Hydrogen

December 9, 2020

This is based on a talk given last night by Nicky Ison of the WWF on hydrogen power.

Advantages

The advantage of hydrogen as a fuel is fairly simple. You burn it and that produces energy and water. No greenhouse gases. It is reasonably energy intense, perhaps not as good as coal or oil, but it is more likely to be useful for processes which require large amounts of power, than renewables and storage can be. These include steel production and powering huge mining trucks and shipping, or other trucks which have to travel long distances quickly.

Hydrogen is unlikely to be used to power ordinary cars. There is already an electricity infrastructure, and we would have build a new, and country wide, hydrogen infrastructure to make it useful to for ordinary people. Its more energy efficient to use electricity, than to make hydrogen. and transport it. However, in big vehicles the weight of batteries becomes significant. Hence the possibilities of use.

Having said its a great form of energy, it is good because it is extremely flammable and hence dangerous. It does burn so fiercely that materials nearby may not be hurt, as the flames rise upwards. Hydrogen is often transformed into ammonia to help safe storage and transport, and ammonia is not that great for human health. Hydrogen stays as a gas until very low temperatures are reached (−252.87 Celsius), so freezing it or liquidifying it is not practical.

There are three ways of producing Hydrogen. In the first two, coal or gas are used as raw materials (processing them in different ways). These methods could be powered by renewables, but are perhaps more likely to be powered by coal or gas. The third method is to extract the hydrogen from water by electrolysis – that is passing an electrical current through nearly pure water. This third method can use renewable energy, and produces more-or-less no harmful waste products. The other two methods naturally produce greenhouse gases.

There is an argument that the greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel hydrogen could be stored underground through carbon capture and storage (CCS). This is almost certainly a fantasy. CCS does not work well enough, and costs a lot. It is not happening for most coal and gas energy production now, and even in working projects little carbon is being stored, so there is no reason to think it will happen for hydrogen production in the near future.

Hydrogen production is already a major industry, it is used to produce ammonia and methanol, and that goes into cleaning products, fertilisers and explosives. It is highly polluting. 99% of global hydrogen is made from coal and gas and produces approximately 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions – that is more emissions than attributed to Germany or South Korea. Hydrogen production accounts for about 6% of global methane use.

Big renewable Hydrogen/Ammonia plants are being built in China, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Germany. So the idea is taking off, and some people, at least, do not think it impractical in their local conditions.

Conditions of Use

The WWF argues that if we are going to use hydrogen it must be:

  • Renewable hydrogen, not hydrogen made from, or powered by, coal or gas.
  • Traceable. So we don’t get established fossil fuel hydrogen being substituted onto the market for renewable.
  • Deploy stringent safety regulations. If we transport it as ammonia, then we have to also consider the safety issues of that.
  • Minimising environmental impact, and maximising environmental co-benefits [This is a bit vague]
  • Part of the electrification of energy use and production. This is not an excuse for gas or coal to come back.
  • Cheap for Australian customers. We don’t want a replication of the gas (methane) situation in which it is cheaper to import methane than it is to buy local methane.

Renewable hydrogen could conceivably be exported to Singapore, or Japan. But that needs us to build it up quickly, before other people lock in contracts.

We might also use it to start up “green steel” production, and “Green aluminium”. We could also start putting hydrogen into gas pipelines, if we reduced the amount of methane we consumed.

Problems

1) The classic problem is that Australian business is not geared towards making things and exporting them. Our business likes digging things up, growing things, or selling real estate. That is about it. The only person person interested in Green Steel in Australia, who is widely known, is Sanjeev Gupta who is an Indian born Briton.

I’m told that compared to other countries there is a dearth of Australian industrial policy that is helpful to people starting up. It is possible that this could get in the way, or that the Government’s declared preference for fossil fuel Hydrogen, could also inhibit renewable hydrogen.

2) hydrogen production is not very energy efficient. It takes lots of energy to make, compared to the amount of energy released by burning. Energy Return on Energy Input (EREI) is not great. This means we can only do green hydrogen, when we have masses of excess energy being produced. Renewable farms could conceivably produce hydrogen when they can’t sell electricity, because they are producing too much. However, this assumes that we can build that many large scale renewable options, and still have them make a profit, and that we can add the cost of transporting Hydrogen to this, without making it difficult.

3) You need clean water to make renewable hydrogen. I think the WWF tend to bypass this problem too quickly, but I don’t know how much water is needed – I would have thought quite a lot, but I could be wrong. Australia is not renown for its fresh water supplies. Sea water is probably no good. To use sea water we would have to have large desalination plants. That would take even more energy. Bore water usually contains impurities, and that might have to be purified as well. It was suggested we use water in tailings dams. But that is also impure, and probably not enough in any particular pool for us to set up an industrial plant, so the plant would have to be moveable, which could be quite difficult.

So the priority would be cheap water cleaners which can operate at large volumes. This is something the world will need soon anyway, so working on this would be useful. However, because something would be useful, does not mean it can be done in the current situation.

The other possible light here, is that if we stopped coal mining, we would have heaps more water.

According to the National Hydrogen Strategy, producing “enough hydrogen to satisfy Japan’s projected annual imports in 2030 would require less than 1% of the water now used by Australia’s mining industry each year”.

Energising the Economy with Renewable Hydrogen, WWF Australia, P 14.

Conclusion

If we are going to try hydrogen, and we won’t know whether it is doable unless we try, then we need to add at least two points to the WWF list of conditions

  • A coordinated industrial policy that aims to get renewable hydrogen off the ground, encourages industry to use it (such as green steel for export), and either spends the money that is currently marked for taxpayer funding of gas (methane) pipelines on hydrogen pipelines, or gradually converts the current gas infrastructure into hydrogen infrastructure.
  • Make sure that any water which is consumed by hydrogen manufacture does not take away from farming, environmental or human drinking supplies. This could be done by tightening water regulation for coal mines and slowly decreasing the amount of water that coal mines can take, deliberately or ‘accidentally’.

Without these extra points, hydrogen will almost certainly fail to help the situation.

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Neoliberal Conspiracy 07: Summary

December 6, 2020

[20 December 2020 – the original blog post has now been broken into two posts. The part here can be considered the summary of the argument, The part now placed here is a consideration of the plausibility of the argument]

What is the theory of Neoliberal Conspiracy?

The idea of ‘neoliberal conspiracy’ is simple. It is that many of those in the wealth elites, or working for them, have acted to increase established corporate power and wealth at the expense of the general public, while pretending that ‘free markets’ result in liberty and prosperity for all.

Neoliberalism has been the dominant real politics in the English speaking world since Thatcher, Reagan, and Keating, although (in the conspiratorial mode) it often presents itself as a minor oppressed player, that is struggling valiantly against government and socialists.

Effects of the Neoliberal Conspiracy

Neoliberalism’s effects are most clearly shown in the decline in the share of wealth going to ordinary people over those last 40 years.

Over the last four decades since 1979… those in the top 0.1% had wages grow… 340.7%. In contrast those in the bottom 90% had annual wages grow by 23.9% from 1979 to 2018. 

Top 1.0% of earners see wages up 157.8% since 1979. Economic Policy Institute, 18 December 2019

People are also less likely to increase their wealth class than they used to be. Some even claim that in the US and UK life expectancy has recently begun to decline [1], [2], [3] (possibly due to suicide and drugs) and hunger appears to be increasing in the US [4] (the pandemic response does not help) and elsewhere.

After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is on the rise, affecting 8.9 percent of people globally. From 2018 to 2019, the number of undernourished people grew by 10 million, and there are nearly 60 million more undernourished people now than in 2014

World Hunger; Key facts and Statistics

Wealth seems spread so that while the top 10%, or so, of the population can be said to be comfortable, or extremely wealthy, the bottom 90% (especially younger people below 35) are heading towards a precarious existence, while the middle class is shrinking.

there is a recognition amongst these people of the novelty of their socio-economic circumstances, and thus frustration and disquiet at the nature of these circumstances. The ‘new normal’ is in fact recognised as abnormal. 

[However] they focus on how they can succeed within this inherited structure rather than on pursuing structural change. There is a degree of resignation to a situation wherein precarity is deemed largely immutable…. many young people understand the prospect of improving labour market outcomes in terms of personal development and their ability to successfully navigate this more competitive environment

Craig Berry and Sean McDaniel Young people and the post-crisis precarity: the abnormality of the ‘new normal’ LSE BPP 20 January 2020

Neoliberal media, rarely suggest an approach based on structural or economic change, that might challenge the dominant power relations, or they aim to misidentify those power relations. Another important marker of neoliberal effect, is that there appears to have been growing concentrations of economic power, with higher profits going to fewer people [5].

We used to think that high profits were a sign of the successful working of the American economy, a better product, a better service. But now we know that higher profits can arise from a better way of exploiting consumers, a better way of price discrimination, extracting consumer surplus, the main effect of which is to redistribute income from consumers to our new super-wealthy. 

Joseph Stiglitz “America has a monopoly problem – and it’s huge” Pearls and Irritations 15 November 2020

Corporations are now as wealthy as nations: “Of the world’s top 100 economies, 69 are corporations.” This implies they easily have the powers of wealth to buy States, especially if they ‘crony up’.

I probably don’t have to remind people, that the neoliberal response to almost every problem involves tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporate sector, possibly mixed in with some taxpayer subsidies for established big businesses not doing that well. It would seem obvious that this might help boost the wealth differentials, and gives the wealthy even more money to invest in political control. Of course they say this boost to the wealthy helps the lower classes, but the wealthy always make that argument, and it never seems to work. One study of 18 OECD countries, simply remarks:

We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.

Hope & Limberg 2020. The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich. LSE Working Paper 55.

Let us be clear. It is a reasonable hypothesis that distribution of wealth results, not from the nature of life, but from deliberate social struggle, or social engineering. In which case, the way wealth is being distributed now, as opposed to 50 years ago, marks the triumph of class war against the people. As Warren Buffett said in the context of a discussion on taxes:

BUFFETT: Yeah. The rich people are doing so well in this country. I mean, we never had it so good.

