Introducing Dale and her discussing network

«I am a reti­red Phar­macist. I am a woman and was born in the USA in 1951, in Sou­thern Cali­for­nia, where I have always lived. My family has been in the same gene­ral area since the begin­ning of the 20^th Cen­tury. I am mar­ried for the third time. My hus­band of 8 years, Jerry, is also from this area. We have 5 adult child­ren and 6 grand­child­ren. You ask about my thoughts and fee­lings about the upco­ming Pre­si­den­tial elec­tion in the USA. There is no way to dis­cuss this elec­tion wit­hout tal­king about the other things that are going on here, inclu­ding the COVID-19 Pan­de­mic, its health and finan­cial con­se­quen­ces as well as the large amount of social unrest rela­ted racial dis­pa­ri­ties, pre­ju­di­ces and our his­to­ric sys­te­mic racism. There are, of course, other extre­mely dis­tur­bing issues right now rela­ted to glo­bal warm­ing, medi­cal care, elder care and schoo­ling in the face of the Pandemic.

I am not affi­lia­ted with any poli­tic party and have not been for about 25 years. I joi­ned a reli­gion back then that I have since left, which did not sup­port par­ti­san poli­tics. Prior to that I was mostly a Demo­crat, but lea­ned towards more pro­gres­sive can­di­da­tes in gene­ral, such as those sup­port­ing envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice and health equity. I defi­ni­tely have Liber­ta­rian sym­pa­thies but tend to vote more on social jus­tice issues.

Back in 2015 and 2016, I pretty much stop­ped fol­lo­wing the news. The elec­tion rhe­to­ric was so cau­stic, I just did not want to lis­ten to it. And then I com­for­ta­bly sank into not pay­ing atten­tion to the deba­tes or pretty much any­thing that was going on in the US rela­ted to ‹poli­tics›. Since I am a woman, I thought that having one for a Pre­si­dent, at last, would be good. I have no love for Hil­lary Clin­ton, but I do admire her much. I voted, by mail, for her.

On the other hand, I have never liked Donald Trump. He was a cele­brity and a New York socia­lite I thought that he was not very smart and could not fathom that we would actually even con­sider him for Pre­si­dent. Then he was! But I was not wat­ching. Sure, there were some things that he did or ‹we did› that came to my atten­tion. I just shook my head and could not believe that ‹he› had done that (like bom­bing Syria, the drone ass­as­si­na­tion of the Ira­nian gene­ral, the bor­der wall, immi­gra­tion poli­cies in gene­ral.) I app­re­cia­ted some bene­fits that I recei­ved by reduc­tions and sim­pli­fi­ca­ti­ons of my income tax.

Then came the COVID-19 Pan­de­mic. My hus­band and I are ‹at risk› because of our age and some other con­di­ti­ons. We were on vaca­tion in Ari­zona to watch base­ball (Spring Trai­ning) when the shut-down orders came through. Our vaca­tion was not a com­plete bust, but we were mostly annoyed rather than afraid. We were stuck in our con­do­mi­nium wat­ching TV and the news. It was there that I star­ted wat­ching the news again. I was so appal­led at the daily press con­fe­ren­ces that Pre­si­dent Trump was giving. I really could not believe what an idiot he see­med like to me. Unpro­fes­sio­nal and not well pre­pared or well spoken.

Back at home and being a health­care pro­fes­sio­nal, I knew that a month or two of ‹stay-at-home› orders was unrea­li­stic. Also, we were not going to be out of this for pro­ba­bly more like 2 years. We reluc­tantly fol­lo­wed the ins­truc­tions to stay at home, avoid crowds, or even small family gathe­rings, use ‹senior› time at stores for shop­ping. I am a vol­un­teer Ombuds­man (advo­cate) for resi­den­tial care faci­li­ties. I can­not go there, even now, but must ‹advo­cate› on the phone. I hope they know who to call!

