable person looking at this is going to instantly scoff, and with good reason. It is not often that someone spends millions of dollars, commits numerous violations of campaign finance laws, and violates the Constitution of the United States, expressly for the purpose of losing an election so that they would have an opportunity to destroy their opponent after he takes office. This line of (for lack of a better term) "reasoning" is so insane, so patently ludicrous, that it is impossible to conceive of anyone taking it seriously.

(Or, as an acquaintance of mine once said, "It's all bullshit. I could lose an election for absolutely free, and the Russians wouldn't have to get anywhere near it.")

It is a testament to the blind fervor with which his adherents attend to his every whim that there are over 30 million people in the United States who believe this is a valid theory ... and what's more, anyone who states differently is an enemy. Not a "difference of opinion," not an "opponent." An enemy. As in, "one who must be destroyed in a very literal sense." And it is because of this fervor that we have seen things like a trump supporter trying to send mail bombs to Democratic lawmakers, or the resurgence in white nationalist rhetoric, among other things.

To be fair, these incidents were outliers in and of themselves, but the fact that trump either did not condemn these actions at all, or mounted at most a tepid response, is very telling.

Unfortunately, for so many of trump's adherents their personal identity has become so intertwined with their support for him that renouncing him has become tantamount to renouncing the self.

Equally unfortunately, there is no easy solution for this. For those who truly believe in trumpism, even undeniable, concrete evidence of his wrongdoing (such as was obtained in the Intelligence Committee testimony) is not enough to sway them -- they will instead look for any possible pretense to deny the validity of it. Even someone like Gordon Sondland, who gave trump $1 million for his inauguration and is, by any other measure, a textbook supporter, is now part of the "witch hunt" because he dared contradict the account put forth by trump -- even though the account put forth by trump is almost complete fabrication.

So no, we cannot change someone's mind and make them no longer a trump supporter. There could be a videotape of trump beheading an immigrant child and urinating into the neck stump, with the entire Supreme Court as eyewitnesses, and trump himself could go on national television saying he did it, and he would not lose one whit of support.

It is more than a bit frightening that one of the only true statements trump said during the 2016 campaign (and, for that matter, since) is that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any votes."

Sadly, this is as true, if not more so, than when he said it in 2016.

I gotta lie down.

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Preparing ...

It's getting dangerous. Mike Huckabee is claiming that trump should get a 3rd term "due to the illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and media , et al attempting to oust him as @POTUS so that's why I was named to head up the 2024 re-election." Republicans are referring to impeachment as "an attempted coup." Given this, what are the odds that trump will go quietly?

I'm willing to bet they are almost nil.

This in itself wouldn't be much to worry about. It wouldn't be the first time someone had to be "persuaded" to leave. The problem here is that he has institutional backing for this move.

The 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms. This amendment was introduced, and ratified, after FDR was elected for a fourth term, attempting to address the possibility that we could end up with a dictator in all but name. donald trump has demonstrated time and again that, in his opinion, rules don't apply to him ...and the Republican Party is doing everything they can to further this view. Consider that, in 1996, Susan MacDougall was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions in a grand jury during the Clinton investigation. Yet dozens of trump associates -- from Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton on down -- have refused to honor a Congressional subpoena with apparent impunity.

It is becoming more and more plain each day that trump in particular and the Republican Party in general have become -- shall we say, "dismissive" -- of the will of the people they so piously cite -- when it suits them. They blocked a Supreme Court nominee for nearly a year on the grounds that "the American people need to be heard" despite that fact that American people had spoken very clearly in the 2012 election. Mitch McConnell, aka Mitchsky McConnellovich, has flatly stated that he will not allow any Democrat-sponsored legislation to a Senate vote. In the current impeachment imbroglio, Republican members of the House of Representatives are spending all of their time yelling about how unfair it is that we hold the president accountable for trying to get a hostile foreign power to meddle in our election and it wasn't Russia it was Ukraine and he didn't really do it and if he did it's okay because that's what presidents are supposed to do and what about Burisma and Hunter Biden and omigod HILLARY CLINTON?

The Republican Party is no longer an American party. They have become stooges of Russia and the wealthy elite, concerned only with lining their own pockets and the rest of the American people can go screw themselves. And if trump wins in 2020, they will have all the proof they need that they don't even have to pretend any longer.

If he wins in 2020, I predict there will be motions to repeal the 22nd Amendment. When these fail (and they inevitably will), things will become more serious. We've already seen some things: demonization of immigrants (which, not coincidentally, represent a major voting bloc for the Democrats) and minorities ("good people on both sides"). trump offering to pardon people ahead of time, giving them license to do whatever ("just beat the crap out of them. I'll cover your legal bills.") However, with a successful re-election under his belt and no need to butter people up for the next election, he will do everything in his power -- which, if the Republicans have their way, will be almost absolute -- to either remove impediments to a third term, or to simply declare himself king.