DOBBS: What a radical idea.

BUFFETT: It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.

Buffett: ‘There are lots of loose nukes around the world’

He is also reported as saying in an interview with the New York Times “There’s class warfare, all right,…. but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Part of that class war undoubtedly involves the attack on, and the decline of unions, which gave workers the power to organise and challenge employers who were richer than whole countries, and who cronyed up together with other employers. Unions also meant that workers had direct input into party politics, as opposed to mainly business having input.

The period is also marked by growing ecological crisis, as capitalists and developers abandoned restraint, found profit in attacking science and in locking people into expanding fossil fuel use.

Neoliberalism appears to have generated a growth of alienation from politics experienced by ordinary people, as the political system consistently ignored their interests, no matter how large the protests (such as those against the second Iraq War, or against climate inaction). This alienation seems to have lead to an increase in culture wars, and polarisation, as the neoliberal Right sought to retain support and votes by whipping up an identity politics of self-justification and hatred against ‘out-groups’. For example, making claims that the left says you are racist simply because you are white (no other reason is possible), and that the only real racists are active black people, the only sexists are feminist women and so on. This leads to the part of the neoliberal conspiracy I will discuss later in this blog.

We don’t need to look so much at what neoliberals claim they believe, some of which might be well intentioned and genuine, but look at what neoliberal politicians actually do.

Neoliberals and the Government takeover

With the mixed economies, Keynesian interventionism, and union power, of post-world war II Europe, US, UK and Australia we had a steady rise in living standards, working conditions and increasing levels of political participation. This was alarming for the corporate elites. We could have ended up with a participatory democracy. This situation has now changed.

The first part of the current version of the neoliberal conspiracy has to be to negate the obvious point that “We’ve had forty years of free market boosting, and the world is not getting better.” As we might expect, the main idea that neoliberals want to promote is that we need more neoliberalism, and more of their ‘free markets’ to fix the mess generated by neoliberalism and their ‘free markets’ – truly what you might call ‘positive thinking’: lets ignore the counter evidence and persist in destruction as long as it pays us off. Thus almost their first effort is to convince people that most of the problems we currently observe, do not stem from neoliberalism, but from the ‘fact’ we have “too much government”, by which they mean too much government which might attempt to be responsive to the people.

Now they have a point. Governments can, and often are oppressive. Sometimes this is because of “one size fits all policies” which don’t fit all (like ‘free markets’), sometimes it is because the governors want total order and rule of one principle alone (like ‘free markets’), sometimes it is because they want to build things or go to war (say in favour of protecting investment and ‘free markets’), and sometimes it’s because they govern on behalf of a particular class (like neoliberals do). Scrap the last point, we are not meant to think about the last point, we are meant to think neoliberals are against government, not trying to commandeer it, away from you.

Neoliberals tend to pretend, that in a free market, business and the State (‘government’) have nothing to do with each other, rather than that they interact all the time. In neoliberal rhetoric, government and business are somehow completely different, or their intersection is of no consequence. Thus I can be told, by quite a few people over the years, that obviously crony capitalists only have an effect because of the government, and not because of the existence of cronyism, or the intersection of business interests with the State, or business influence over the State. This argument occurs while neoliberal politicians are overtly trying to win over the State completely so they can change it, and change the regulations of that State to benefit them.

Pretending to roll back the State is part of the strategy of increasing corporate power. Rollback of the State under neoliberalism is not remotely anarchistic. It is about rolling back those parts of the State that were moderately helpful, sensitive or responsive to the people, while keeping the parts of the state which are helpful to maintaining corporate power, and providing taxpayer subsidy to that power and suppression of protest. This is one reason why government size, regulation and ‘heaviness’, has not decreased, despite the years of neoliberals apparently pushing for a smaller State. At best it has just increased the powers of bosses, in general, over their employees.

As part of the process of increasing their power, Neoliberals attempt to remove any regulations which hinder corporate ability to freeload on the public; such as regulations which impose restrictions on their ability to injure and poison people, or pollute and destroy ecologies. Trump and other hardline neoliberal politicians have been extremely helpful in removing these kinds of regulations. Such regulations can diminish profits, although they may increase the possibility of prolonging people’s lives and physical comfort. Neoliberals think that if people want prolonged lives or comfort then they should pay for it, not rely on nature.

It is fundamental to neoliberalism, being a politics of established wealth, that any living being should only get what they can afford, and if they cannot afford to live, or fight against action that harms them, then they should suffer as the judgement of the market, is against them, and they are of no worth. Neoliberalism considers protecting established capitalism more important than protecting life.

Neoliberals buy government policy which benefits corporate power, and then, when it turns out badly for people in general, claim that the situation would be much better if, rather than supporting the harmed, we did not have any government intervention at all and we just left everything to the corporate class to sort out – as if benefits inevitably flow through to those who don’t participate, and the people who caused the problems will necessarily fix them by accident.

The great thing about the strategy of pretending to be anti-State while using the State to enforce their rule, is that whenever the neoliberals use the State to shaft their supporters they can claim they could have had nothing to do with it. It was the dreaded socialists of the ‘deep State’ that are to blame. And they get even more leeway to rollback the State useful to others and build up the State useful to them.

It is common sense in neoliberal land for corporate lobbyists, or ex corporate executives to write legislation or even occupy positions in government departments. Despite his claims of employing outsiders this is what Trump has done in a big way [6], [7].

Steve Mnuchin from Goldman Sachs became the first Treasury Secretary. Gary Cohn president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs was picked to head the National Economic Council and manage economic policy. Steve Bannon once worked for the same organisation, before becoming a Breitbart executive chair and also obviously worked for the administration. Jay Clayton, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, was a partner with the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, and Goldman Sachs was a client. ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson was made Secretary of State.

At the EPA, nearly half of the political appointees hired by the Trump Administration have had strong ties to industries regulated by the agency industry, according to research by the Associated Press.  About a third of these EPA appointees – including the current acting administrator – formerly worked as registered lobbyists or lawyers for fossil fuel companies, chemical manufacturers, or other corporate clients….

The Administration has been pursuing a de-regulatory agenda that benefits many of these same industries by rolling back air and water pollution control regulations. This inverts the purpose of the agency, which is to protect the environment and public health, not industry profits.

Who’s Running Trump’s EPA, EPA Conflict of Interest Watch. Environmental Integrity Project nd.

The number of lobbyists Trump appointed was quite extraordinary

A lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made… The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for….

It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Update: We Found a “Staggering” 281 Lobbyists Who’ve Worked in the Trump Administration. ProPublica, 15 October 2019

A report from early in Trump’s administration states:

The president-elect, in filling out his transition team and administration, has drawn heavily from the vast network of donors and advocacy groups built by the billionaire industrialist [Koch] brothers, who have sought to reshape American politics in their libertarian image.

From White House Counsel Don McGahn and transition team advisers Tom Pyle, Darin Selnick and Alan Cobb to Presidential Inaugural Committee member Diane Hendricks and transition-team executive committee members Rebekah Mercer and Anthony Scaramucci, Trump has surrounded himself with people tied to the Kochs….

many more Koch-linked operatives are expected to join Trump’s nascent administration in the coming weeks, according to Trump transition-team sources.

Vogel and Johnson Trump’s Koch administration. Politico 28 November 2016.

This network of lobbyists appeared to influence the taxpayer handouts to business during the Covid response:

lobbyists with ties to the president have successfully secured billions in aid for their clients—and several lobbyists may be violating President Donald Trump’s own executive order on ethics in the process.

Trump-Connected Lobbyists Are Getting Billions In Federal Coronavirus Aid, Report Finds, Forbes 6 July 2020

Instead of staring down “the unholy alliance of lobbyists and donors and special interests” as Trump recently declared, the influence industry has flourished during his administration.

Trump’s Cabinet Has Had More Ex-Lobbyists Than Obama or Bush. Fortune, 18 September 2019

No clearing ‘the Swamp,’ but a lot of importing alligators.

Neoliberalism deliberately tends to ignore how much government intervention there was in the economy in the years of rising prosperity for everyone, or tries to portray these years as some kind of disaster. They buy revisionist history, so that we can argue the Great Depression was actually caused by government and that the recovery was hindered by the New Deal. The point is that capitalism depends on a State, and capitalists attempt to control the State, so there is always state action which can be blamed, and used to direct attention away from how business was behaving, or what it was attempting to do. For example, if Hoover’s trade embargos and tariffs were the only factors causing the Great Depression, then what businesses was he defending, and why are Trump’s tariffs not going to be equally destructive?

The question about governments really should be, “Who controls the rule making and enforcement, that allows the market to be maintained?” And the answer to that, is the established corporate sector and not the people. So the market is structured and regulated to benefit the established corporate sector and not the people. That is why the proportion of wealth distributed to the people is going down, and the proportion of wealth going to the wealth elites is increasing.

Ronald Reagan was a classic example of neoliberal action, cutting taxes for the wealthy, cutting back social security and making welfare more onerous and expensive, while massively increasing military spending which benefitted corporate arms manufacturers, and increased the deficit. The idea was that the deficit should eventually be curtailed by ‘reluctantly’ cutting ‘helpful-to-the-people’ spending. Reagan’s ‘free market reforms’, not only crashed the S&Ls which severely impacted many ordinary people, but it allowed much of US industry to be asset stripped and destroyed. This helped produce the US’s current manufacturing problems and rampant business oligopolies, as small scale business was harmed. Neoliberals may say they are in favour of small business, but their actions nearly always help destroy small business, as do the actions of Wall-Mart and the other large retailers who they support.

The big difference between US Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans are hardline neoliberals who pretend to like rightwing Christians, while Democrats are more humanistic neoliberals who are suspicious of Rightwing Christians being Christians at all, and who think that people don’t need to be suppressed and persecuted by big business all the time. For example, Obama thought that bailout money given to established financial institutions should be paid back, and should not explicitly pay for parties and executive bonuses, unlike his predecessor. He did not, however, think bailout money should go to people who were going to lose their home through financial institutions calling in misleading loans, as a democratic socialist might do.

