Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox – 31jul24

[Have no idea why Trump has ‘buried’ the Project 2025 position paper generated by Heritage.  Its purpose was to elicit public discussion of conservative oriented policies, most of which Trump et al continue to endorse.  Such peremptory emotional eruptions by our former president continue to give me pause about his chances this November. (more here)  gjr]

Trumps November Chances – 25jul24 update

George Rebane

The Lip from the Hip has done it again.  With his 18jul24 convention acceptance speech he took a cinched November win and threw it back into a campaign maelstrom welcomed only by Kamala Harris and the Dems (and Putin and Xi).  My own immediate reaction to his convention performance was posted here, and since then literally every left and right commentator has agreed that Trump blew it.

Trump’s self-declared return to a barroom brawl mode of campaigning has put his road to the White House back in play, even with the likes of an unaccomplished opponent and grifter like Kamala as his opponent.  WSJ’s Dan Henninger summarizes her chances in today’s paper (here).

With a flawed candidate like Trump already problematic when he was running against Bumblebrain, on 15 June I did a little work in extracting my own assessment of Trump’s probability of winning in November (described here).  The result (0.45) was not promising.  Given all that has happened since – assassination attempt, enthusiastic Republican convention, reversion to rambling stump speeches, … - I redid my probability assessment, hoping against hope for a better outcome.  The resulting probability came in at slightly north of 0.48, not much of an improvement when considering the woulda/coulda/shouldas.

Given her documented far left ideology and promised public policy initiatives a Kamala Harris presidency would be cataclysmic for our republic.  And Trump’s loose cannon tactics promise to make the interval to November a real nailbiter.  Is there no one on his team of advisors with the courage and gravitas who can tell him to stuff a sock in it and give acting presidential a try?

Scattershots – 21jul24 (updated 22jul24)

George Rebane

Given the nature and extent of America’s ideological schism, all effective public policies should be made in the anticipation that this schism will endure.  Existentially we are no longer one nation.  Rebane Doctrine, 2024.

The mentality of collectivists – progressives, liberals, wokes, socialists, communists, neo-Marxists, … - ranges within a space anchored by insanity, cynicism, and evil. The evidence continues to pour in.  Today we hear leftwing commentators on lamestream media attempting to foster doubt that there was an actual assassination attempt on Donald Trump.  Their cynical cum evil proposals to their ill-informed audiences are that the blood letting was staged and/or was caused by some mysterious shards of broken glass exploding out of somewhere.

As expected, Bumblebrain is out and an even worse choice in Kamala Harris is now undemocratically foisted by the Dem elites as their new standard bearer. (more here)  But everyone knows Kamala will just be the next empty pipe to power for those who have been acting as the administration’s Star Chamber.  She will be a compliant conduit between the leftwing power brokers and the public policies they intend to implement, much like Joe Biden has been during his term.  From my perch I see the political landscape between now and November as a minefield for Republicans, especially Donald Trump.  There will be an opportunity to make countless politically destructive gaffs when shooting from the lip as the campaign really heats up.

[22jul24 update]  POTUS is NOT the hardest job in the world as any casual perusal of history will confirm.  In fact, POTUS may be the most fault tolerant job ever.  For how else do people with no executive experience and a woefully limited knowledge base perform more or less adequately – i.e. they didn’t start WW3?  Almost anyone who reads English can assume the position and make it through with on-the-job training that is amply available to a president.  Since FDR, consider the tenures of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Obama, and now Biden.

PJ Media is not a credible source of news and information due to its conservative outlook – so again posits one of our leftwing commenters after I cited it above in reference to the ‘undemocratic’ way that the Dems have hoisted Kamala to be their standard bearer.  What I always ask these liberal critics is for the evidence they have to support their assertion.  They can never provide any such backing for their gratuitous conclusion.  This is in opposition to conservatives dunning liberal outlets like NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS as willing shills of the Democratic Party publishing years of unrecanted lies to their audiences.  As evidence just consider their years of ongoing reporting on the Russian election interference, that the border is secure, onset of inflation, Trump instigating insurrection, FBI doctoring FISA evidence, Hunter’s laptop as Russian disinformation, Hillary’s paying for generating the infamous Trump memo, and on and on.  And now we know that the whole cadre of the country’s Left has been covering up and lying about the cognitive breakdown of Joe Biden which has been obvious to Americans during his entire term as POTUS.