If this happens, then people like me are screwed, and we are going to have to get out of Dodge, and quick. Under the reign of emperor trump, dissension will be punishable by death. Loyalty will be rewarded with what amounts to table scraps ... just enough to keep the ants coming back for more. The national treasury will become his personal account. Tax revenues will be spent on making his life better.

Meanwhile, roads will crumble, bridges will rust away. Our education system, or what's left of it, will be re-purposed to indoctrinate, rather than educate. There will be a national religion, with all the major ones (at least, all the major ones for white people; the rest of them don't count) lining up to kiss the ring in the hopes of being given the rose. Jim Crow, always lurking in the dark corners, will re-emerge in the light in all its seedy, shit stained glory.

Legislation will be written and enacted by trump and/or his cronies, with Congress' sole role to be a rubber stamp. The Constitution will be discarded, possibly used as a bib by trump during a feast of hamberders and diet coke. The Supreme Court will become less the ultimate arbiter of law more of an inquisition into loyalty to the king.

Elections will start to resemble the "elections" in North Korea, where Kim Jong Il once claimed that, having won 100% of the vote in an election, this was proof of how loved he was. The fact that a) he was the only one on the ballot, and b) people were literally forced to vote for him at gunpoint ... well, those were just coincidences.

Power will become hereditary. donald trump Jr. will inherit the crown from his father. eric "bad Gary Busey impersonator" trump will inherit from Junior when the animals he is so fond of killing start fighting back. Jared will be ousted and Ivanka will be installed as empress, with an order to produce as many greedy, inbred babies as possible.

Oddly enough, Melania's role as the court concubine won't change that much.

I realize this article has been full of hyperbole, and very few -- if any -- of the things mentioned here are likely to happen. However, there remains a possibility, however slight, that they could happen if trump escapes conviction and is re-elected in 2020. This is why it is vitally important that you contact your representatives in the House and Senate and tell them that, if they vote to acquit, they are losing your vote in the next election. And if that doesn't work (and let's face it, with Moscow Mitch running things, that is highly likely), then fer pete's sake get out there and vote blue.

It doesn't matter if it's Biden, or Warren, or Sanders, or Castro, or any of the current crop of Democratic contenders. Any one of them would be at least ten times better than trump.

Hell, a rotted cantaloupe would be a better president than trump. Say what you will about the guy, over the decades he has shown himself to be a rousing success at lowering the bar.

I gotta lie down.

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The Problem of the Electoral College

Since the 2016 election, when the current president won the election despite a nearly three million vote deficit in the popular vote, there has been a lot of outcry on the left that we need to eliminate the Electoral College. To be sure, there is some cause for concern. After all President trump won the Electoral College with the largest popular vote deficit -- in absolute numbers as well as percentage of the electorate as a whole -- in history.

However, calls to eliminate the Electoral College are far too simplistic and open up the floodgates to unintended (or perhaps "intended" on purely partisan grounds) consequences. To begin with, if the Electoral College is simply eliminated and we rely purely on the popular vote, it's a safe bet that no Republican will hold the White House again for I don't know how many years due to the fact that, according to voter rolls, there are simply more Democrats than Republicans. And while some may view this as a salutary situation, it actually is doing nothing more than taking the pendulum that is at one extreme and pushing it to the other as well as doing nothing to address the increasing, nearly paralyzing, polarization that exists in this country.

There has also been a lot of agitation, mostly from the left, about disparity in Congressional representation. The common example used is that Wyoming has only one Representative and two Senators to represent 579,315 people (note: all population numbers used in this articles are 2017 estimates obtained from the United States Census Bureau) people, whereas California has 53 Representatives and two Senators to represent 39,536,653 million people, or roughly one Representative for 745,974 Californians. However, for a true illustration one need only to look at Rhode Island and Montana, the two states at the extreme ends of the representation spectrum.

Rhode Island has two Representatives, representing a total population of 1,059,639 people, or 529,819 people for each Representative. Compare that to Montana, which has a population that is nearly identical (1,050,493, a difference of only 9,146 people) yet only has one Representative.

The reason this situation exists is because we are Constitutionally constrained to keep Congressional districts completely within a single state. This made perfect sense in the agrarian society of the late 1700s and early 1800s, when the vast majority of the population was spread out over millions of acres of farmland.