So, since I am alre­ady dia­led into many net­works that give health­care infor­ma­tion, I was gathe­ring infor­ma­tion about the virus and sen­ding some of it out to my small cir­cle of fri­ends and family. I have actually (re)forged some rela­ti­onships that I did not have before. The ones who gave me the most feed­back are:

1) Nel­son, my nephew who is 50ish, lives in South Korea for about 20 years, mar­ried a Korean and tea­ches in a small pri­vate uni­ver­sity (Eng­lish and Eco­no­mics). Nel­son wat­ches much of the US media, pri­ma­rily CNN he says, but also alter­nate sites such as Slate.

2) Ber­nie, an early child­hood fri­end. She lives in Nor­t­hern Cali­for­nia. She will not watch any of the usual news sources, but has pas­sed me many alter­nate sites.

3) Bret, ano­ther nephew, from my sis­ter, who is 45ish. He is a com­pu­ter engi­neer. Says that he ‹chan­ged› two years ago. He does not trust any­thing out of tra­di­tio­nal media. Much like Bernie.

4) Allen (Al), my older brot­her, who is 77, a reti­red nuclear engi­neer who worked at Los Ala­mos Natio­nal Lab in New Mexico for 30 years or so. He only wat­ches MSNTV and loves Rachel Maddow.

5) Barb, a middle child­hood fri­end, and always a fri­end. She lives in Hawaii. Barb is always a Repu­bli­can, no mat­ter what. She has a lot of legi­ti­mate con­cerns about the shut­down of Hawaii that relies so much on tou­rism. She bla­mes the Democrats.

6) Nancy, ano­ther middle child­hood fri­end along with Barb. She lives in Sou­thern Cali­for­nia. She wat­ches a lot of TV, but mostly CNN. She thinks that Trump is an idiot.

So in this group I have 3 who love Trump and 3 who do not. None of us are Joe Biden sup­port­ers. It is not that we think that he is so bad, but he just does not inspire a lot of faith (in the sys­tem or in his age/​health.) He is a quint­essen­tial career poli­ti­cian, after all. That is not a good thing to most of us.

I will try to give you a taste of some of the communications.

I have resor­ted to my pre-Obama habit of wat­ching the comedy news. I find the sar­casm a nice break from the serious stuff. I have been wat­ching Tre­vor Noah, John Oli­ver and Seth Mey­ers with a little Jimmy Fallon and John Ste­ward. My feeds often give me links to my favo­rite, George Car­lin. He really liked to call BS what it was/​is. RIP George.»

Dale on environment

«You asked about envi­ron­men­tal, glo­bal warm­ing issues affec­ting how Ame­ri­cans feel about the pre­si­den­tial candidates/​race.

I threw out the ques­tion to my cont­acts who I thought might respond ‹your take on the cur­rent administration’s record on the environment.›

I got almost not­hing back. Only from trusty Nel­son who did not think that it was a pri­mary issue for the pre­si­den­tial race.

Howe­ver, I do. And I think that the cur­rent administration’s track record shows that it is busi­ness before the envi­ron­ment. A pre­si­den­tial order that Trump signed about a month ago for our Natio­nal Parks was really just bela­ted needs for main­ten­ance on the infra­struc­ture in those parks. Bes­i­des, Natio­nal Parks are a big tou­rist draw, the­r­e­fore important for business.

Other­wise his admi­nis­tra­tion has tried to gut seve­ral pre­vious pro­tec­tions inclu­ding the Migra­tory Birds Act, allo­wing for des­truc­tion of habi­tat by mostly fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies, wit­hout need to actually pro­tect the birds (such as des­truc­tion of in use nes­t­ing sites.) This is par­ti­cu­larly important in the Arc­tic (i.e. Alaska) where the useful months for fos­sil fuel work coin­ci­des with nes­t­ing sea­son for many species.

And fos­sil fuels are not nee­ded like they were before. The Admi­nis­tra­tion seems more likely to reopen coal mines than invest in ‹green› energy, even nuclear energy with updated tech­no­logy and safety. Again, I believe that he is more inte­res­ted in pro­tec­ting big busi­ness than pro­tec­ting peo­ple. And, of course, there is frack­ing, which can­not be a good thing, pretty much any way you look at it. NIMBY, please.

Then there is the administration’s with­dra­wal of the US from the Paris agree­ments on glo­bal warming.

So, from my point of view, these are as important as any other actions by ‹Trump›. He just does not care. The demo­crats are more con­sis­tent in their actions to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment for the future.

