I respect Barbara Kingsolver. I think her books, fiction and nonfiction, are great examples of American writing. She is engaged, passionate and informed, but like most American voters, she doesn’t have a clue about what just happened in America and what needs doing to repair the mistake.

Everything doesn’t suddenly matter, everything has always mattered and will always matter. Andrew Carnegie once advised, put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket. Well, we got the first part right, but we failed miserably on the second.

Barbara Kingsolver, writing in Trump changed everything. Now everything counts for The Guardian, laments:

If you’re among the majority of American voters who just voted against the party soon to control all three branches of our government, you’ve probably had a run of bad days. You felt this loss like a death in the family and coped with it as such: grieved with friends, comforted scared kids, got out the bottle of whisky, binge-watched Netflix. But we can’t hole up for four years waiting for something that’s gone. We just woke up in another country.

It’s hard to guess much from Trump’s campaign promises but we know the goals of the legislators now taking charge, plus Trump’s VP and those he’s tapping to head our government agencies. Losses are coming at us in these areas: freedom of speech and the press; women’s reproductive rights; affordable healthcare; security for immigrants and Muslims; racial and LGBTQ civil rights; environmental protection; scientific research and education; international cooperation on limiting climate change; international cooperation on anything; any restraints on who may possess firearms; restraint on the upper-class wealth accumulation that’s gutting our middle class; limits on corporate influence over our laws. That’s the opening volley.

A well-documented majority of Americans want to keep all those things, and in some cases expand them. We now find ourselves seriously opposed to our government-elect. We went to bed as voters, and got up as outsiders to the program.

That’s what Kingsolver gets wrong. I don’t believe that the majority of Americans want to keep those things, I think they want those things kept for them. The great minority who didn’t bother to cast a vote—too busy doing whatever to actually get off their dead Netflix-watching butts to read, engage in meaningful conversation and vote—expected someone else to do the heavy lifting and protect their gawd given rights to ignore the civic process.

Well, boo hoo.

I read Scott Adam’s How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big when the book came out in 2014 and I thought the central thesis of the book: approach life as a system as opposed to a set of goals—made sense. So too, I now learn, did Oliver Burkeman who, writing in Want to succeed? You need systems not goals for The Guardian, explains:

Still, I like to imagine I’d spot a profound insight into human behaviour even if it came from, say, Paul Nuttall of Ukip, so let me set aside Adams’ views on political correctness (I suspect he thinks it’s “gone mad”) and acknowledge that his book contains one very useful bit of advice: when you’re trying to get better at something—a creative skill, such as cartooning, or a habit, such as regular exercise—think in terms of systems, not goals.

The difference is subtle, perhaps so subtle that the difference is a difference that makes no difference, but a paradigm shift may be helpful. Burkeman continues:

As anyone whose employer foists “performance targets” upon them already knows, a fixation with goal-setting has many downsides. But Adams adds one more: when you approach life as a sequence of milestones to be achieved, you exist “in a state of near-continuous failure”. Almost all the time, by definition, you’re not at the place you’ve defined as embodying accomplishment or success. And should you get there, you’ll find you’ve lost the very thing that gave you a sense of purpose – so you’ll formulate a new goal and start again.

A system, by contrast, is “something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run”, regardless of immediate outcome. Drawing one cartoon a day is a system; so is resolving to take some kind of exercise daily – rather than setting a goal, like being able to run a marathon in four hours. One system that’s currently popular online goes by the name “No Zero Days”: the idea is simply not to let a single day pass without doing something, however tiny, towards some important project.

I’ve long used routines, systems, as a way to move effortlessly into tasks I want to perform. I don’t have to finish the task, or even a portion of a task I’m focusing on in the moment—there is no goal—I simply need to begin. That’s my system and so far, the system works for me.