To give a sense of scale here, New York City has been the most populous city in the United States in every census. In 1790, the United States population as a whole was 3,929,214 and NYC was 33,131 -- 0.84% of the total population. Compare that to 2017 estimates of 325,150,000 for the country as a whole and 8,623,000 for NYC (2.65% of the total population), and we can see that cities have been gaining in influence. In addition, in 1790 the United States population was 5.1% urban, compared to 20000 (around 81%).

The problem is the constraints that have been placed on apportionment:

• Each Representative must represent only people in his or her home state.
• The total number of Members in the House of Representatives is capped at 435 due to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. This was passed into law to address the fact that, if we had remained with the procedures described in the Constitution of one Member for every 30,000 people, we would have a House of Representatives with over 108,000 members.
• Our current apportionment methodology is that of the total population of the United States divided as equally as possible among the 435 Representative seats, with a provision that each state is entitled to at least one seat.

Various other methods have been proposed, in ever-increasing mathematical complexity. And while these methods do address the problem -- somewhat -- they all far short of achieving true representational parity.

There is a single solution that will address both of these issues, and it does not involve elimination of the Electoral College. It will require a radical shift in how we apportion representation, and will also require that the functions of the two Houses of the Legislative Branch be redefined slightly.

Stick with me here.

The first thing that needs to be done is to define what it is we wish to accomplish. If our goal is to maintain partisan gridlock, then by all means we should continue on our current course. If, however, we aspire to make elections, free, fair, and more closely respondent to the population, then we need to take the following measures.

Eliminate "winner take all."
Under our current system, a presidential candidate wins all the Electoral College votes for a state, even if he or she only wins the popular vote by one vote. This servers to artificially inflate the influence of rural, sparsely populated areas of the country over urban areas ... or, to put it another way, it takes more votes to earn a single Electoral College vote in Montana than it does in Rhode Island, a disparity that can cause a candidate to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

There are two states that do not follow this framework and instead use proportional voting: Nebraska and Maine. In these states, a presidential candidate gets two Electoral College votes based on the statewide total, and one Electoral College vote for each Congressional district in which he or she wins a popular plurality. Incorporating this approach in the country at large is a fairly simple matter in that it does not change how vote are cast, only how they are counted.

Eliminate the requirement that a Representative only represent people from a single state.
If we do this, each Representative would represent roughly 747,500 people (based on 2017 population estimates) while maintaining the 435 Representatives mandated by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. For example, in the case a state like Wyoming, with less than this number, the Representative can "borrow" constituents from neighboring Montana to reach this number -- simultaneously bring Montana closer to parity as well.

Eliminate electors as separate entities.
In 2016, the following people were appointed to serve as presidential electors:

• Bob Asher (convicted of racketeering, conspiracy, and bribery in 1987; his co-conspirator, Bud Dwyer, committed suicide on live television a week before his sentencing by putting a pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger during a press conference. He was 47 years old.)
• Mary Barket
• Robert Bozzuto
• Theodore (Ted) Christian
• Michael Downing
• Margaret Ferraro
• Robert Gleason (former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican party)
• Christopher Gleason
• Joyce Haas
• Ash Khare
• James McErlane
• Elstina Pickett
• Patricia Poprik
• Andrew Reilly
• Carol Sides
• Glora "Lee" Snover
• Richard Stewart
• Lawrence Tabas
• Christine Toretti (Republican National Committee member from Indiana, PA)
• Carolyn Bunny Welsh (sheriff of Chester County)

Out of this list, the only person who is an elected official is Welsh, who was elected sheriff in 2000 and has held the office since.

By making the casting of an Electoral College vote part of the duties of members of Congress, and enforcing a legal requirement that they vote according to their district (for Representatives) or state (for Senators), we introduce a level of accountability that has not previously existed. For example, in Pennsylvania in 2016, the 17th Congressional District voted for donald trump, 53% to 43%, yet elected Democrat Matt Cartwright to the House of Representatives. Under this new scenario, if trump wins the PA-17 in 2020, Cartwright (who won re-election in 2018) would be legally required to cast an electoral vote for trump -- despite his personal feelings about the matter.

Obviously, this is a back-of-the-envelope idea, and I am sure that there is no shortage of flaws in the plan as it is stated here. However, it is someplace to start.

I gotta lie down.

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Overture, Light The Lights ...

There is gonna be a lot of ink spilled about the impeachment hearings. Fox News is going to parrot trump's line that it's a witch hunt, that it's illegitimate, and so on. MSNBC is probably going to argue that the evidence is incontrovertible and impeachment must happen.

I'm not going there. Instead, I want to talk about how the hearings are presented, and what individual members are trying to accomplish. Naturally, there are two broad camps here, Republican and Democrat, and members are staying in their lanes, but I want to address the style of these questioning sessions.