And I am not so jaded that I believe that this was a Trump thing first. We have a lot of bad history here, but he has (per­so­nally) rever­sed many trends for improvement.»

Bernie on Paris agreement

«I think that the administration’s with­dra­wal from the Paris Accords was jus­ti­fied. The main­stream media (as with so much of the news gene­ra­ted by it) fai­led to report on why Trump withdrew.

Docu­ments sup­plied by every coun­try before the Paris con­fe­rence, known as INDCs, or ‘Inten­ded Natio­nally Deter­mi­ned Con­tri­bu­ti­ons’, SET OUT THEIR INTEN­DED FUTURE ENERGY POLICIES.

Buried in tech­ni­cal details, these made clear that, howe­ver much the count­ries of the West might be plan­ning to reduce their ‘car­bon’ emis­si­ons, the rest of the world, led by China and India, was plan­ning by 2030 to build enough fos­sil-fuel power sta­ti­ons to increase glo­bal emis­si­ons by almost 50 per­cent. China was inten­ding to dou­ble its emis­si­ons, India to tri­ple theirs.

IN OTHER WORDS, THE REST OF THE WORLD HAD NO INTEN­TION OF GOING ALONG WITH THE DECLARED AIM OF PARIS, TO AGREE ON THE WHO­LE­SALE ‘DECAR­BO­NI­SA­TION’ OF THE WORLD’S ECONOMY.

This was Trump’s cited reason for with­dra­wal. But did you hear about it?

You may want to send the atta­ched report to Kira. It addres­ses the issue of ‹GroupT­hink› and how this phe­no­me­non has eli­mi­na­ted the pos­si­bi­lity for intel­li­gent debate con­cer­ning the issue of Cli­mate Change and the Envi­ron­ment. And, while it speaks of the pro­blem as it exists in the UK, I don’t think it can be denied that we have the same pro­blem here in the Sta­tes.» (Gemeint ist hier die kli­ma­kri­ti­sche Publi­ka­tion von Chris­to­pher Boo­ker: Glo­bal Warm­ing. A case study in groupt­hink. How sci­ence can shed new light on the most important ‘non-debate’ of our time, Lon­don 2018)

Nel­son (Ex-pat in Korea) when asked about how he actually gets a bal­lot and vote

«This year, I don’t. There is no mail ser­vice bet­ween the US and Korea now except for maybe govern­ment stuff (I got my sti­mu­lus check in June). We’ve tried to send some cards, a bill, and, about a month ago, my request for an absen­tee bal­lot to the US. Within a week or two, they’re retur­ned to us with a mes­sage like, «There is no mail ser­vice to this coun­try now.» Also, Aus­tra­lia. We tried to send a card to a fri­end there, and within a week, it was returned.

Every year when I’m visi­ting my dad in Las Cruces, where I’m regis­tered to vote, I go to the coun­try clerk and fill in all the info nee­ded to get a bal­lot sent to me. They’re usually pretty good about it though last year (late in the year when the mail ser­vice was alre­ady start­ing to slow down for some reason), I got a bal­lot for a local elec­tion about a week before the elec­tion. I gene­rally don’t vote on local issues any­way wit­hout asking my dad about them (Who am I to raise the pro­perty taxes of ever­yone in Las Cruces, for exam­ple?), but this would­n’t have made it back to NM in time any­way. I never got my bal­lot for the NM Demo­cra­tic pri­mary this year (did­n’t even apply). 

This time around, I kindly asked my dad if he would vote Biden for me, but he does­n’t want to vote for a pedo­phile Satan-wor­ship­ping socia­list. He guf­fa­wed. NM’s a pretty safe blue state as far as pre­si­den­tial elec­tions go, so I’m not too worried. My fri­end here, Gor­don, is bum­med he won’t be able to vote in his home dis­trict in Wis­con­sin, though.»