Neoliberal Media

On the whole the media is pro-capitalist, as it is largely (if not totally) funded and controlled by corporations or billionaires. Who else has the money? Most of it is hardline neoliberal, taking neoliberalism as the only position possible – especially media associated with the Murdoch Empire (like Fox, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Post in the US, or Skynews in Australia, The Sun and The Times in the UK), other Trump supporting media is similar, but it also includes Facebook and Twitter, who helped Trump win the previous election because they happily sold data to neoliberal conspirators like Cambridge Analytica, and gave them a free playground. Social media (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter) also keeps channeling people into more extreme forms of the neoliberal conspiracy if they show any interest in going along with it – so they act as advertising channels for this material. There is little escape – the internet, as currently organised, does not widen the opinion and news people are exposed to; it narrows it.

The basic principle for any analysis, given the neoliberal environment, is that no media should be trusted, and that includes small media. Small media can as easily be funded by billionaires as large media; it requires less capital and is more disposable when it has served its purpose, so it may be a better investment. Some big-billionaire-media like Breitbart or Skynews may pretend to be ‘alternate’, but they are just heavily controlled neoliberal propaganda channels – which sometimes seem coordinated in their decisions about what counts as news and what does not. They are certainly not going to portray the situation accurately or impartially.

Neoliberal Science

It is a remarkable co-incidence that nearly all science which might cause constraints on corporate action is attacked by supporters of neoliberalism, while science which allows corporations to build or manufacture products is not. Thus climate science has to go. Ecological science has to go. And the idea of pandemics has to go, even it pharmaceutical companies can make money out of vaccines.

Neoliberal Covid

Covid-19 policy and responses can be analysed in terms of their support for neoliberal principles. The main aim of neoliberal government is to keep the economy going, and keep the power relations of the established economy intact. If it cannot do that then the aim is to protect and subsidise the wealth elites during the crisis rather than the people. It is a response based defending corporate power and liberty to use workers, even if it hurts the workers. If quarter of a million, and now many more, die to keep the economy roughly intact, then that is surely a small price to pay for corporate comfort?

Neoliberal responses may not have caused redistribution of wealth, but it is clear that in the US those responses have been used, under Trump and the Republicans, to further redistribution of wealth with massive subsidies and tax breaks going to wealthy people and wealthy organisations. Some of this going to oil and fracking companies, who were already doing badly without Covid [8], [9], [10], [11]. It is well known that many billionaires have increased their wealth substantially during the crisis, as you would expect of such a pro-established wealth based response [12], [13], [14].

Interestingly I have noticed amongst Republican friends and news sources a marked hostility to the increase in the wealth of info-tech billionaires in particular, without much protest about the increases in the wealth of other kinds of billionaires.  I’m not aware of any subsidy, regulatory favours, tax breaks etc, which were specifically, or only, aimed at Info tech, or at Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg etc. However, this kind of thing tends not to get reported in the mainstream media, so if these special government aids exist, then I would welcome being informed about them, as it would add to the evidence about how the system works.

However, that some industries flourish and get ridiculously rich while others suffer and decline, would seem to be what we would expect from the free market in action. This is how the market supposedly works, and how it is meant to work, culling inefficiency, bad management and unwanted products and massively rewarding services that people need. So I’m not sure why this should be praised in some circumstances and damned in others. My current hypothesis is that the Republican party and its elites are owned by established industries and big business, and are hostile to newcomers, but I have no real idea if that is correct.

Surprisingly (?) it does not appear that many of these billionaires (tech or otherwise) have used their increased wealth to protect their workers, or make sure they have good health leave. Indeed:

One in eight workers has perceived possible retaliatory actions by employers against workers in their company who have raised health and safety concerns during the pandemic.
Black workers are more than twice as likely as white workers to have seen possible retaliation by their employer.

National Employment Law Project Silenced About COVID-19 in the Workplace

Well it might lower profits, and if some people get really ill and have lasting consequences, or some people die, its for a good cause.

The Republicans, in the US, are also demanding protection for companies from any liability law suits which claim they not properly looking after workers [15], [16], [17]. Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the US Senate, said:

as the Majority Leader I can tell you no bill will pass the Senate that doesn’t have the liability protection in it…..

Republicans almost to a person support the liability reform and that’s not about companies. It includes companies. It’s about hospitals and doctors and nurses and teachers and universities and colleges and K-12. This is not just liability protection for businesses. They’re included along with everyone else dealing with this brand new disease. Unless you’re grossly negligent or engage in intentional misbehavior, you’ll be covered. And it will be in a bill that passes the Senate.

McConnell on CNBC’s “Closing Bell”

Strange to protect companies from being sued over a condition which Republicans apparently claim is not real, or not that harmful.

This reminds us that the majority of times we are censored, or self-censored, or forced to do unpleasant things it is not because of the government, but because of our employer. Neoliberals want most people to be subservient to bosses. Again neoliberalism is not anarchism or the activation of liberty.

Discouraging social distancing, has the side effect of boosting pharmaceutical company profit, just as Trump’s promotion of unproven drugs helped boost their profits, and as will reliance on vaccines. However, this result may not be entirely deliberate, only a ‘fortunate’ consequence of the general approach to business.

To repeat, neoliberalism has no concern over whether ordinary people survive, or not. It holds that if people can’t afford to survive, they should suffer.

What I hope is the final part of this ‘Neoliberal Conspiracy’ project, will be a simple consideration of whether the Neoliberal Conspiracy is plausible.

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Crony Capitalism and Neoliberalism

December 5, 2020

For what its worth I argue that what people call ‘Crony Capitalism” is the normal form of capitalism. It is not, in any way, aberrant, even if it supposedly ‘corrupts’ the market; that is what happens in capitalism. Neoliberalism is a particular form of crony capitalism which aims at total control over all forms of human life, and the sacrifice of human life to capitalism.

Crony Capitalism

Wealthy people (or people who succeed in the market, if you prefer) naturally team-up with each other to:

  • protect themselves
  • defeat their enemies,
  • defraud the public,
  • suppress rising competition whenever possible,
  • secure their wealth and property,
  • attain maximum profit at minimum risk (which is the origin of the modern corporation),
  • disperse the costs of business, or business expansion, onto the public,
  • get maximal labour for minimal costs,
  • plan for a favourable future for themselves,
  • propose what they consider to be sensible government,
  • reinforce, or set up, a State to govern on their behalf,
  • buy legislation and regulation that supports them,
  • support people in the State who give them good results,
  • support people who can intellectually and rhetorically justify their actions and dominance,
  • deceive the public to distract from what is really going on, and so on.

Some of these normal aims obviously overlap.

Friendly people who work in the State, and elsewhere, benefit from this association. They get:

  • supplemented incomes,
  • extra entertainment,
  • prestige,
  • power and back up,
  • association with people who might support them in times of need
  • high paying jobs, after they leave the State, with little real work.

It is a mutual association that works well. State workers tend to work with the powerful as it makes life easier, capitalists tend to want the State to defend them, or be useful to them, and business people want to work with other business people for mutual profit. This is just normal business in action.

Historical issue?

I am not aware of any historical form of capitalism or mercantilism that does not work this way. If crony capitalism is not dominant in any period of history, then it’s probably because the existence of at least one other organised (or ‘crony’) force that is equally, or more, powerful: an Aristocracy, Church, Military, Organised Labour etc. That does not mean that crony capitalism does not exist in those societies, merely that it has to struggle and does not win all the time.

Cronyism is normal

The simple point is that people who identify with each other as being similar, will often collaborate against others they identify against, even if they are often competitive with each other as well. Any formal group working for its own interests will always have people competing for positions, dominance and so on, within that group. This does not mean the group’s people are not also collaborative, and do not team up to:

  • protect each other,
  • gain power as a group, or
  • fight against those in groups they do not like.

The people who are considered similar might change depending on who the opposition is. In war, business people might see themselves as more similar to workers than they are to the enemy, and thus work with workers while the war is on, even if they still try and maintain ultimate dominance, or try to reassert the established hierarchy when the war is over.

This can be considered a common human dynamics (‘human nature’ if you like), and if it is left out of an economic theory then that theory is deficient. Almost always pro-corporate economics ignores the collaborative nature of the corporate system, or makes collaboration something that is acceptable within the firm, but condemns collaborations of workers (an outgroup) in general. These kind of economic statements could be seen as political statements, acting for the benefit of business, not statements aimed at discovering anything about real economic behaviour.

If humans were not prone to ‘cronyism’ then society would not work very well. If we did not compete and co-operate for personal and group advantage, we would not have firms, corporations, gangs, rock bands, political parties, discussion groups, organised religions, families and kin groups, and almost any other feature of social life you might care to mention.

That capitalists and business people engage in cronyism is to be expected. The more society is structured by wealth, then the more effective that cronyism will be, and that leads us to neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism seems to be an intensification of crony capitalism, or a tool of crony capitalism, that effectively acts as if to argue:

  • the State only exists to support the big-business (corporate) sector,
  • the State should not encourage or support any other sector at all,
  • the State should leave ‘planning’ to business,
  • the State must support the ecological destruction caused by business and allow pollution and poisoning by business, unless it threatens the activities of other big business,
  • everything must be organised for business,
  • every activity must be organised like a business as there must be no other organisational form with any public validity. Every organisation from Church to mother’s group to the army is really a business.
  • public monopoly is bad, private monopoly is good (one of the big differences between neoliberalism and classical economics),
  • ‘the people,’ or the State, must be stopped from interfering with business profits as that will lead to disaster and tyranny,
  • democracy is only good, if it protects business, and is disciplined by corporate (‘market’) needs,
  • free markets solve every problem as satisfactorily as that problem can be solved.

By promoting these positions, neoliberalism not only threatens human ways of life, but human life itself.

These positions seem marked in early neoliberal theorists such Hayek, Mises and the like, as well as in neoliberal politics.