For the most part, when members are questioning witnesses in this hearing, they are not really trying to uncover the truth or elide information. Instead, they are trying to reinforce the points that have already been made. Unfortunately for trump, the Democrats have a distinct advantage here in that Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is far more telegenic and clear-spoken than his Republican counterpart, Devin Nunes.

Consider today's opening statements. Schiff laid out what had happened to date, and what was expected from today's hearing. Nunes chose to read the transcript from trump's congratulatory call in May of this year to Ukrainian president Zelensky. Throughout the hearings, Republicans have been trying to shut down witnesses when they try to explain their answers, preferring to take a marginally accurate "yes" instead of a more accurate "yes, but only in these very specific ways."

The Democrats have a clear edge in terms of presentation here, and this has to do with the fact that ... well, the facts are on their side. The Republicans know their case is weak to nonexistent, and as a result we are seeing the following:

• Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) interrupting Chairman Schiff to complain about being interrupted.
• Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) trying to make the case that, since the military aid was eventually release, then there was nothing wrong.
• Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) loooking really confused pretty much all of the time and making the claim that publicly televised hearings are "secret depositions."

In short, these hearings are theater, and the Democrats are just better at it.

I gotta lie down.

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Changing tack

About a week or so ago I announced that I was taking a break from politics. As it turns out, this is not entirely true.

In fact, I am taking a break from two very specific things:

• trump.
• Mitch McConnell, and the harm he is doing to the reputation of turtles the world over.

Seriously, my focus is merely shifting from arguing about Republican hypocrisy (kinda like being upset that water is wet, but whatever) and instead putting my attention on the Democratic primaries and the merits/drawbacks of each candidate, as well as more theoretical ideas in the realm of political science, economics, etc.

I am also trying to be more positive in general. On that note, since it has been quite a long time since I did one of my "Ten Good Things" lists, here goes.

1. I am grateful that my health is improving. After suffering a stroke in February 2017 I was put on blood thinners, cholesterol meds, blood pressure meds ... the whole bit. They left me so lethargic and drained that it was all I could do to get up in the morning. What made it worse is that I was also put on medication to deal with GIRD (gastrintestinal reflux disease) as well as antidepressants. This last "neurological event" (I covered this in some detail here) was sort of the last straw ... I decided I had to go off the meds to get back to a baseline blood chemistry. As it turns out, now that I am off all meds, I am feeling pretty good. I have much more energy (I remodeled a bathroom and built two flowerbeds in the past month or so, and I just started demolition on our mudroom for a full-scale makeover), I am not experiencing the digestive issues I was under the meds, and it is beginning to look like I may survive the year.

2. Turkey Hill All Natural Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. It's what's for dinner.

3. My lawn is rockin' this year.

4. The past year or so has been filled with people close to me losing one or both of their parents. Not surprising, given that we are all in our forties and fifties. That being said, I am extremely grateful that my adopted parents are not only still with me but just as active and engaged as they ever were ... more so, even (my birth mother passed away in October 2012, though, which really sucked).

5. Five and a half years later and I still really like my car.

6. I can now get Wawa delivered through Uber Eats.

7. Being able to work from home means I get to be here when my kids get home from school. Granted, they are now surly, unpleasant teenagers, but still.

8. Streaming "The Goldbergs" on Hulu.

9. My wife actually likes spending time with me. I know. Surprised me too.

10. Medical marijuana. Because of that, I am able to get a full night's sleep for the first time since 1983.

And on that note, I am going to get started enrolling for school. Don't know what my next degree is going to be yet, but it's gonna be a fun ride finding out.

I gotta lie down.

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There's A Reason I've Been Away

With thanks to Mark Bryan

So I've been away for a while. But y'all prob'ly already knew that. So here's why.

Every day. Every goddam day that orange idiot does something else expressly designed to outrage, to infuriate ... and to obfuscate. The result? The chattersphere gets their collective panties in a twist. On the left, gallons of ink are spilled detailing the hypocrisy of the Republicans (kinda like issuing a press release stating that water is wet, but whatever), the fact that donald trump is essentially a sulky toddler on the world stage, and that the religious right is neither. This fires up the right wing version, who spend their time shrieking MAGA phrases, calling liberals "leftists" to try to paint them as dangerous European revolutionaries, and crowing about how good the economy is doing (it really isn't, but that's another topic entirely).

All of which seems to be on an endless loop, repeated day after day after day after day after day after day after ...

And this vitriol, this venom directed at our fellow citizens, our neighbors, in some cases our families, has spread down through the masses. The result being that the online world is full of people yelling at each other, demanding that they provide incontrovertible proof of their opinions (not possible ... such is the nature of opinions, after all) ... it's depressing. It's sad. It's sickening.

Above all, it is beneath us. As Republicans and Democrats, as Americans ... hell, as people. We are better than this infernal sorting.