Ber­nie on motifs of Trump supporters

Trump sup­port­ers (the ones I know) are not back­ing him because they «hate libe­rals». They are back­ing him because they see Trump taking actions that no prior Pre­si­dent (in the past 50 years) has dared to take. They are back­ing him because, irre­spec­tive of his lack of polished elo­quence, he speaks his mind directly-often bru­t­ally-and this lack of arti­fice is a trait that average Ame­ri­cans can iden­tify with. In exam­ple, whe­ther or not it makes any sense to the «Coas­ters», middle Ame­rica belie­ves that this coun­try should remain sove­reign and, for that to hap­pen, ille­gal immi­gra­tion must first be curtailed. They believe that, in order to be eco­no­mic­ally via­ble, indus­try must exist and thrive WITHIN our bor­ders, and for that to hap­pen, jobs can­not be ship­ped to China and tariffs have an important role to play in main­tai­ning Ame­ri­can Indus­try. Most (middle class) Ame­ri­cans believe that they have a right to pro­tect their land and their fami­lies and, in order to do that, the Second Amend­ment must be pre­ser­ved. And, for most of them, «Make Ame­rica Great Again» is more than just a poli­ti­cal slo­gan. It is a call to arms to defend against a take­over of this coun­try, one which they see as coming from Socia­list forces devo­ted to the cen­tra­li­zed plan­ning of the entire World, where Top Down Manage­ment emana­tes from Brussels, Basle and the cen­tra­li­zed finan­cial manage­ment plat­forms crea­ted by the Ban­king élite.

Nel­son in response

«Yeah, I don’t want to spend too much time on stuff like this. At least Ber­nie does­n’t seem to think the world is run by pedo­phile Satan wor­ship­pers like some of the QAnon folks do. At any rate, con­trary to popu­lar belief, libe­rals are against ille­gal immi­gra­tion (Obama depor­ted far more than Bush did though it was kind of due to a change in how ‹depor­ted› was defi­ned). It’s false to say other­wise (Liber­ta­ri­ans are gene­rally the ones for open bor­ders, not libe­rals). DACA folks are ano­ther story – one should not be punis­hed for the sins of one’s fathers and mothers. The easiest way to stop ille­gal immi­gra­tion is to punish those who hire ille­gal immi­grants, not build a wall. Punis­hing busi­ness is not popu­lar with Repu­bli­cans, though. 

If Ame­rica wants a place in the world, it’ll have to fol­low some of the world’s rules, and the only way to do that is by being part of it. The more you can engage with the world, the more you can influence its rules in the way you want. In fact, that’s part of my job here, in a way. I teach lan­guage and eco­no­mics, but also cul­ture. Ame­rica has been losing influence in the Trump years. Peo­ple are loo­king for other models, and the Rus­sian and Chi­nese ones, as hard as they try, are not palata­ble to modern demo­cra­cies (not that some of them – Modi, Abe, etc., are­n’t try­ing). S. Korea has been loo­king at making alli­ances with other ‹middle powers› like Mexico and Aus­tra­lia, who, as a group, can have more influence than when solo and won’t have to be so tied to capri­cious super­powers. It’s sel­fish to say, ‹We would like the world shaped in our image, but we don’t want to fol­low inter­na­tio­nal rules.› 

Eco­no­mic­ally, tariffs are a losing game so often. There’s an old joke – ‹Who wins the trade war? No one›. The cost of the tariffs are paid by Ame­ri­cans, not China. Free trade tends to help count­ries as a whole when it’s done right. Bernie’s right, though, in that it’s often not done right – I can under­stand that. One of the pro­blems in the US, though, is that so many are so out of it with regard to what it takes to make a good living in a modern demo­cracy. I’m not bla­ming those peo­ple. The sys­tem – govern­ment, society, reli­gion – has fai­led them. They don’t have the edu­ca­tion or trai­ning to make a good living, and it’s sad. It reminds me of all those peo­ple who lost their farms in the early Rea­gan years. When I look at how many peo­ple think the virus is a hoax or glo­bal warm­ing does­n’t exist or the Earth is 10,000 years old or QAnon is real, I think, ‹How could a modern demo­cracy have so many peo­ple like that and still exist?› The ans­wer: It can’t – not for long. Peo­ple are just as important as natu­ral resour­ces and capi­tal in pro­duc­tion. They have to be ‹grown› and ‹deve­lo­ped›. They can’t be allo­wed to wal­low in igno­rance if you want a pro­duc­tive society.