Neoliberal politics came in to prominence when the possibility seemed strong that ‘the people’ might start working to stop business and State from causing ecological catastrophe, in the late sixties to early seventies. Neoliberals saw this as an unforgivable democratic attempt to interfere in business operations, liberties and profits, and neoliberalism seemed the way for crony capitalists and friends to go – especially after the only major challenge of Communism collapsed.

Corporately controlled markets were said to be the only way to bring liberty and prosperity. In Thatcher’s famous words: “There is no alternative.” Her words can also be seen as an attempt to stop the search for alternatives, which is one of the strategic aims of neoliberalism; it tries to present itself as inevitable when it is merely a hierarchical political and utopian movement.

A term central to neoliberal practice, is ‘free market.’ In practice, this term simply refers to whatever big business does. Interfering with nearly anything established business does is immediately said to be bad. Boosting free markets also means that the State should not help ordinary people, because that can free those people from the markets, and that might lead to a challenge to those markets. Business is the model for everything.

In practice neoliberal political parties are not ‘hands off’, and always seem eager to throw money at businesses they like; bail out failures (currently oil, gas and fracking companies) and to choose winners when they like them, or need to suppress some up and coming challenger. This is one reason why it is important to observe what neoliberals do, rather than what they say they do. The dogma of ‘free markets’ is an attempt to make this power grab seem aspirational; it easily passes from a position of putting the interests of established business first to claiming this gives everyone else liberty rather than servitude. In neoliberalism, the term ‘free market’ usually functions as a misdirection.

Preventing interference with whatever established corporations want to do can also involve:

  • Lowering taxes on business, as that interferes in profits.
  • Removing protective regulation such as minimum wages, good or safe working conditions, prevention of ecological destruction, lowering pollution etc., as they all interfere with business liberty and profit maximisation, and thus the ‘free market’.
  • Increasing regulation and penalties which inhibit protest against business, as this stops interference with business.
  • Arguing that taxpayers should not support ‘free education’ or ‘free’ healthcare for those who need it, as that impinges on ‘liberty’ (it probably is an added cost to business), presents a non-business form of organisation, and businesses could profit themselves from running these services.
  • Reducing any social security which allows people not to be forced to take very low wages or working conditions to avoid starving to death, as this interferes with the threats business people can use to discipline workers and increase profits. The more neoliberal the powers that be, the more they are happy to sacrifice people to disease to keep the economy, and profits, going.

In neoliberalism, the ‘free market’ never means a market that is not structured to support big business, and it always allows giving big business subsidies from taxpayers if needed – whatever neoliberals say to the contrary.

Neoliberalism is not about ideal, or really, free markets and never has been – partly because to get real free markets you would have to scrap some forms of accumulation (particularly destructive accumulation) and stop companies getting so large they influence the market or the State (or become “too big to fail”), so that people could compete relatively equally in the market. This would be interfering with business as it is, and hence interfering with what neoliberals call free markets.

You would have to break up existing crony capitalism to get free markets, but eventually the process of control would restart unless you had inhibitors, such as limited lifespan for corporations, wealth taxes, customs such as dispersion of assets on death, or you had other powerful groups which were organised to resist capitalist control.

Conclusion

Crony capitalism may be unavoidable, just as crony communism, crony conceptualisation, or crony Christianity, are unavoidable. Neoliberalism is avoidable and challengeable, provided we recognise what it is and what is aims for (deliberately or not): that is, total dominance by the corporate classes or plutocracy.

However, fighting neoliberalism calls for ‘cronyism’ amongst all those in the population who are victimised by it – which is another reason the term is condemned by neoliberals. If we are all neoliberal ‘individuals’, then how can we team up to defeat it? Co-operation by the people is necessary to struggle against co-operation amongst the wealth elites.

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Is coronavirus engineered? The case for Intelligent Design

December 3, 2020

Paranoid time.

Points in favour of design:

1) Conoravirus is amazingly contagious.

2) Most people who get coronovirus will not have symptoms but they will spread the disease, increasing the infection rate by stealth – other people will not engage in protective behaviour around supposedly healthy people, and supposedly healthy people will be less likely to protect others from their unknown sickness.

3) Minor quarantine/hygene efforts can slow the apparent infection rate down, while the disease keeps spreading secretly. Then the bang hits.

4) Coronavirus looks like flu, heart attack, stroke, lung embolism, lung failure, liver failure and so on.

5) Coronavirus looks like other diseases, because it often damages the organs it lodges in – it appears to stop cells from doing what the cells are supposed to do.

6) Therefore it is really easy to mistake Covid-19 for something else.

7) If you are not looking for it, then deaths will often just be recorded as something normal, and the disease will keep spreading.

8) It would be normal to undercount the fatalities from Covid-19 for a long time, until someone wonders why so many different illnesses are off the charts. Then people might start looking for a common cause. They might not see it until too late.

9) Some people, getting organ or muscle damage, get what is now known as ‘long coronavirus’ – the disease effects last for months after they are supposedly healed. They consume medical and social resources long after they have supposedly recovered, which lowers resources for other people. We as yet do not know the average length of long coronavirus.

10) There is dispute about how long immunity lasts, however, it does seem pretty likely that some people who healed have got it again, thus becoming new sources of vulnerability.

11) This possible lack of long term immunity, may undermine vaccination efforts.

12) Anyone who now tells you Covid-19 is flu, or like a flu, is misinformed or lying. They may even be part of the war team – assuming it exists. After all the war team would want to downplay the severity of the disease, and persuade others it was not dangerous, so as to maintain its spread.

13) The death rate is quite high; not so high that its immediately noticeable, and so again deaths will appear minor until they start accelerating by the normal processes of exponential contagion. Deaths seem to have started to accelerate badly in the US since October.

14) Some of the acceleration has occurred because the President and his supporters have consistently played down the danger, and played at being positive (engaging in hype) – because that’s how business works. At the moment, the President is preoccupied with casting doubt on the election result (as he promised he would, if he didn’t win), the disease has even less organisation acting against it, at a time in which many US citizens have family celebrations and effectively will spread the disease. His most recent comment, which shows his focus:

The Democrats had this election rigged from the beginning. They used the pandemic, sometimes referred to as the China virus; where it originated; as an excuse to mail out tens of millions of ballots, which ultimately led to a big part of the fraud.

Speech: Donald Trump Makes an Unscheduled Pre-Recorded Speech on the Election – December 2, 2020

Or, trying to keep people safe is part of a plot, and:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·

European Countries are sadly getting clobbered by the China Virus. The Fake News does not like reporting this!

twitter

Obviously he does not read any decent news and I guess that is possible in the US, but given it is ‘clobbering’ Europe, which it is, then the virus is not fake news itself. It is not a hoax, or something which should be ignored…. None of this helps people survive.

15) Further, many states want to keep the labour and the profits going, and neoliberalism is about sacrificing people for profit, so if people die for the economy that is ok.

16) We could suggest that the more unequal and authoritarian the State, the more likely it will fail to deal with the problem, as the elites think they can escape – until they realise otherwise.

Other remarks

The disease seems to have been around in Europe since at least November last year (2019). There is a suggestion it was in Italy as early as September 2019, but this is not confirmed.

The first time it was identified as a new disease was in China in December 2019. The first case confirmed in Australia was announced on 25 January 2020. The first US cases confirmed on 21st January.

Let us be clear without the Chinese efforts to identify the disease, and let people know (however slowly, although a month or so for a new disease is not slow), the world would be in a much worse situation than it is. The disease could have spread with little check. There would likely be no relatively safe spots anywhere.

Real explanations?

So given it is the kind of disease we may not have noticed until the deaths were so high that societies could not function, is Covid-19 engineered?

The US informally accuses China. China accuses the US, as do Iran and Russia.

There are problems with this hypothesis. Firstly, any sensible person should have realised that with the amount of global air traffic we had pre-covid, that any camouflaged disease would be worldwide in a month at the most, and coming back into their own country very quickly. So they would need vaccines before launching it – and even then that might not be enough. They might of course think God, or destiny, was on their side and therefore be committing unintentional suicide.

Any sensible regime would not engineer bioweapons in the first place. And particularly would not engineer something potentially uncontainable like Covid-19.

Having said that, there are a few non-sensible regimes in the World. Trump’s US for example. But there are other places which you can probably guess for yourselves. Some of which claim remarkably low infection rates. I don’t think China is likely to have done a deliberate release, because why tell everyone else?

The other possibility is that the disease escaped before protection was ready. This could have happened anywhere, but again we are assuming people would have generated a bio-weapon which could wipe themselves out. I don’t see any sensible State doing that either.

The final and most plausible possibility, is that viral evolution now functions amidst human protective regimes, and that diseases will evolve to spread despite those regimes – or even through those regimes.

Global interconnection acts to spread (and incubate) diseases very quickly after they have hit people who travel.

Given the contemporary ecology of human prevention, it was probably only a matter of time before something like Covid-19 developed to look like intelligent design, through the processes of interaction, random mutation, survival and replication.

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Directed Skepticism Summarised

December 2, 2020

I want to return to a form of skepticism, which seems common in the contemporary world, which does not seem skeptical at all to me, and just summarise the other rather long articles on this blog [1], [2], [3], [4].

I’ve called it ‘directed skepticism’.

in its simplest form it appears as “I am a real skeptic. I am skeptical about everything, but I cannot speak to anyone who is skeptical of my positions, as those positions are true, and any skeptics of those positions are stupid and immoral.”

Another possible way of phrasing this view is:

“I do not like this information. It is unpleasant. It comes from someone I justifiably do not like or am suspicious of. I am very skeptical of it. I’m a real skeptic.”

The above statement then often seems to be followed by another implied statement of the form:

“This information I do like. It supports my side of politics. It is reassuring. It comes from someone I like. Therefore it is probably true. I’m still a skeptic, because if I can be convinced its false, then I never really believed it in the first place, even if I’m likely to believe it again if I hear it from another source I like. I’m always skeptical of its refutation, or of the good intentions of those who disagree. I am a real skeptic.”