Unfortunately, it seems that the only time we come together as Americans is in times of dire crisis. 9/11. The Challenger disaster. Pearl Harbor. These events brought us all together. They were not partisan issues (until politicians tried to make them such, but again, a different topic). The afternoon of 9/11, the full Congress -- House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats -- gathered on the Capitol steps to sign "God Bless America," and eleven days later George W. Bush delivered the best speech of his career -- and the one we all desperately needed to hear -- to a joint session of Congress.

And within a matter of hours, the partisan sniping had begun anew. Republicans attacked Democrats for having the temerity to question why we were going to invade Iraq when it had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Democrats attacked Republicans as profiteering warmongers who were only interested in enhancing their stock portfolios at the expense of the American people.

I finally reached a saturation point. I don't go online much any longer, simply because it is full of various Shriek Factories squawking about how their opponents are horrible people who should be put to death in as unpleasant a manner as possible, and donald trump is a master negotiator/classless knuckle-dragging idiot, and Nancy Pelosi is a shrewd, cautious manager/shrill harpy, and Melania is the epitome of class and grace/an empty-headed whore, and on and on and on.

I just can't take it any longer. Every time I see a headline about trump, or the 2020 race, or the roughly 87,000 Democratic candidates for President, or the constant will they/won't they of impeachment, I can feel my chest tightening, my stomach sinking. My energy level goes way down. I start feeling the beginnings of a panic attack, and I think longingly of my medical marijuana and counting the minutes until I can dose myself to sleep.

So I have come up with a new strategy, a new way of dealing with trump and Congress and politics and the election and Mueller and Russia and obstruction and the Emoluments Clause and ... it is this.

I'm not gonna do it.

I am not going to get sucked into fighting with strangers over politicians on either side that, quite frankly, don't really give a furry rodent's posterior about us anyway. I am not going to get into "debates" that are nothing more than an excuse for some pinheaded douchenozzle to hurl insults at me and others. I am not going to try to defend policy positions that don't exist and are fabricated by the right solely for the purpose of sowing discord. I refuse to justify my stance to those who don't give a damn and are only looking for an excuse to start a fight (and yes, this is directed at one specific individual, who knows damn well who he is).

So, for the time being, my online presence will consist of:

• Today's Earworm. Every day I wake up with some piece of music playing in my head. It has happened every day, without fail, since I was a small child. It's a 50/50 chance as to whether or not it's something I like, and a couple of months ago I decided that it wasn't fair that I suffer through Steve Perry squalling "Oh, Sherrie" by myself. You can find these by searching for the hashtag #eotd (Earworm Of The Day).
• The occasional recipe. The latest was butter steak that, while quite tasty, just wasn't worth the amount of work involved.
• News stories that are NOT dealing with politics. Science, the arts, human interest, yes. Politics, no, unless it's a particularly good bit of satire.
• Updates on home improvement projects. For example, in the past few weeks I have built two flower beds (one raised) and remodeled the downstairs bathroom.

What I will not be doing is getting sucked into another endless back-and-forth with some right-wing brainstem who only wants to convince himself he is well-endowed by belittling others. It's counterproductive, it's not fun, and I can think of roughly 450,000 other things I could be doing (many of which involve food, some of them are centered around playing evil music really loud, and at least three involve both).

I gotta lie down.

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A Path Forward

The Democratic primaries are heating up, and I am already seeing purity tests of various stripes filtering across the intertubes. Bernie supporters are claiming they will sit out the election if bernie doesn't win the primary. Same from Kamala voters, Warren voters, Biden voters. Booker, Gillibrand, O'Rourke ...

None of that is helpful, and all of it will guarantee another four years of the mango nightmare.

So here's the deal.

During the primaries, if you want to suit up and go to battle for your candidate, then by all means do so. However, make your approach positive. Instead of pointing out where all the other candidates fall short of your fave, why don't you instead point out what your guy (or woman) has going for him or her that will best serve the country? Make the case that your person is the best, instead of trying to make all the rest of them the worst.

Now, I understand that some people have difficulty with the whole concept of "opponents are people too," so below is a quick primer with some examples of what not to do ...