Burkeman concludes:

It’s true that this way of living brings fewer of those moments of fist-pumping triumph that come with the achievement of a goal. Plus it can be hard to tell, on any given day, whether your system’s working. But the payoff is a more predictable supply of regular, smaller happy moments: while goal people usually languish in a state of non-accomplishment, Adams notes, systems people “succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do”.

Above all, focusing on a system means focusing on what you can control (your actions) rather than what you can’t (the endlessly unpredictable external world). Keep working your system and you’ll maximise the chances that success will find you. Live in pursuit of goals and you’ll feel like a failure even when you’re succeeding—and even a fully paid-up member of the PC brigade like me can see that that’s just stupid.

Like an alcoholic who wants to be sober, you have to work the program system.

So yesterday I came across one of those intersection points that I love so much when Diane Rehm and Scott Adams both take on reality in Trumpian America.

First, here’s what Adams’ wrote:

The mainstream media and the public now accept the idea that Trump ignored facts, science, and even common decency… and still got elected. I have been telling readers of this blog for a year that facts don’t matter. Policies don’t matter. The only thing that matters is persuasion. And Trump has plenty of persuasion.

To be perfectly clear, when I say facts don’t matter, I mean that in the limited sense of decision-making. If you make the wrong decision, the facts can kill you. That’s not in debate. I’m talking about the process or arriving at a decision—whether it is a good decision or not. The decision-making process is largely divorced from facts and reason. We live under a consistent illusion that facts and logic guide our decisions. They don’t.

Now, before you start sputtering that Adams is full of shit, listen to Diane Rehm’s How Journalists Are Rethinking Their Role Under A Trump Presidency.

Not only are we no longer even on the same continent as Kansas, I think we’ve left the planet.

[Update at 0401 on 9 December: Sometime this morning ping backs began flowing in for Roldo’s piece on Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s desire for a new facility as tribute for winning a single championship as if a single win in 40-plus years was a momentous achievement.

The first link to arrive came from Even when Cleveland sports teams win, the city loses by Jason Notte.

Notte brings Roldo into the story in the fifth paragraph, about 250 words into the piece:

Roldo Bartimole, a reporter and blogger who’s been covering Cleveland for the better part of half a century, notes that the county took in $240 million from the initial sin tax, but has since extended it twice to reel in another $375 million to cover cost overruns on those projects. It has also offered tax abatements for Quicken Loans Arena, Progressive Field and the FirstEnergy Stadium (home of the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns since opening in 1999) that take $16 million out of the county’s coffers each year, half of which Bartimole says would go to Cleveland schools.

The second obstacle between Gilbert and the county’s money is that it has none left to give. By throwing public money at everything including the three sports facilities mentioned above, hotels, the Ohio Theater, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the House of Blues and an aquarium, Cuyahoga County has plunged itself into nearly $1.1 billion in debt. Now, Gilbert, who threw the county some free arena renovations when he bought the Cavaliers in 2005, wants more and is likely going to get it. County executives are now suggesting that Destination Cleveland, the county’s tax-funded tourist agency, can step in and help pay the $70 million that Gilbert’s seeking. Considering that Cavaliers Chief Executive Officer Len Komoroski sits on Destination Cleveland’s board — and that nobody seems to care about conflicts of interest anymore — there’s a good chance the Cavs get what they’re looking for.

Considering that Bartimole puts the payoff date for the city’s current stadium and arena debt sometime in 2023 — and that the Gateway projects were already bailed out of bankruptcy [Notte’s link to Roldo’s piece, JH] once before — this is an obviously terrible deal for both Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Throw in the fact that Gilbert alone is worth $4.9 billion and there shouldn’t be one additional dime of public money dropped into that facility.

Dan Gilbert does not come out smelling so sweet in Notte’s story.

Notte’s piece was republished in rapid succession on seven additional websites: QuanTwo; Jeffrey Lipton Barbados; OpenFinTech; Open-Banking; AsianFinTech; Sport Fine Mall; and Stocks And Trading.