In general, people might say they are skeptical because they use their senses but, in effect, often what they are saying cannot come ‘directly from their senses’ as the subject being discussed is too big for overall perception, and too slow for the changes to be perceptible, as with climate change, pandemics, the cause of wars etc..

In these cases, our perception is likely to be mediated by what we have heard from others, no matter how much we insist on our independent thinking. That is, what we think is opinion, not knowledge to use an old (and probably largely invalid) distinction. We only have hypothesis.

This might all sound like caricature, but lets look at a few situations….

Climate change.

It seems common for people to say that they are skeptical of climate change. They may even allege that it is obvious that climate change is not a problem, or that climate scientists are lying.

We could allege that the idea that one’s own ‘side’ is undermining one’s life and the life of our children is difficult. It is far more comfortable to believe climate change is not real, than that our imagined allies are killing us (deliberately or not). However, a skeptic might be skeptical about the idea that our side cannot be harmful to us….

I personally do not know how the fakery and harmlessness of climate change could be obvious. Climate change is a big phenomena. No one can observe directly everything relevant that is happening, so it seems odd for a skeptic not to accept even the possibility that climate scientists may be persuaded by the evidence, or the cumulation of evidence, even if they are still mistaken. Whether it is wise to assume they must be mistaken is another question.

However, those people skeptical of the information and motives presented by climate scientists often appear to have little skepticism about the information and motives of the people on youtube or in the ‘mainstream media’ or in their favoured political party who tell them there is ‘no problem’ or that it is ‘not that bad’, or that ‘we can solve it through [imaginary??] technology’.

The ‘skeptical’ person may argue that the consequences of climate change are bad for the economy, and we should therefore be skeptical of those actions and keep the economy going as we need it, and let the free market sort it all out. With this argument, there is no obvious skepticism directed at the idea that the free market will be able to solve all problems. This is not obvious. It would appear to be a dogma. IThe skeptic is showing no skepticism of the idea we need an economy which is destructive to us, or of the motives of those promoting this idea.

It may be that the people telling the ‘skeptics’ there is nothing to worry about are not climate scientists, and have no apparent long-term experience with the issue. These people may still be right, and climate scientists wrong, but it is not inherently likely that this is the case. It is possible, but are non-climate scientists the best people to trust? Can we be skeptical about deciding that people who are not climate scientists must know much more about climate than all those people who have spent years studying the subject? This is skepticism of non-climate scientists is generally not allowed by climate skeptics.

Acceptance of the ‘no case’ case also tends to demand acceptance of the idea that climate scientists are conspiring, or that science is now completely corrupt (when it conflicts with the skeptics dogma). Is it clearly the case that a world wide conspiracy of climate scientists and leftist politicians is more plausible than a conspiracy involving some fossil fuel companies (who directly benefit from ignoring climate change), and some rightwing media and politicians. If it is not clearly the case, then this could sound like choosing to believe what is comforting.

In my experience, directed skeptics may refer to scientific papers as evidence for their view, which they may not have read, as often the papers do not appear to say what they say they say, or perhaps they just wanted to hear something nice which confirms their skepticism.

The skepticism appears to be entirely directed at justifying a particular point of view. It is not applied evenly to the person’s own positions.

Covid

The same appears to be true of Covid. I, at least, met many people skeptical that Covid is real or dangerous. Diagnosing a new disease, and predicting its trajectory, is difficult. It is another process which seems beyond our direct sense perception – we cannot perceive every virus, and every infected person, all over the world as these develop. So there is every reason for being skeptical of the proposition that we know everything we should know, or need to know, about the disease. It could be something we can adapt to painlessly after a while.

However again, these directed skeptics seem largely unskeptical of people who say its a hoax, or a summer flu, or that the death figures for the US are made up, possibly by doctors to get money or to allow Joe Biden to form a dictatorship. Why should we not be equally skeptical of Trump’s claims that covid would just go away, and that it would disappear after the election, when there was no evidence of this at the time.?


Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·

ALL THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IS COVID, COVID, COVID. ON NOVEMBER 4th, YOU WON’T BE HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT IT ANYMORE. WE ARE ROUNDING THE TURN!!!

Twitter

These people may quote doctors worried that long term lock-down will probably have some bad psychological and health effects for some people, as being evidence that Covid is not really a problem, or that dealing with Covid is worse than ignoring it. Another conclusion might be more like recognising that doctors may well be right that there are problems with lock-downs, and these problems should not be ignored.

Again the skepticism seems to be directed at a particular and reassuring result – we are safe all of our family is safe, and the people we support are not sacrificing us.

News

I often seem to be being told that I should not rely on ‘mainstream media’ for political news. This seems good advice as again I cannot observe everything that happens politically as it happens (and I would need to interpret what is happening anyway, direct perception is limited), and the mainstream media has similar limited perception and comprehension. It also probably displays political and other bias, most likely in favour of its corporate or billionaire owners and advertisers. However, it then seems these people assume that Fox or Breitbart or some youtube channel, that appear to have noticeable political slants, can be trusted most of the time and despite their size and influence are not mainstream, corporately controlled media. This is odd. Surely these news sources are at least equally worthy of skepticism?

Elections

We are currently being told at great volume that we should be skeptical of the US Presidential election results (not the House or Senate results, only the Presidential election results). This is also worthy of skepticism.

Election results are often not representative. Electorates can be gerrymandered. Attempts at fairness, or unfairness, can mean particular parts of the population get more representatives than other parts of the population, as when smaller population states get to elect more members per head than do large population states. Small margins in some electorates can change the result of a whole election, which might otherwise have gone another way. People can be turned away from polling booths, some sections of the population can be disenfranchised by what could look like reasonable political action, voting machines could be hacked. There may be attempts to stop mail in voting, or pre-poll voting. ‘The people’ may not be as binary as the major parties claim. Voters can be ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘socialist’ and not support all the policies of the party they vote for. There is even a social theorem which states that a fair and rational voting scheme is impossible.

The idea that political parties in government always represent the ‘general will’ (or something) and have a ‘mandate’ to do whatever they like, deserves skepticism as few people are likely voting for everything the party has proposed or might propose in the future.

However, in this current case, we are just being asked to be skeptical about the voting system being accurate, and policed, enough to award Donald Trump the victory.

We are furthermore being asked to be unskeptical of a person who argued that he could only loose if the other side cheated. We are to be unskeptical that this person has good evidence of cheating which they have so far refused to present in court, where it can be tested, and perjury can be penalised. We are asked to be unskeptical of claims that the majority result of the vote must be wrong by close to 8 million. We are being asked not to consider whether the known frauds were equally, or even majorly, Republican attempts at cheating. We also have recounts which have not changed the results, and the Attorney General, who appeared to have misrepresented the Mueller report in favour of the President, also states there is no evidence of fraud. But we still have to remain unskeptical of a person who does not have a reputation for peacefully going down, or telling the truth.

At the moment, given who is alleging the claims of truly massive cheating, it would seem ‘rational’ to be skeptical of those claims. Especially given that he appears to want to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands (to millions?) of voters by not counting their votes, in order to win.

Conclusion

These directed skeptics, do not appear to have a sense that skepticism which is only directed in one direction is not skepticism – it is a form of belief which refuses to test its own desired truths.

In this case, directed skepticism seems to be being used to further particular dogmas.

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Ethics and positivity

December 1, 2020

Strong ethical guidelines

There is a pretty standard argument that goes something like this: ‘moral relativity’ is untrue, because it does not allow us to make strong moral evaluations and act against evil, or evil people. Therefore, we need a clear set of moral guidelines to guide us, and for us to be able to act decisively.

Now this may be correct but it is also extremely problematic.

Which Guidelines?

Firstly which set of moral guidelines do we choose?

Do we choose Christian ones, Buddhist ones, Islamic ones, Confucian ones, or the traditional mode of tribal societies, which we might call negotiated custom?

If, for example, we choose Christian ones, then which Christian ones? There is a considerable range of ethical systems within Christianity, and a fair amount of dispute over them. Its not immediately clear which set of Christian morals we would choose as they are all based on roughly the same set of texts and principles.

Even Sharia law has areas of dispute, and in practice people argue over how it should be applied.

Even the same sets of instructions do not always result in moral agreement. There does not seem to be an ethical ‘mechanism’ which can be rolled out and used infallibly in all cases, or which is immediately obvious, if you do not already accept it.

How do we choose?

Secondly how do we choose our preferred system?

I often suspect that people who make this allegation about the virtue of strong moral systems, have already chosen, or already know what they think people should choose, but let’s postpone that allegation for a while, and ask a question….

“Is it possible to make an ethical decision which is not already based on ethical principles?” How do I judge one set of ethical principles as being better than another, without already having made an ethical choice in favour of some ethical principles?

To rephrase a little, the question of “Should people base their life on this set of ethical principles?” may only be decidable by ethical principles.

For example. “Should we accept text A as the word of God, and should we obey it without question” is a set of ethical questions. We evaluate text A at least partially, by our feeling whether or not it is ethical enough for God to have “dictated it.” If we think not, then it is hard to accept it as a complete guide to ethics.

The assertion about obeying that text, then implies the question of whether it is ethical to obey whatever God is said to have said. People might think that particular ethical question is easy, but it is still an ethical question. Someone could assert that it is not ethical to obey God, because God gave use free will and allowed us to think for ourselves. Or we could assert it is not ethical to obey God because every situation is fresh and the text simply provides examples for that moment, or the moment when it was written or dictated. Or we could assert that some of what God is reported as having said, is contradictory, or immoral judged by other parts of what God is alleged to have said and taught, and we have to evaluate which statement has precidence and when.

Then thee is the old question of whether God give us ethical principles which are ethical only because God says so, or because they are really ethical, based on something else? If morals are only morals because God said so, then is God immoral and tyrannous? Different people give different arguments on these subjects.

Even a text which asserts ethics should be about human survival, makes the ethical assumption that human survival is good. Others may be more skeptical about that ethical assertion. We could at least ask, “at what cost can we privilege human survival?”

Are strong guidelines ethically beneficial, or do they just give us excuses for immorality?