Helpful	Unhelpful
Pointing out that your candidate has a Medicare for All plan, for example, and discussing the various aspects of that.	Pointing out that some of the others have not signed on to this plan and accusing them of being shills for corporations/Republicans/trump/North Korea/Russia/aliens from the planet Zontar.
Stating that you do not want to support a candidate that takes corporate donations, a perfectly valid stance.	Declaring that, if the nominee turns out to have accepted corporate donations, you will not vote for him or her and will instead vote for Yosemite Sam, Donald Duck, donald trump, or some other cartoon character.
Reposting a story from a reputable source that highlights sketchy behavior of one of the candidates during a campaign event (the actual nature of the misbehavior is unimportant to this example).	Reposting a story with a lurid headline about one of the candidates sexually assaulting an underage dolphin because it's sensational and it will generate likes for your post, only to discover a couple of hours later that it was pure bullshit ... something that could have easily been avoided if you had just done your due diligence.
Allowing that the other candidates have perfectly legitimate ideas that, while not your first choice, are a drastic improvement over our current situation.	Demanding complete and total ideological purity and throwing a tantrum if that is not met.

The long and short of it is this: regardless of who your candidate is in the Democratic primaries, we will not prevail in 2020 if we are continually engaging in circular firing squads. So yes, Cory Booker might not be your cup of tea, or you may be enamored of Kamala Harris or Mayor Pete (and I'll be damned if I'll ever be able to spell his last name without looking it up), or you might think Elizabeth Warren has the best ideas, or Beto O'Rourke, or you may want to go old-school and vote for Biden.

All that's fine. You do you. What I am saying is that, during the primary season, we need to focus on what these candidates say they will do. We need to run positive campaigns, in which we discuss ideas for the future, not negative campaigns in which the goal is to destroy the others and leave them writhing in agony in the smoking shrapnel of an ugly campaign.

We definitely don't want to Al Franken these people. Sure, if they engage in disreputable behavior, call them out on it. But immediately resorting to hysterics and demanding that they step down/resign/commit seppuku will accomplish nothing of substance and will simply drown out the things the other candidates are saying that we need to hear.

And then, next summer, when the nominee is named, we -- all of us, without exception -- need to get behind that person 100%. Sure, the odds are there are going to be some policies this candidate espouses that aren't your first choice. They may be too grumpy for your liking, or too glib, or too ... something. The fact remains, that no matter who the Dems pick in 2020, they will have one salient quality that cannot be denied, and that has to be factored in:

They are not donald trump.

We outnumber Republicans. The fact is that trump only got into office through a quirk of the Electoral College (and for all those shrieking that we need to abolish the EC, stop for a second and think it through. Take a moment and think of how that could come back to bite us on the ass later, a la eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees ... that worked out well for us, didn't it?). If we show up at the polls, and present a united front, then the GOP will be sent scurrying back to the depths from which the likes of trump and Mitch McConnell emerged and we can actually start repairing the damage of the last two years.

And once that person is in office, we can hold them accountable to stick to their promises and govern all of America, not just the "base."

I gotta lie down.

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And The Oscar Goes To ...

Yeah, yesterday's column? Um ... no.

Yesterday I posted that I had undergone a change of heart, a radical shift in my political leanings, and that I was supporting trump in the 2020 election. This was partly an April Fool's gag, but also an experiment to see a) who believed it, and 2) what the subsequent reaction was.

And the results are in: very few people bought it.

This was kinda what I expected. It turns out this probably would have worked a lot better if I had spent a couple of months building up to it ... but then it would have been a whole thing, and I would have had to get the cooperation of the mainstream media (who, as you well know, follow every word of this blog slavishly) it just ain't worth the trouble.

So, as far as the "let's see if they believe this" thing, well ... they didn't. And as far as April Fool's pranks go, it kinda fizzled and fell flat.

Better luck next year ...

I gotta lie down. Please like and share this post from my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/blowhardpundit, and please consider making a donation to my advertising fund at www.gofundme.com/blowhardpundit.

The Time Has Come

Well, it's happened.

Let me start by saying, despite it being April 1, this is not an April Fool's gag.

There may be one or two of you out there who have been wondering where I've been and why my usual firebrand style of liberal rhetoric has been quite blatantly missing from my posts. The reason for this?

I have been having doubts.

This has been fueled in large part by the Democratic Party's unwillingness to be straight with me. They have been so caught up in anti-Trump propaganda that they have lost sight of their mission to govern effectively, and have actually worked against the best interest of the country simply to spite the president.

Don't get me wrong. The Republicans have been just as bad in many ways (especially Mitch McConnell, a lying, propagandizing hack of such monumental proportions that he makes Joseph Goebbels look like a failed use car salesman). However, at least they have remained true to their core principles, whereas the Democrats have pretty much been about nothing else than being against President Trump.

Don't get me wrong. There is still a lot about our president of which I disapprove -- the constant lying, the petty bickering, and so on. But I dare you to point to a politician who doesn't lie ... it can't be done. It's almost a job requirement.

