America the Beautiful

In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil, each has its place.

— Nelson Algren

It's February 1947.

Chicago novelist Nelson Algren takes the El to Monroe and walks a block to the Palmer House, where he meets fellow novelist Simone de Beauvoir in a cocktail lounge named Le Petit Café. 

He buys her a drink and they try to hold a conversation, but it's tough: he speaks no French and her English is limited.

"I’m the only serious writer in this city," Algren boasts, and offers to show de Beauvoir, visiting from Paris, the "real" town.

He takes the famous Existentialist to a tiny dance club filled with down-and-out customers; old winos, ruined whores, and a crazy spastic misfit who dances alone on the empty stage. Algren used to be a hobo, himself, a member of Chicago's lowlife.

"He’s here every day," Algren says, pointing to the spastic man. 

"He's beautiful," Beauvoir replied. "They're all beautiful."

"In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil—each has its place" Algren says. "We don't like to think these extremes can mingle.”

We still don't.

Report No. 32-04 VD

Ukraine's tragedy may be America's blessing.

The sudden spotlight on Putin may open the eyes of Trump fans to his treachery.

They might come to realize what the rest of the world knows: Trump is Putin's bitch, which doesn't quite recommend 45 for reelection.

Excerpt from Report No. 32-04 VD

With luck, that spotlight will land soon on a Kremlin document leaked last July, Report No. 32-04 VD.

While America's mainstream media slumbered all that month, reporting only on the Tokyo Olympics, Europe's media headlined the document's leak.

Report No. 32-04 VD, dated January 14, 2016, is a Kremlin brief that was discussed by Putin in a meeting of Russia's national security council a week later.

At the end of the meeting, Putin directed three spy agencies to begin "all out" disinformation campaigns to help then-candidate Trump win in 2016. 

The spy agencies were to "alter the consciousness of the masses, especially in certain groups."

Putin believed a Trump White House would disrupt and weaken America, his longtime nemesis.

"A Trump victory will definitely lead to the destabilization of the US socio-political system and will see discontent erupt," the report says.

The document also assesses the mind of then-candidate Trump.

"Trump is an impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual suffering from an inferiority complex.”

Report No. 32-04 VD confirms the Kremlin had blackmail materials from "previous unofficial visits by Trump to the territory of the Russian Federation." 

No doubt, those include the infamous "golden showers" video.

Should Trump resist the Kremlin's intervention in the presidential election, Putin would remind the candidate he could ruin him.

So as you witness Ukraine's tragedy unfold, remember what mom used to say.

"Behind every cloud there's a silver lining."

Or at least a golden shower.

True Ignorance

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge,
but the refusal to acquire it.

— Karl Popper

I rarely encounter a fatuous opinion that's based on knowledge.

They're almost always based on bullshit.

Knowledge has never been as easy to acquire than it is today.

And yet ignorance remains rampant.

Our polity is a disaster today because, while we test citizens relentlessly—for Covid-19, alcohol, cholesterol, illegal drugs, math skills and driving skills—we don't test our citizens for ignorance. 

We let it go unchecked.

People who are ignorant counter knowledge by labeling it opinion, as if there were no difference. 

"Well, that's your opinion."

But there's a vast difference, which has been understood for 2,500 years.

The Ancient Greek philosophers called opinion doxa; knowledge, episteme.

The former is hearsay; the latter, science.

Episteme, the philosophers taught, had privilege over doxa because it was rational (or what we'd call "evidence-based").

To label episteme as doxa—to say, "Well, that's your opinion"—is to conflate the two forms of knowledge. 

In short, to pile ignorance on top of ignorance.

But some ignorant people want to double down even on that. 

When cornered by unwanted evidence, they label it fake news, as Trump labeled Covid-19 in October 2020—despite the detection of 69,000 new cases every day.

Insisting there's fake news is worse than ignorant; it's psychotic.

It's the cranial condition Karl Popper described as "true ignorance."

Ignorance that won't seek self-help.

Millions of our citizens share this psychosis—incurably, I'm afraid.

But that's nothing new.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been," science writer Isaac Asimov said in 1980.

"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence," Mark Twain said in 1887, "and then success is sure."

Quousque Tandem?

For how much longer, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?