Thirdly, is there any evidence that people with strong ethical guidelines are more ethical, on the whole, than those without? The Inquisition comes to mind. Islamic slavery comes to mind. Religious wars come to mind. The Nazis and Stalinists come to mind. These systems were pretty morally absolutist, yet to people outside them, they could easily look immoral, and need to be resisted.

We may need to ask, whether a demand for strong ethics is often merely a demand for the ability to harm people we don’t like, or think are inferior, with a clear conscience? The demand allows us to oppose those we have defined as evil, without examining whether our own views of righteousness also cause evil, or other harms? If so, then could a demand for strong ethics be immoral?

It is an interesting question because often these arguments in favour of strong morals, come from those who seem committed to acts others might define as evil. For example I’ve recently heard Trumpists declare “One must never tolerate evil” – that is apparently apart from Donald Trump, who is to be supported (not just ‘tolerated’) whatever. There is apparently, to be no question that he is moral as is the movement which supports him, and he is not to be questioned. This does suggest that the strong guidelines are demanded to excuse people from moral reflection, or from facing normal ethical difficulties, and to help them assume that they are correct and righteous without effort, or without much attention to their guidelines or the accuracy of their judgements. Other people might assert that this refusal to consider moral difficulty is, itself, immoral.

It could well be that if a person believed that failure to keep the strong moral code meant eternal damnation, that they would do everything they could to condemn others for their own failures, so as to try and persuade God not to harm them. And if God does harm people forever, is God moral, or are we just providing an excuse that He must be, in fear of what will happen to us if we consider the possibility that God is not moral?

Human psychology seems forever ingenious in its ability to engage in self-justification and self-protection. I could be doing the same, but at least I am aware of the possibility.

Are any parts of Moral Relativism useful?

As implied above it seems impossible to take a moral position without moral assumptions. In which case what others call ‘moral relativism,’ and immoral, may also derive from morality.

A real moral relativist may well not consider it moral to condemn others all the time. They might engage in self-defence, or decide someone could need locking away to protect people, but they may not assert that they were particularly righteous in doing so.

They might accept there is a God, but ethically leave absolute moral judgements to God, who is apparently capable of it and not insist on the righteousness of their own condemnation or dislikes.

They may well accept that an ethical basis of ethics is to admit that ethics is difficult, and possibly not certain in every single case.

They might accept that an ethical case nearly always involves some dispute between the parties involved, and that it was ethical to listen to the other sides, and to learn from the case if possible, before you came to an ethical conclusion.

They might recognise that it was easy for humans to deceive themselves about their morality, and judge actions of members of our own group as good, when those actions would be condemned if performed by members of another group, especially a disliked group.

They might accept that what was ethical action in one situation would not always be ethical in another apparently similar situation, as situations are rarely (if ever) identical.

They might doubt it is ethical to claim to be a moral authority, and hence be suspicious of people who did proclaim themselves to be moral authorities.

They might decide that as human knowledge was limited, the ethical approach to any ethical decision was to regard the decision as provisional and open to change.

They might accept that many acts appear both good and bad, depending on what aspects you focused on.

They might decide it is immoral to force their morality on others. They might also admit the possibility they could be wrong, which again reinforces the idea it is immortal to force their morality on others.

This does not mean that they would always have to choose to “resist not evil” (Matt 5.39), but that they understand it is probable the ‘evil person’, or immoral organisation, thinks they are doing good, as do their followers. They realise this fact could apply to themselves as well, but never-the-less they may act, after consideration, as best they can.

They are likely to accept that in this world we can only achieve imperfect good, and that virtuous acts, and organisations founded to pursue virtue, can generate unintended consequences which may not be judged as good. So we ethically need to pay attention to the consequences of our actions, rather than assume that because we think we are good, or doing good, we can do no harm.

I leave it to readers to think about other ethical goods of ‘moral relativism.’

If you cannot bring yourself to do this, then maybe you are being immoral? But of course you can dispute that ethical position.

Positive thinking and ethics

If you remember, the original position being looked at, apparently suggests moral relativism is harmful and is therefore untrue.

There is no reason a truth cannot be harmful, unpleasant or demoralising. To assert otherwise, is just optimism or positive thinking speaking, and there is nothing necessarily true about that. If someone makes this argument, it could appear they are either refusing to look at the subject, running away from the Truth, or simply trying to hold onto some kind of power.

Some of ex-president Trump’s reasoning seems to follow this pattern.

  • Covid-19 is unpleasant and harmful to the economy therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance. The evidence people are dying in large numbers must be false.
  • Climate change is unpleasant therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance. The evidence indicating it is getting worse must be false, and I will get by whatever.
  • Racism is unpleasant therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance. The evidence that black people in the US get shot and injured by police disproportionately to their numbers in the population must be false. People on my side, cannot be racist, they are just misunderstood.
  • Being taken advantage of by North Korea is unpleasant therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance.
  • Failure to build or extend a wall very far, or get the Mexicans to pay for it, is unpleasant therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance. The wall is a great success.
  • Losing is unpleasant therefore it cannot be happening or its only of minor importance. As loosing is unpleasant, there must be lots of evidence that loosing did not happen, even if I cannot seem to present it in court. People who say I’ve lost are biased, or weak, enemies. Virtue says I have to have won.

Trump’s followers often seem to think, that if Trump (and Republicanism) is not on their side it would be unpleasant and there would be no hope of life getting better, therefore he must be on their side and working for them, and all the evidence he is not is pure fakery.

Sadly the unpleasant is often more accurate, and needs to be faced rather than avoided or concealed.

Harmful positive thinking denies reality.

Beneficial positive thinking can accept the unpleasantness, or “non-optimality” of the situation, but asserts we do not have to be victims, we might still have lots to be grateful for, we can survive, we can struggle to be in the best place possible, we may triumph if we persist in those struggles, or learn a new way of proceeding. We may even have God on our side, but the problems are real, and have to be faced, even the unpleasant problems of ethical uncertainty.

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True and false Positive Thought

November 16, 2020

After writing about Trump and destructive positive thinking, I thought it useful to write about constructive positive thought. So here goes.

Real positive thinking

With persistance and learning, it is amazing what people can achieve.

Learning is vital and requires interaction with the world and occasional failure. If I cannot fail I cannot learn.

  • Think of how often young children fall over when they try to walk, or how often they make garbled noise or confused statements when they try to speak. Yet they get on with it, and almost everyone succeeds.

Most problems are not insurmountable, but if they seem insurmountable perhaps they can be bypassed? Perhaps I can do something different and more effective?

Perhaps I can learn from someone else?

People who point out problems, don’t have to be believed at face value, but they may need to be thanked, especially if they have experience and I can learn from them.

Cliche: every problem presents opportunities… for learning.

I don’t know how things will turn out or how the process will work in advance. I should let things flow once I’ve started. (If you are religious then think about leaving the end place to God)

Some things are improbable and possibly doable. Some things are physically impossible. It is good to be able to distinguish them – choose something possible to begin with.

  • For Example, it is improbable in the extreme that you will become a skillful and famous ballet dancer if you first start training at 50. However, you might become a good dancer, or you might enjoy dancing, you might found a new type of dance – all of which are worthwhile. In the current world you cannot peddle your way from Moscow to the Moon. You cannot bring back the dead. You cannot build a perpetual motion machine. You cannot regrow your chopped off legs by will power but you might still be able to live a fully satisfying life. We cannot continue our current ‘developed world’ lives as they are, without catastrophe, but we can perhaps change to something better.

I can work with my materials not against them. I don’t command the world, it is what it is. There are always limits. Sometimes we don’t know what those limits are. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we only think we do.

My thinking shows me the world I experience and interpret. Therefore I need to learn the most useful and accurate thinking I can get, and that usually involves getting things wrong and correcting myself.

I might think I have succeeded, only to find its another learning experience. That’s fine.

Total success and dominance are not the point!

Life involves surprise! That’s wonderful and adds to my creativity.

False positive thinking

I can do anything without fail.

I know everything already.

Everything is easy, or should be easy, if I think right.

Problems do not exist. All problems are unreal, and I should not think about them, as that attracts more problems.

People who point out problems are enemies trying to pull me down.

The world is whatever I think it is. I shape the whole world to be what I want.

Everything will work out exactly as I have planned it, and if it doesn’t I just reassert that it will happen that way and only that way.

I’m the greatest!

***********

Real positive thinking is realistic. Keep going, keep learning and keep changing.

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Trump and the deal

November 15, 2020

One of the things that has surprised me about Trump, is that I thought he might do deals – that is what he is supposedly famous for, and people keep telling us he is not a politician and he is always open to a deal. His famous book is The Art of the Deal

But he seems incapable of doing what normal people might call deals.

In normal business, my understanding is that a ‘deal’ leaves all sides relatively happy. In Trump world a deal seems to be an agreement in which Trump wins. Or as the co-author of the Art of the Deal remarks:

To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it — as he thought his older brother had….

In countless conversations, he made clear to me that he treated every encounter as a contest he had to win, because the only other option from his perspective was to lose, and that was the equivalent of obliteration. Many of the deals in “The Art of the Deal” were massive failures — among them the casinos he owned and the launch of a league to rival the National Football League — but Trump had me describe each of them as a huge success….

From his perspective, he operated in a jungle full of predators who were forever out to get him, and he did what he must to survive.

Tony Schwartz I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal’ with Trump. His self-sabotage is rooted in his past. Washington Post. 16 May 2017

The above is, of course, opinion from a person who listened to Trump for a long time, but there are plenty of people around, who allege that in their direct experience of him, as a business person, Trump’s idea of a deal was to not pay contractors or suppliers, and threaten them with legal warfare if they complained.

Obviously I don’t know how true any of these assertions are, but it seems characteristic of his visible politics, and he supposedly was involved in over 3,500 law suits before entering politics (see here for for an expanded list) – and some of his frauds like Trump University [2] and the Trump Foundation [3], [4] are quite well known – so its not implausible. It also appears that he took money from his presidential campaign funds and transferred it to his own businesses.