Trump’s Speech – Barely a Base Hit

George Rebane

We were all hoping after surviving the assassination attempt that former President Trump would hit it out of the park.  That was not to be.  His keynote speech accepting the nomination at last night’s Republican convention came in lackluster, long, and lame.  There was a noteworthy part at the beginning where he described last Saturday’s events, praised his Secret Service detail, remembered the fallen fireman and wounded, and thanked the Lord.  From there on I thought he was going to walk instead of eking out what charitably could be described as a base hit.  As he droned on, freely departing from the script, you could hear him stray out of his appointed lane and attack Biden by name, decry once more the 2020 election, and continue circling the barn and its various outhouses reprising the slings and arrows he has suffered over the last eight years.  In short, it was the best speech the Democrats could have hoped for.  November cannot arrive too soon.  Given the months remaining, my fear is that his mouth will again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Square Root Algo (more added)

George Rebane

Regular RR readers know of my interest in numeracy and promoting the practice of mental math to derive usable approximations without the use of calculators.  I argue that such skills are required by educated lay people so that they can quickly understand and vet claims made by politicians and pundits that involve the torrents of numbers with which we our public policies are delivered.

One useful tool is the ability to calculate the square root of any number to within a percent or so.  For example, when you hear that a wildfire has burned a 45 square mile area, how big is that really?  Numerous other problems that require a quick estimate of square roots are encountered daily by people whose desire to understand only penetrates the surface of (or bounces off) reports they hear.  So here’s a square root algo (algorithm to the purists) that I developed some time ago and have taught my numeracy students and shared with colleagues.

Assassin’s Bullet Grazes Former President Trump

George Rebane

‘Political violence has no place in America’ was professed by tens of media mavens and history-light politicians immediately after Republican candidate Donald Trump almost bought the farm in Butler, Pennsylvania this afternoon.  Bumblebrain even went on the air to state that such an act was “unprecedented” and “totally unacceptable” in American history.  Au contraire.

Trump survived the event and was defiant with his fist in the air as he was rushed off the podium and into his waiting SUV.  Two rally visitors were not so lucky – one was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire between the assassin and the Secret Service, and another attendee was wounded and is in serious condition.  The assassin was brought down quickly by pre-positioned counter-sniper fire.

But to be clear about the historical precedents – violence is a long and well-established practice on the country’s political scene.  The number of successful assassinations over the centuries are many, and the number of thwarted attempts are countless.  This is not unusual in relatively free countries where people have access to firearms and other weapons, and is a price we pay for having the Second Amendment.  In tightly controlled autocracies where people are kept unarmed, assassinations still occur at a good clip, but it is the tyrant and his thugs who do the killing of undesirable political opponents, uncooperative journalists, and recalcitrant intellectuals.

Tonight most of America is thankful that President Trump escaped with his life.  Many of us have had trepidations over the last years about his open campaigning style which has continued to invite such attempts on his life, attempts that are nigh well impossible to guard against.  (In this incident the ‘secured boundary’ from beyond which the assassin fired was less than 200 yards from the podium.)  We will learn more about all this in the coming days.  But I venture to say that Trump’s chances for returning to the Oval Office increased significantly tonight.  Thank God he’s OK, and long may he wave.

Sandbox – 8jul24

[‘Sweden Is Safer in the Summertime, But No One Wants to Face the Reason Why’  Another reason to be an Islamophobe.  gjr]

Happy Independence Day - 2024

George Rebane

'Nuff said.