And after seeing the hysterics and mental gymnastics performed by those on the left who refuse to give the president any credit for anything, combined with recent polling data, and culminating in the release of the Mueller report and the subsequent revelation that there was no evidence of collusion, I have been forced to re-evaluate my position.

it wasn't easy, let me tell you. One of the most difficult things any person -- right, left, male, female, black, white -- can do is to utter the words "I was wrong." History is replete with examples of people who were willing to accept extreme punishment and abuse -- sometimes even death -- in favor of saying those three words.

Therefore, I will be supporting the re-election of Donald Trump in 2020. There's simply too much at stake, economically speaking, to do otherwise. Since he has taken office, we have seen the Dow soar to unprecedented heights, falling unemployment, and increases in take-home pay for average Americans. These are all salutary effects.

We have also seen foreign policy positions that are unprecedented (or "unpresidented," since people like to make as much hay out of slips of the tongue as possible) in American history. From negotiations with North Korea to shutting down Iran's nuclear program, President Trump has staked out positions that are bold, fearless, and with a tenacity and fierceness never before seen in our history.

Look, the guy's not perfect. I get that. He's coarse. He plays fast and loose with the truth. He doesn't seem like a very happy person. But he is very clear on where his interests lie and what his goals are, and that lack of ambiguity is refreshing.

Now, I know this will engender screaming vitriol from my friends on the left. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. Sadly, there is no litmus test, no magic bullet to which I can point that will help them understand that this was not something I undertook lightly. Also sadly, this will likely spell the end of some friendships, given the highly polarized state in which we are currently embroiled. I wish it wasn't so, but such is the nature of America in 2019, I guess.

I gotta lie down.

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So Here's What Happened ...

For those of you who don't already know, I spent a couple of days in the ICU over the weekend as a result of collapsing during one of the performances of a play (it happened at intermission, in the green room). It turns out to be physiologically a bit interesting ...

So the events transpired thusly:

On Thursday, March 21, I was performing as Verges in the Steel River Playhouse production of William Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." Verges is a tiny role, so I only have four scenes in total: two in act I and two in Act II (I'm talking about the acts as set up by the director, not by Billy Shakes ... he had six acts in this play).

About halfway through my first scene, my right foot abruptly went completely numb. At the time I wasn't too concerned; this had happened before as a result of the costume not being a perfect fit (hey, it's a volunteer gig, so it's not like there's a professional seamstress on staff to attend to the costume alteration requests of seventeen people). However, when I came off stage and sat down, it didn't go away.

I figured that the first scene was my biggest one, I only had one more to go before intermission, and the final two scenes basically involved me standing there and reacting to Dogberry, so I could just power through and get a good night's sleep and everything wold sort itself out.

I was wrong.

During intermission, in the green room, I was leaning up against a counter. My arms started shaking, then my right leg announced that it was no longer happy with its working conditions and therefore was going on strike. I collapsed. I was still somewhat lucid, but my entire right side had become pretty much useless, there was significant facial drooping -- all the classic signs of a stroke.

I had suffered two strokes pervious to this: one on February of 2017 that was centered in the pons (a region of the cerebellum that, my neurologist informed me, was arguably one of the best places to have a stroke). The second was in June of 2017 and was rather inconclusive ... the neurologist at the hospital described the MRI as "fuzzy" and that as best as she could figure out it was something that happened in the white matter in the brain.

And here's where it gets interesting. But first, a little anatomy lesson.

The vertebral artery

In the diagram above, you can see the aortic arch. The aorta, as you are undoubtedly aware, is the main artery coming from the heart. It loops up by the collarbone (from whence the carotid artery splits off) to supply blood to the arteries of the head, face, and neck, before descending into the lower part of the body. In the diagram above, you can see the vertebral artery (in red) emerging from the aortic arch and ascending along the spine -- not inside the spinal column itself, but tucked into the spinal processes. There are actually two vertebral arteries, one on each side.

Diagram of the vertebral arteries at the base of the brain

Above is a sort of schematic of the vertebral artery system. These arteries are located at the base of the brain, as shown below.

The vertebral arteries in relation to the brain.

As you can see, these things are tucked right up against the underside of the brain in an area that is virtually impossible to get to surgically (this will become relevant later).

Given my symptoms both in June of 2017 and this past Thursday, it looked for all the world like I was having a stroke or, at least a TIA (transient ischemic event). The difference between the two? A stroke leaves permanent footprints on the brain, whereas a TIA is just what it sounds like: a temporary blockage of an otherwise healthy blood vessel that leaves no residuals.

My stroke in February of 2017 left me with a 5-10% strength deficit on my right side. Most of the time it's not at all apparent, but when I get tired (say, if we've spent the day at Longwood Gardens walking a lot) I will develop a limp and my right eyelid will droop. Other than that I was extremely lucky in that there were no other permanent effects.