One example of the failure to make a deal is that, despite the Republicans controlling the Senate and the Reps for two years, Trump was unable to get a deal to improve Obamacare. He kept promising that one will turn up in the next fortnight, but it never happens. He could not even get the Republicans to fund his fence with Mexico. He even threatened to close the government over it towards the end of 2017, without any one yielding to the deal. He blamed Democrats, despite having Republican majorities, but he did not, would not, or could not, do a deal with Democrats. He had to take the money from other programmes. I quote from wikipedia to save space:

Trump signed a declaration that the situation at the southern border constitutes a national emergency.[101] This declaration ostensibly made available $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, $2.5 billion from the United States Department of Defense[b] (including anti-drug accounts), $3.6 billion from military construction accounts, for a total of $8 billion when added to the $1.375 billion allocated by Congress.[103] Around February 21–22, it emerged that more than a third of those funds had already been spent for their original purposes, and were therefore unavailable.[104][105]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_wall#cite_note-105

When both the Democrats and Republicans passed a motion to stop the US participating in Saudi Arabia’s war with Yemen, Trump did not deal, he vetoed it.

Some people say he has sabotaged two peace deals with the Taliban – but he has carried out his threat to bomb the shit out of them, apparently dropping more bombs than were used in all Bush Jr’s wars.

But then he has apparently carried out more attacks on Somalia than any other US President – and Somalia is not exactly a threat.

And the US is no longer required to report how many people it has killed through drone warfare – an achievement, but perhaps not a deal.

He did not do a deal in Syria, he just abandoned the US’s Kurdish allies, even while he kept troops there. He did not do a deal with the Iraqi government when they insisted he remove troops, he just kept the troops there.

He did not do a deal with Iran, he just withdrew. He seems to have deliberately destabilised a peace agreement and pushed Iran towards nuclear weapons. He could be looking for a war there. That is one reason he could be stacking the Pentagon.

He did not manage a deal with China. China is still pressing in the South China Seas, and suppressing democracy in Hong Kong. The Trade War with China, which he thought was easily won, is still going, with no obvious advantage to the US – although lots of taxpayers money has been used to prop up big agribusiness. It might be possible to think this is a good thing, but its not a deal.

He failed to get a deal with North Korea, and testing nukes continues.

He did not improve the deal with Paris agreement. He just withdrew.

The usual impression I get from international meetings is that few world leaders think Trump is great at making deals, and they seem to have little evidence he is any good. He appears to spend most of his time at such meetings saying how wonderful he is, how bad everyone else is, and talking with Putin in secret.

I don’t know of anything the US has got from his deals with Putin, but perhaps he benefits a bit.

The only deal I know that seems decent was the economic treaty between Serbia and Kosovo. I don’t know how much he had to do with that. I have read that he claimed he was ending centuries of bloodshed, in a war which ended 20 years ago, and Serbia still does not recognise Kosovo’s right to exist.

The middle East treaty seems to have been about giving Israel what they wanted, abandoning the Palestinians and getting signatures from people who were not at war and shared no common borders.

He seems to have even refused to talk with people in the US who were protesting about black people being shot and beaten up by police. Instead he seems to have encouraged the police violence that started the riots, and praises white guys for shooting bullets and paint pellets at rioters. No deal there. He seems to have decided it was to his political advantage to keep the situation tense, rather than to do a deal.

Likewise rather than deal, he seems to have overridden States’ rights, so as to push higher pollution levels on States that wanted to make their own laws about what was acceptable.

So he does not deal that well.

Most politicians would probably not insist on total subservience and loyalty to themselves. That seems to be Trump’s idea of a deal. Consequently it is not really a surprise that after years of FoxNews’ unswerving support, and the kind of lovey-dovey interviews he can cope with, he threatens to destroy them after they reported he lost.

To most people this could seem like a political attack on free speech – but hey its Trump and he is not a politician.

I don’t know of any deals done with the Democrats, but his 4th July Speech seems to reveal his attitude to deals again. This is traditionally a speech in which Presidents try to draw Americans together. Trump used it to blame the ‘the left’ (which to his audience would mean Democrats) for everything that was wrong. He tried to make them appear Unamerican.

as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure.

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children…

In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.  If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.  It’s not going to happen to us….

That is why I am deploying federal law enforcement to protect our monuments, arrest the rioters, and prosecute offenders to the fullest extent of the law….

 The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions….. [and so on and so on]

Remarks by President Trump at South Dakota’s 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration | Keystone, South Dakota. White House 4 July

Yet again, it appears that if you don’t completely admire and agree with Trump, you are evil and his enemy – there is no deal. There is certainly no attempt to understand what is going on.

That seems to be his main political strategy: Don’t deal, and stir up the conditions for civil war, to stop the other side from winning.

And now he won’t go, and personally I worry about what might happen next.

And he is ignoring Covid, so it will get worse and at best make Biden’s job harder. Biden has to deal with the Republicans, misinformation, and the disease, plus handle climate change.

It might be suggested that aiming to win, or stop the other side from winning, all the time, is not compatible with Democracy or dealing. Democracy needs people to be able to win, lose and share with other citizens.

****

For References for the “Trump at war” section see:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/donald-trump-defense-contractors

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/record-7423-bombs-dropped-afghanistan-2019-report-200128142958633.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/us-afghanistan-war-bombs-2019

https://ips-dc.org/ending-the-myth-that-trump-is-ending-the-wars/

https://ips-dc.org/remember-trumps-choices-war-walls-and-wall-street/

https://upstatedroneaction.org/wp/trumps-military-drops-a-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-count/

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/trump-yemen-war-civilian-deaths/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/02/trumps-plan-to-withdraw-from-somalia-couldnt-come-at-a-worse-time/

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Trump refuses to concede? What about the law?

November 13, 2020

[Why do I keep writing about Trump? Isn’t this blog supposed to be about climate and technology? Yes, but it is also about disorder and unintended consequences, and the sociology of information.

In the contemporary world Trump has become central to, and illustrative of, these phenomena. He is not responsible for them, but he seems to use, and intensify, them to both keep power and to assert power. He uses the dynamics which are already present with apparent expertise, and his success with those dynamics not only shows something about how they work, but may eventually undermine the ability of the USA to function. That is why I find Trump and ‘Trumpism’, interesting.]

Democrats and the left in general are being way too optimistic about what is happening in Washington.

Trump has not left the White House. He has another two months in which he has the power of an elected King and, given he owns the attorney general and many judges, pretty much the power of an absolute monarchy.

He is engaging in legal warfare. He is stacking agencies with his own people (including a guy who had called Obama a “terrorist leader”) and sacking opponents (including the man who contradicted him over the potential use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty military units against protests). It is reported that he was wanting to strike Iran’s main nuclear site, as Iran was (not surprisingly) increasing uranium stockpiles. He was persuaded not to, possibly by Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and others [1], [2]. The Iranians warned that “Any action against the Iranian nation would certainly face a crushing response” [3]. Assuming he leaves office, Trump has two months left in which to try and threaten and irritate the Iranians into a war, so we shall have to see what happens.

He has the Republican party gathered around him, playing along with him, to keep their power and position. He has a massive network of underground media which has no responsibility to anyone or any Truth other than Republican Victory, and the victory of the wealth elites.

On top of that he can, and largely has, established in the minds of Republican voters that there is a question about this election. And that question will remain, even if all of Trump’s challenges fail in the courts, or in the recounts (And some may succeed, who knows? Mistakes do happen). It may even remain if he concedes, but he may never concede – why should he?

That will justify Republican non-cooperation with Biden. It will justify Republican attempts to impeach Biden, and find cause to impeach him – this is despite the ease with which they refused to even listen to the evidence about Trump.

Even if the voting claims do not pan out, then some Republican states might say there is enough doubt to ignore the votes and use their powers to send whomsoever they want to the Electoral College – which would probably benefit Trump. There are apparently precedents.

But even if this does not happen in enough States to make a difference, Trump’s current campaign will keep the fake news sites hot and may even justify continual popular insurrection. Attempts to end that insurrection will be taken as showing the repressive nature of Democrats and the ‘deep state‘. It is likely to justify a Trump family campaign at the next election and the return of overt fascism – this time with few pretenses.

You should not dismiss what he might do.

Most democrats are assuming the law and convention counts for something. They gave in to the ‘referees’ in the Bush/Gore election. However, authoritarians know the law is about power and establishing their legitimacy. It is a weapon – nothing else.

The law will not save us against a united determination by a major power block to keep power – especially if one side foolishly believes in the others obedience to lawful process and convention.

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Trump and black magic: A Jungian view

November 12, 2020

What is a black shaman, or black magician?

The usual answer is that it is someone who works with ‘dark forces’.

However that is not quite enough. Even if we were clear what ‘dark forces’ were, sometimes we need to work with the chaos, or destructiveness, to produce healing.

I guess that is the point: the black magician works with dark forces for their own personal power or for the pleasure of destruction.

The most obvious dark forces present today, are the forces of the socially repressed but vengeful collective unconscious – brought out by a failing and flailing society. Trump manifests what Jung calls the shadow, the denied harmful parts of the collective personality, and its projection onto those with little power.

The use of these forces for personal power and destruction is why I think of Trump as a ‘black Shaman’.

  • [I should add that there are large dispute as to whether ‘shaman’ is a valid analytical category – see Kehoe’s book Shamans and Religion for a relatively good introduction to the debate – I’m using the term in its normal western meaning of a person who summons, travels with and/or listens to spirits, even if that is no excuse]

Trump seems to have spent most of his life creating chaos and destruction to build his power and support his ‘righteousness’ or his apparently unending ability to ignore, or celebrate the harms he creates – an ability which often seems contagious, so that we are dealing with collective shadow forces.

The Background

In business Trump appears to use threats and the promise of using the law to attack, and an ability not to be held responsible for failure. He is an excellent salesman, and self-promoter, although it appears he sees what he wants to see, rather than face ‘what is’. He is excellent at self-deception. I am sure he really believes that Covid is not a problem and that he cannot lose.