I under­stand why Ber­nie likes Trump for the way he speaks because some think it’s refres­hing to have a poli­ti­cian who speaks his/​her mind (or seems to) ins­tead of dres­sing things up (Not men­tio­ning that he dres­ses a lot up in lies and half truths.). There are other ways to do it, though, and tact is part of being an adult. In addi­tion, I think he’s a lot coar­ser and stu­pi­der than most Ame­ri­cans in the middle class (I assume she means white middle class). Very few middle clas­sers I know would pre­sent bleach as a solu­tion to COVID or mock dis­ab­led peo­ple or imply mob vio­lence against jour­na­lists or peo­ple who don’t like them is OK or lie about their past state­ments or posi­ti­ons that are part of the recor­ded public record. 

Donald Trump has been a public figure for more than 40 years. We know who he has been, so it’s easy to see what he is now. Direct line. 

Any­way, that’s all the time I’m going to spend on that. So many issues.»

Dale on the first debate

«Well, I trol­led the libe­ral and con­ser­va­tive news on the inter­net today try­ing to find the pulse of the nation after the debate débâcle on Tuesday.

Defi­ni­tely the thing that most con­sis­t­ently was the big­gest pro­blem was Trump not denoun­cing White Supre­macists. Repu­bli­cans and Demo­crats alike. And on his fol­low up, he still would not do it spe­ci­fi­cally, but tried to make peo­ple think that he did. Even his press secre­tary thinks that he did. But others inter­viewed who have a lot of inte­rest in this, even his lone Black Repu­bli­can Sena­tor, Tim Scott, are not liking his response. He just could not say ‹I denounce white supre­macists groups.› I guess that his ton­gue would burn off if he actually said those words!!!!»

Dale on the Vice debate

I have not seen any of the offi­cial respon­ses to the debate yet, so this is from my impres­si­ons from last night. I think that both can­di­da­tes made some good points.

I really dis­liked the inter­rup­ti­ons, but they were more irri­ta­tion than dis­gust as with the pre­si­den­tial debate. I will be inte­res­ted in the rebut­tal points that will be in the news and the others that I follow.

I like Kamala Har­ris because she is a woman and of color and expe­ri­en­ced in public ser­vice. Though, like Barak Obama, not ‹Afri­can-Ame­ri­can› as in the slave heri­tage sense. I think that there is a dif­fe­rence in per­spec­tive. I like that she was able to make some ‹law and order› cred points.

I think that she is a more sym­pa­the­tic can­di­date for her sta­ted con­cerns for the working folks. I think that she tried hard during the debate to be civil in her tone and demeanor.

Mike Pence is too much of a fun­da­men­ta­list Chris­tian for my tas­tes and I am very con­cer­ned about that agenda being forced onto ever­yone. (I think that the pre­si­dent is a fraud there) I would like to think that the pre­si­den­tial order from awhile back allo­wing prayer in school will be equally applied. Are the Mus­lims allo­wed to roll out their prayer rugs during recess?! Wit­hout harass­ment? I doubt it, but that is what it says. Free­dom to pray if you want to.

I thought that he was inten­tio­nally being civil to Har­ris and the mode­ra­tor, but I think that it was a ruse. But, none­thel­ess, refres­hing com­pared to the president.

I think that abor­tion should have some rest­ric­tions, but allo­wed. Any­thing after the 2nd tri­mes­ter, for sure, unless there are severe medi­cal issues to save the mother. But even late 2nd tri­mes­ter is too far along, I think. I believe that it will not change much in Cali­for­nia, wha­te­ver the ruling. I under­stand that there are, and always have been, abor­tion tou­rists who have to go to other sta­tes. With the phar­maceu­ti­cal abor­ti­ons available, it seems to be less of an issue, but I guess they are not allo­wed in some sta­tes. And then there are issues about who will pay for it.

Ber­nie on Democracy

«Peo­ple often mistake my ana­ly­sis of Trump as vali­da­tion of him, It is not. I did­n’t vote for the man in 2016 and, if any­thing, I con­sider him to be only the les­ser of two evils in that Biden (in my opi­nion) is part and par­cel of a group of pup­pets con­trol­led by Glo­bal Élite inte­rests who are (and always have been) the domi­nant powers on this planet.