For the these last two events, though, they didn't quite fit either classification. They couldn't be considered actual strokes in that there were no marks left in the brain, but they couldn't necessarily be thought of as TIAs either due to the severity and the fact that TPA (Alteplase IV r-tPA, a clot buster drug) reversed symptoms (as far as I know, tPA has no effect in a TIA situation).

On Saturday I met with the neurologist on staff. I was curious as to why it took two days to see the guy, but this became clear when he presented his hypothesis.

His thinking is that one of the vertebral arteries at the base of the brain, where the spinal cord enters the medulla, is malformed (a birth defect) as shown in the amateurishly photo-shopped diagram below:

The hypothesized arrangement of the arteries in my brain.

According to the doc, what has been happening is that this artery, being undersized and with narrower walls, really isn't sturdy enough to hold itself open; it relies on my blood pressure to do that. However, after the first stroke, I was prescribed medication to reduce my blood pressure -- which, let's face it, wasn't really that bad off to begin with, but it is accepted practice to prescribe blood thinners to stroke patients.

What this did was to reduce the blood pressure enough so that it was right on the cusp of being insufficient to support this artery. The doctor's hypothesis is that, both in June 2017 and on Thursday, my blood pressure dropped enough to pass that threshold. As a result, blood flow to that portion of the brain was cut off, and stroke symptoms emerged. However, with the administration of tPA, my blood became thin enough that it could squeeze through this artery and force it back open, restoring blood flow.

In retrospect, this makes a whole lot of sense. Several times over the past coupe of years -- too many to count, to be honest -- I have noticed that my right side weakness would become a little more severe, or I would notice facial drooping in the mirror, etc. In all of these situations my reaction was "Oh, crap. Not again" and I would started getting a little torqued up ... which would (presumably) elevate my blood pressure, open the artery back up, and the symptoms would subside.

At this time my only course of treatment is to stop taking the blood pressure meds. I will be consulting with my neurologist, at which point there may be other options. Based on everything I have been told, though, it doesn't look like a surgery to go directly at it and expand the artery is possible based on its location. It may be possible to have a stent put in via catheterization, but then again I'm not a doctor and really have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

So this was my weekend. How was yours?

I gotta lie down. Literally.

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When A Song Gets Stuck In Your Head ...

So for the past several weeks I have been posting semi-regular updates about the music that has appeared unbidden in my noggin, often with absolutely zero relevance to what has been going on in my life at the time. A couple of been monumentally annoying, others have been sublime, and most of them have been simply enjoyable.

What has been surprising to me is the relative under-representation of the music of the 60s and 70s in this list. While there are some notable entries, (Frank Zappa, CSNY, Bowie, George Harrison from the 70s, the Beatles and Marvin Gaye from the 60s) the majority seems to be coming from the New Wave movement in the 80s.

Regardless, one of these days I am going to take all of these and compile them into a killer, somewhat odd and disturbing, playlist. For now, y'all can pick and choose as you see fit.

Enjoy!


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Posting date	Artist	Title
1/31	Rick Springfield	Speak To The Sky
2/3	The Pointer Sisters	He's So Shy
2/5	David Bowie	Starman
2/6	Ozzy Osbourne	Flying High Again
2/7	Genesis	Duke (the whole album)
2/8	Squeeze	Black Coffee In Bed
2/9	Henry Mancini	Baby Elephant Walk
2/12	Chumbawumba	Tubthumping
2/14	PUP	Sleep In The Heat
2/16	The Rembrandts	Theme from "Friends"
2/17	Sonny James	Young Love
2/18	Marvin Gaye	Ain't That Peculiar
2/19	Frank Zappa	Flakes
2/20	Frank Zappa	Cosmic Debris
2/22	Sigh No More, Ladies	From the Kenneth Branagh film of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"
2/23	Jimmy Eat World	The Middle
2/24	George Harrison	Give Me Love
2/25	The Osmond Brothers	Down By The Lazy River
2/26	The Cars	My Best Friend's Girl
2/27	Unknown	Theme from "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"
2/28	Bee Gees	Night Fever
3/2	Unknown	Baby Shark
3/4	CSNY	Woodstock
3/6	Giacomo Puccini	Musetta's Waltz, from La Boheme
3/7	The Cure	Love Cats
3/8	Genesis	One For The Vine
3/9	Level 42	Tracy
3/12	INXS	Don't Change
3/14	INXS	The One Thing
3/16	The Beatles	I'm A Loser
3/17	The Cranberries	Zombie
3/19	Tai Bachman	She's So High
3/20	Van Halen	Beautiful Girls
3/21	The Beatles	I've Just Seen A Face
3/22	Santo & Johnny	Sleep Walk
3/23	The Icicle Works	Whisper To A Scream

I gotta lie down.

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