— Cicero

Fox News cut off Trump last night when he attributed Putin's invasion of Ukraine to the "big steal."

"Putin was going to be satisfied with a peace, and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration, and as an American, I'm angry about it, and I'm saddened by it, and it all happened because of a rigged election."

Interviewer Laura Ingraham cut off Trump at this point and jumped to another story. She returned to Trump minutes later, only to get into an argument with him.

We can only hope media companies—even propagandist ones like Fox News—have lost patience with Trump's bullshit.

It would not be the first time a popular figure was silenced by broadcasters.

In November 1938, radio stations nationwide banned Father Charles Coughlin, a Nazi-sympathizing Catholic priest with 30 million avid American listeners, after he denied during his weekly broadcast that Kristallnacht had hurt Germany's Jews. (He claimed it only targeted Communists.)

The stations insisted the airwaves could not tolerate Coughlin's intolerance—an abuse of the freedom of speech. Without a platform, the Nazi-loving Coughlin soon vanished from the public forum.

In November 63 BC, Rome's consul Cicero convened the senate in order to lay before it a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.

The plot's leader, the corrupt Senator Catiline, sat in the gallery as Cicero delivered his First Speech against Catilina, one of history's greatest political orations. It opens:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? 

For how much longer, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? How much longer will your madness make playthings of us? When will your unbridled effrontery stop swaggering?

Quo usque tandem abutere, Trump, patientia nostra?

Absurdities

Love the offender, yet detest the offense.

— Alexander Pope

Self-justification is a powerful force.

A recent Goodly post offended a friend of mine, who's rejoicing over the end of mask mandates. 

He was particularly upset by my calling anti-maskers "discourteous" and "miserable" and wanted to know if I was labeling him as such.

"I and millions of other well-informed people are convinced we are well past the point of mandating mask-wearing," he said.

This fallacious argument is known among logicians as the argumentum ad populum. 

It insists that, because a belief is held in common by a large group of people, it is therefore correct.

The fallacy is clear: just because a crowd thinks something is so doesn't make it so. (More on this in a moment.)

In fairness to my friend, I believe he views my criticisms as instances of "name-calling."

Name-calling is mightily offensive to everyone (especially to name-callers).

He also views mask-wearing as an instance of "hygiene theater."

Medical experts now know Covid-19 is transmitted through the air and that many of the now-outdated public-safety protocols we cherish, like surface-scrubbing, hand-sanitizing, plexiglass shields and disposable menus, are worthless "theatrics" designed to soothe anxious citizens.

Mask-wearing, however, doesn't fall into the same category. 

Mask-wearing, in fact, deters the spread of Covid-19.

Naturally, you can always find a medical practitioner or two who insists masks are hooey; but they'd be lacking evidence. 

You can also assert that the entire scientific community is stupid and wrong; but you'd be lacking evidence.

My problem with anti-maskers is simple: their behavior is unconscionable. 

By ignoring the fact that Covid-19 has killed 1 million Americans and isn't done with us yet, they're guilty of criminal negligence.

And rather than delight in their guilt, I'm saddened. 

I'm sad that a microbe is smarter than the millions of our fellow citizens who'd tell you mask-wearing is whimpy.

They skew Conservative and represent the same crowd that voted for Trump in 2020 (although they'd deny it).

They're the "fake news" bunch.

They don't believe in science and medicine and don't accept civic duty, unless it's convenient, justifying their irresponsible behaviors with the argumentum ad populum.

I'm sorry, but accepting without evidence another's beliefs—or even many people’s beliefs—is just wishful, lazy thinking.

It's thinking of the kind that, throughout history, has produced absurdities like these:

• The earth is flat.
• The fifth day of every month is unlucky.
• Drinking gladiators' blood will cure epilepsy.
• Mice originate from cheese wrapped in dirty rags.
• The earth is 6,000 years old.
• Proximity to the sun determines IQ.
• Blistering the skin with a hot iron cures disease.
• Tobacco enemas revive drowning victims.
• Plowing the ground will make it rain.
• The speed of trains crushes passengers’ brains.
• Implanting goat testicles in the scrotum will cure ED.
• Lower taxes for the rich benefit everyone.
• All Mexicans are rapists.
  
• Vladmir Putin is admirable. 

We don't need anti-maskers' absurdities.

The world is absurd enough.