What all seven seem to have in common is that they are looking for investors suckers to risk their money on the stock market. Still, from my read, Notte’s has done a credible, if derivative, job in reporting.]

How would you like to buy Billionaire Dan “Casino” Gilbert a brand new arena here in Cleveland?

Well, he and LeBron James may just want that from Cuyahoga County taxpayers before long.

The same tax payers still haven’t nearly paid for JUST the overruns on the first arena—Quicken Arena. That bill was presented to taxpayers in 1994. We owe until 2023.

In a panel a week ago, Len Komoroski, Cavs and Quicken Loan Arena CEO and a principal in Gilbert’s casino business, answered a question from moderator Peter Krouse of the Plain Dealer.

The panel, sponsored by the League of Voters of Greater Cleveland Women, seemed a prelude to the usual sports moguls’ quest for more public money.

Krouse, who had recently spoken to County Executive Armond Budish, asked whether the Cavs are looking for a new facility or a revamping of Quicken Arena.

Budish told Krouse the County had no borrowing power left. No wonder. Continue Reading »

The facility to hurl such lovely insults is a nice skill, don’t you agree?

I understand what Nelson Algren is speaking about here, writing is more visceral in the moment, but time and distance can make the writing better. I think here about the difference between Ernest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast, written decades after his life in Paris vs. Norman Mailer’s The Naked And The Dead, written right after his discharge from the Army.

To put the comparison in simplistic, 21st century terms, the difference might be compared to replying immediately to an irritating email vs. waiting 24 hours.

The Paris Review: “The Art Of Fiction No. 11” with Nelson Algren:

INTERVIEWER: How do you think you arrived at [The Man with the Golden Arm] thematically—rather than a war novel?

ALGREN: Well, if you’re going to write a war novel, you have to do it while you’re in the war. If you don’t do the thing while you’re there—at least the way I operate—you can’t do it. It slips away. Two months after the war it was gone; but I was living in a living situation, and… I find it pretty hard to write on anything in the past… and this thing just got more real; I mean, the neighborhood I was living in, and these people, were a lot more real than the Army was.

Found in my electronic chapbook…

No seriously, she got vilified for this.

Back on 5 November I created a Google Alert to follow daily news on the Dakota Access Pipeline. I haven’t received an alert since Wednesday, 23 November. What with all the holiday activities, I looked away until this morning. Boy, was that a mistake.

A lot has happened since last Wednesday, not the least is that the number of protesters has now moved into five digits. Listening to my local NPR station yesterday I heard a reporter say that more than 10,000 people are now gathered at Standing Rock. That is more than the combined forces at The Battle of Greasy Grass (we white folk say Little Big Horn) and while in the past I have suggested that Standing Rock could become this century’s Wounded Knee, I’m now thinking that Tienanmen Square might be the better comparison. Yes, both ended in the brutal suppression, beating and murder of innocents, but I have hopes for a happier outcome with the whole world watching and the government unable, or at least unwilling, to enforce a news blackout in our nation’s heartland.

My question, though, is whether or not Google is intentionally blocking Google Alerts from gathering and disseminating news about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests? I’ve been able to update the news the old fashion way by using a search engine other than Google, but something stinks here. Is this shadowbanning?

So, Matt Taibbi, writing in President Trump and How America Got It So Wrong paints the blame with a broad brush, but there some, and I take no glee in this, who knew Trump was a real threat and believed that Bernie Sanders was the only person who could beat The Great Pumpkin Jack O Lantern by energizing a generation of new voters in much the same way President Obama did in 2008.

Instead we got Hillary and the result is worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy. Taibbi writes:

Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party’s failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

But the party’s willful blindness symbolized a similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump’s election was a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of “the establishment.” The target group included political leaders, bankers, industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media. And we all closed our eyes to what we didn’t want to see.

Well, I hope everyone’s eyes are wide open now.