Culture Drives Reality

George Rebane

It is the unfortunate case that individuals can not only have their own opinions, but also their own facts that substantiate those opinions. – Rebane Doctrine

A person’s reality is a manifestation of his culture.  More specifically, an individual’s ontology or worldview of reality is, at a minimum, strongly influenced or maximally determined by the culture in which he was raised or has since adopted, and now lives.

This thesis has been argued by philosophers, historians, and psychologists for the better part of the last 50 years, and today goes a long way to explain the behaviorally cohesive cultural cohorts worldwide.  In America we have reverted into a strongly politicized polyglot of cultures (tribes?) whose diverse adherents no longer practice a common culture in the public square.  Instead, we take great pride in demonstrating to one and all our particular complement of unique behaviors which declare our cultural bona fides and tribe memberships.  And woe be it to anyone to dismiss, discredit, or discriminate against such behaviors as expressions of a sacrosanct culture whose dimensions include any combination of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, etc.

Everyone has unique rights when operating under the obvious mantle of their culture, since all cultures are held to be valuable and of equal worth.  Actually, upon closer examination, some cultures have been and remain definitely worth more to humanity than others, especially if they derive from western or European cultures.

To illustrate the veracity of the above thesis, we can appeal to several examples that range from recorded history to current events from the present day.  We start by recognizing that one reality of human consciousness itself rose from a cultural transformation that reaches back to about 1200 BC (or BCE, if you prefer).  The late Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes gave a very convincing account of how consciousness, in the sense of the rise of the personal agency of I/me, arose in the middle east during the 400 years of the so-called Dorian Invasions (1200 – 800 BC).

In his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1990) Jaynes describes how ‘pre-Dorian’ people, who then lived nomadically or in small towns and villages, actually saw and interacted with their gods.  They recorded such occasions and incidents in their written records and graphic arts (e.g. murals and pottery).  From early youth their cultures taught them to see and hear such gods, and behave as the gods’ agents, essentially expressing little or no of what we today call consciousness or ‘free  will’ – in short, you did what the gods prescribed ‘in vivo’ or in your culture’s recorded scriptures/myths.  Personal decision making and its attendant stress were minimized or even absent from such people’s lives. (more here)

In the pre-enlightenment age even the most advanced western nations/kingdoms had populations that overwhelmingly believed in and interacted with witches and other agents of evil.  They actually ‘saw’ witches fly and cast hideous spells, and therefore felt quite justified in denouncing them for extreme punishments by the authorities.  These beliefs were cemented early on by the religious teachings of their culture.

In more recent times we have teams of cultural anthropologists (e.g. Margaret Mead) who have encountered and studied primitive tribes with cultures that embed drastically different realities in their members.  An example of such a discovery occurred in the Papua-New Guinea highlands during the pre-war years.  There a tribe was discovered whose members believed that the world ended in the middle of a river on whose bank was their village.  They literally saw nothing of the other bank less than a hundred feet away.  Anthropologists visibly encamped on the other side were received as aliens emerging from a fog in their inflated dinghy.

A similar culture-induced reality was enjoyed by tribes on a neighboring island during the Pacific campaign of WW2.  The island had an airstrip for receiving cargo laden C-47 military transport aircraft.  To the natives these giant aircraft were bringers of never-before-seen wondrous things to enrich and expand their lives.  Not familiar with manufacturing processes, they believed “that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture had been created by spiritual means.”  And no matter how many times it was explained and demonstrated to them, they never saw the airplanes as mechanical things operated by humans – to them they were simply alive as large flying creatures.  When the war moved on and the airstrip was abandoned, the natives were bereft – the wondrous creatures stopped coming.  Their response was simple, they formed what became known as a ‘Cargo Cult’ whose members continued to maintain the landing strip, and built decoys in the shape of airplanes to attract more of these giant flying critters full of presents. The clear and demonstrated reality of the foreigners did nothing to change their culture-rooted alternate reality. (more here)