I do not believe that we (the 99%) achieve any­thing by voting. In that regard, I believe that Buck­mins­ter Ful­ler got it right. The Republican/​Democtatic divide is a dis­trac­tion meant to create the illu­sion of choice. We think we live in a demo­cracy and that our decis­ion of one lea­der over ano­ther, is making some sort of dif­fe­rence. My belief is that the agenda is set; that we are in the dark as to what that agenda implies and that the divi­si­ve­ness crea­ted as a result of our false belief that one (hand picked by the Élite) poli­ti­cian over ano­ther will/​ can make a dif­fe­rence is the real pro­blem. We haven’t unders­tood that the REAL issue is NOT a ques­tion of right ver­sus left, libe­ral poli­tics ver­sus con­ser­va­tive poli­tics, or Biden v. Trump. The real pro­blem is the 1% ver­sus the 99%.

We are a threat to them due to our num­bers. That is the reason why we must be sur­veil­led. It is the reason for the data ana­ly­tics that track our every move, our every thought (s regis­tered by key­strokes on a com­pu­ter), as we navi­gate a digi­tal, vir­tual world. His­to­ri­cally, we have always been nee­ded to per­form the grunt labor, the hard work that pro­vi­des the bene­fits to that slim mino­rity of con­trol­lers. We are no lon­ger nee­ded, at least, not all 8 bil­lion of us. The future, in my opi­nion will be a world where the only indi­vi­du­als who will con­ti­nue to repre­sent ‹Value› for the Élite (the ‹Belite› as I refer to them) will be those with the intellect and con­for­mist beha­vi­oral men­ta­lity con­du­cive to per­forming the tech­ni­cal work nee­ded to build a robo­tic world–a cyborg world–where vir­tual rea­lity will be the norm and humans will be sup­p­lan­ted by AI.

Dark, yes. But I believe that this is the real threat. »

Nel­sons Reply

«I actually agree with a lot of what Ber­nie says here. We’re often given false choices – only two. Neither party repres­ents the working peo­ple very well (though it’s got­ten worse under Trump). I also agree that AI and the loss of jobs for those not able to be trai­ned in it (or other­wise con­form) are issues to be dealt with. We’ve alre­ady seen the effects of a lot of that over the deca­des. Jobs are lost, not just to other count­ries, but to robots. That’s where a lot of jobs lost in the Great Reces­sion went. ‹Homo Deus› by Yavel Noah Hariri has a rather large sec­tion on humans beco­ming obso­lete. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s very interesting.

I guess we dis­agree in belie­ving that Trump is the solu­tion. I don’t see a mas­sive ‹Deep State› con­spi­racy against him. It’s many peo­ple working tog­e­ther and apart to bring down a cri­mi­nal just like is done with thou­sands of cri­mi­nals every day. We’ve known what kind of per­son Trump was for deca­des. He’s been in the public eye lon­ger than Hil­lary has been, in fact. 

Any­way, I’m glad Ber­nie and I can (sort of) see eye to eye about part of it. We don’t have to agree on everything.»

Nel­son on Coal and Covid-19

«I haven’t paid a lot of atten­tion to the spe­ci­fics, but I remem­ber early on when Trump, still a can­di­date, was try­ing to cater to the coal indus­try. Bad idea. There’s no such thing as ‹clean coal› and it’s been a dying indus­try for years and years. Natu­ral gas is rapidly over­ta­king it (has for a long time, ever since frack­ing star­ted gro­wing), and this is a reasonable alter­na­tive until we ease into more rene­wa­ble resour­ces, as is Biden’s plan. There are, of course, other pro­blems with natu­ral gas as frack­ing is pretty messy.

Lots of busi­ness peo­ple tend to for­get that a dirty, sick coun­try harms the eco­nomy. Peo­ple are resour­ces, too, and peo­ple who are dying from poi­so­ned water and air are bur­dens. Loo­king at how COVID has been hand­led by this admi­nis­tra­tion, I’m won­de­ring about how much the R’s really value human life.»

To be continued…