This morning Jill Miller Zimon writes in In Trump do not trust that we should not:

[T]rust Donald Trump, unless you want to be disappointed, repeatedly. Not because he lies. Not because he exaggerates. Not because he has evil intent. But because he will always put himself first.

In Donald Trump’s case, putting oneself first isn’t the common notion we have about doing what is in one’s best interest.

I think Jill is right in her message—Trump cannot be trusted to do what he says unless he benefits directly—but in the broader picture, I think that we can trust President-Elect Trump to behave exactly in the way he has shown us he will act.

We simply need to acknowledge two realities: first, that Donald Trump is a brilliant and successful individual and second, that he is the sum of the life experiences that have shaped his personal reality. We ignore those and we delude ourselves into continuing to make disastrous mistakes.

As a way into the second, I left this comment on Jill’s post:

Good morning Jill,

That’s true, you (and Blow) are absolutely correct.

As to why Trump is as he is, we need only understand the pastor who lead the congregation Trump grew up in: Norman Vincent Peale, most famous for his book The Power Of Positive Thinking. Reading that book, along with Trump’s own, The Art Of The Deal (both volumes are in my library), will tell you all you need to know to anticipate the next eight (yes eight, the Democrats will not take back the White House—or the Congress—in 2020) years.

We might argue that Trump perverted Peale’s message, but I don’t think so. Barbara Ehrenreich laid Peale’s message bare in her 2009 book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

The signs of Trumps victory have been there all along. We let him win because we were too focused on dismissing him as a clown and an idiot.

We need to stop making that mistake. We disregard those with world views different from our own by calling them stupid at our peril.

Do all you can to make today a better day,

Jeff

I think that reading, or re-reading, The Power Of Positive Thinking and The Art Of The Deal are the most important reading that anyone who wishes to understand what has happened can undertake between now and 20 January.

I’m catching up on the news sources that I am allowing back into my space this morning and reading Matt Taibbi’s ever excellent work at Rolling Stone shows that my own news fast idea was far from original.

Taibbi, in After This Election, Turn It Off for Rolling Stone, writes:

Most of what we consume as political media these days is just an endless series of alarmist features detailing the bottomless iniquity of the Other Side. Some of it might be true, who knows. Maybe even most or all of it, in the case of Donald Trump.

But our capacity to do anything about what we read nowhere near matches the sheer quantity of negative messages we receive. So we end up with a hyper-stimulated population, overwhelmed on all sides by feelings of disgust, anger and impotence.

There are only two reasons why society would be organized to keep us paralyzed this way, in a perpetual state of manic antagonism.

The first is that this is the accidental by-product of a rapacious and nihilistic commercial media system, in which the financial incentives run in the direction of using anger to keep target demographics captive for advertisers.

[Snip…]

The other possible reason for such divisive media is even more overtly political. If you want to keep any population from ever usefully focusing its energies in any direction, just keep its people geeked up on intramural hatreds and conspiracy theories. That way, they’ll never get anything done.

That our political process was so easily reduced to a grotesque joke in the past year should tell us all something.

It showed that the people who run this country don’t really care if we make a mess of our democratic rituals, provided we don’t actually elect someone hostile to their interests.

Otherwise, mazel tov! So long as the population keeps going to work and spending money, nobody up there really cares what goes on.

The American people, right to left, were played in 2016 and the people who benefited, I mean really benefited are celebrating what a silly herd of sheep we are. They think we can’t touch them, but we can.

Taibbi concludes:

This has been a terrible year for our country. American exceptionalism as a non-sarcastic idea is dead. Whatever our argument used to be for being a hegemonic superpower with the authority to meddle in the affairs of every other country, it’s no longer valid. We’re officially earth’s most embarrassing people.

Only direct action and sustaining financial support for groups fighting against the smug bastards can help. John Oliver offered a long list of organizations (go to timemark 19:12), pick one, or pick a local group, as I have done, to support with your time and money.

Turn off the noise so you can hear the gurgle of your freedom and your future going down the drain.