However, he has many failures and not a few frauds to his name, but is imagined to be a success. this imagined success is vital to his real success.

He has repeatedly threatened to sue individuals who speculate he’s exaggerating about his riches, and he once even made good on such a threat, suing the author of the 2005 book TrumpNation for estimating that his empire was worth as little as $150 million. (That lawsuit was thrown out.) Forbes editors also say Trump regularly lobbies them to increase the magazine’s estimates of his wealth…. Forbes pegs his fortune at about $4.5 billion

Donald Trump’s 13 Biggest Business Failures. Rolling Stone 14 March 2016

In 2015 the Washington Post Reported:

having looked at Donald Trump’s detailed financial filing with the Federal Election Commission: He owns assets worth at least $1.4 billion and has liabilities of at least $265 million.

Bump, Trump has assets of at least $1.4 billion — and that’s about the best we can say. Washington Post 22 July 2015.

He supposedly persuaded workers in his Casino companies to take stock in the company as their pension fund, so when the companies went bust the workers lost their pensions. This was perfectly legal. Even more scrupulously:

Trump used his company as a means of transferring his personal debt load onto shareholders, issuing rounds of junk bonds to build up cash that would erase his own debts.

Caldwell. How Trump’s Casino Bankruptcies Screwed His Workers out of Millions in Retirement Savings. Mother Jones 17 October 2016.

So he partly salvaged his loses on the backs of his workers. Despite this, his supposed business success, his TV success and his celebrity, makes him a symbol of the American dream. Winning in America creates its own morality, which justifies that victory. He is considered ‘tough.’ Even his documented tax evasion might help amongst those who hate taxes. He is not a person, but a vessel for shadow mana – a projection of what American people should want to be, and do want to be – although it is probable that a nation composed of people like him would collapse in faction and distrust. However, his image attracts and energises; even those who do not worship him, still find their thoughts returning to him, without considerable effort – and this reinforces his attraction and centrality to the world.

In politics, he works with, and summons up, the genuine grievances of the American people, who have been abandoned, suppressed, marginalised, and thrown out of decent paying work and who suffer precarious survival chances. They face loss of home and landscape, and have lost hope, through the consequences of the kinds of policies he, and his fellowship of the wealth elite have bought and supported for their own benefit.

The American people’s living standards have at best remained stable. Social mobility appears to have slowed. Their children probably don’t have a great future. Yet they are bombarded with messages that tell them if they just think positively, or act right, then they can overcome everything. They too can learn The Secret and succeed. They can be wealthy, sexy, healthy and attractive. Those who fail to do this are clearly worthless – it’s easy after all, just a matter of correct thinking. In the neoliberal illusion, there can be no talk of social class or opportunity structures (inequality, corporate power, the distribution of wealth, and the coming environmental collapse) which might explain the problem. It is all personal failure, which is also known to be untrue. It is an immobilising contradiction.

Trump gives people hope again. He is is one of the few politicians (who can get media coverage) who acknowledges what people feel, and directs that feeling into action – even if the action is primarily just letting off steam, or threatening outgroups. His followers can do something, and feel something together with crowds of others feeling the same, which gives them validation. Now, they can fight for their own improvement, and positively hope for further upgrades.

Rather than cultivate that grievance so as to overturn the policies that make the problems, or investigate what should be done to deal with these real problems, Trump turns those grievances into hatred and anger against his enemies – who just happen to be the people most likely (not certainly) to repeal those destructive policies.

Trump gives the real grievances a false target, and given that you cannot talk widely about the real causes of ordinary peoples’ loss in the US, then it works pretty persuasively. After all the mainstream media says similar things, and ignores or hides the real problems, and has been for a long time. This is part of what I have called the “Neoliberal Conspiracy” initiated by the powerful and wealthy. Ordinary people seem to be being conspired against by the wealth elites, although it is hard to tell if the conspiracy is deliberate, or whether it just grows out of the wealth elites defining corporate power and corporately dominated “free markets” as good.

In this sense, Trump benefits twice: once from the policies that transfer the people’s wealth to himself and which support his business crimes against workers and contractors, and second from the anger that the results of these policies generates.

Trump persuasively creates a fictional world in which life makes sense, people can find someone to blame (which is easier to deal with, than blaming the system which is praised on all sides), and he has plenty of people who have already been playing along with that position, who try to be radical by dismissing any critical narratives about real power, and pretending that Trump stands alone, with real Americans, against the horrors. We can see that what seem to be pure right wing ‘news’ sites are flourishing, without responsibility, and are now perhaps the new mainstream – boosting the message. The background creates the conditions for his performance.

Trump as ‘Shaman’

Trump is dependent on his audience for energy. He must give speeches to feel their energies flowing through him. In that sense he seems dependent on the crowds for meaning as they are dependent on him for meaning. And yet the speeches are odd, full of incoherent rambling. Looked at as words they can be almost meaningless, yet I suspect they act as incantations – disrupting what is left of the rational mind and replacing it, like an Eriksonian hypnotist, with repeated phrases about how great we are, how persecuted we are, how we can overcome everything, how things are going well, how the Democrats are traitors. How things are better if we just hand over our power to the shaman.

You know, when people see it, I walk in, we do polls, and they do a poll. “We interviewed 73 people, and President Trump is down 57 points.” This is a poll. See, this is a poll. When you draw crowds like this. This is not the crowd of somebody that’s going to lose the state of Michigan. This is not. This is not. And look at this crowd. You can’t even see the end of it. You can’t. This is not the crowd of a second place finisher. Do you agree with that? No. No. This is our crowd, all together. We’re in this together and we’re doing it together. As long as I’m President, we will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere on this planet. And for the first time, we are energy independent. You never heard that term before. We’re energy independent, and you know, we have very good relationships in different parts of the world. In some we help. We don’t have to, though. Now we don’t have to do … We do what we want, but we have some very good allies and partners that we’ll help them, but we don’t need their oil anymore. We have so much oil. We have more oil than anybody, okay? And it’s an incredible thing that it’s happened over the last few years. A lot of great things. And you’re paying, what, $2 a gallon for your gasoline? That’s okay.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence held a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 20. Rev.com

Through this incantation, and subversion of coherent thinking, he gives hope. He gives endless hypnotic positive assertions. Things are not bad, the awareness of bad things is promoted by his enemies, you can ignore them, as things really are going well. And if some of the media don’t agree with him, then that just proves everything is really fine, because we know the media are evil.

And it doesn’t matter if he lies, the lies point to the greater truth. As a shaman, he utters mystic symbols, which point towards the real truth of what cannot be said (perhaps what the truth should be). This is the truth that is felt in the heart or in the gut – which needs no testing. Reasonable speech tends not to speak to the passions, it is denuded of affect and ineffective – especially to crowds who want passion – who want to be enlivened, lifted out of a sense of powerlessness – and he enlivens them – he frees their energy. And this is Good.

Looked at literally much of what he says is lies. Lies repeated so often, they become assertions of faith – that mark the believer. As Hannah Arendt said:

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

…one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness…..

Arendt Origins of Totalitarianism. Quoted at Vox Populi 31 January 2017

If the ‘other side’ can be defined as responsible for all evil, then victory is all that counts. If lies help win that victory, split the opponents, or cause them discomfort the lies are good by definition. It does not matter if words are literally false.

Such lies function as what some psychologists call “blue lies”; lies which are told on behalf of one’s group against another group – they reinforce identity (and the denied identity politics Trump engages in), and are recognised as being used to hurt the others. These lies can:

actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group….

University of Toronto psychologist Kang Lee explains, blue lies fall in between generous “white” lies and selfish “black” ones. “You can tell a blue lie against another group,” he says, which makes it simultaneously selfless and self-serving….

The lies are beneficial for your group…. They help bring some people together by deceiving those in another group….

 “Many people are angry about how they have been left behind in the current economic climate” [Maurice Schweitzer says]… Trump has tapped into that anger, and he is trusted because he professes to feel angry about the same things.”

“Trump has created a siege-like mentality,” says Schweitzer. “Foreign countries are out to get us; the media is out to get him. This is a rallying cry that bonds people together.”

Smith. Can the Science of Lying Explain Trump’s Support? Greater Good Magazine. 29 March 2017

The suggestion Trump makes is that Trump is persecuted like his followers are persecuted. He is one of them. If correct, this serves as a further example of the functioning of ingroups and outgroups. Outgroups are those who can be lied about when it benefits the ingroup, or confuses the outgroup, or angers them. If the ingroup lies about itself to boost its standing and power, that is also good. If the outgroup lies about anything, then that is still bad, as it points to their greater falsehood.

These lies are to believed when useful. They may never be taken entirely seriously, but they are never entirely disbelieved, or put aside (truth and falsehood are no longer taken as absolute opposites in practice). People are free to use the lies whenever it becomes time to denounce the others, and they will not be called out. At worst these lies are taken as rumours which point to the real truth about how dastardly the others are.

Lying can also be regarded as an art which produces admiration. A person might go along with the lies in admiration of the sheer entertaining effrontery and fantasy of it, and because of their inner truth. Going along with the lies, may well later lead to a tacit belief in the lies.

Sometimes Trump’s aim seems to be simply to turn his followers grievances against those who stand up to him, or who say he was wrong (and get defined as outgroup), but would not threaten the policies which are the basis of his power. Part of the illusion he attempts to create is that he is always right, so people who disagree must be wrong, and be deliberate saboteurs; again outgroups are evil. In any case they are enemies, and they are the real liars.

In this act of suppression, he can use the force of others. It was not he who gets armed people into the streets, or who generates death threats to Dr. Fauci, it is the peoples’ legitimate anger which he encourages and excuses. Through these threats they are standing up to the elite – unfortunately not the right elites.

He also attempts to create the idea he is the victim; “no president has been more persecuted than myself”. This relies on people’s short memories. Many presidents have been attacked more than him; some have been shot, some have faced years of intrusive inquiries with little result.

However, as already stated, this victimhood establishes the idea he is one of the real people who are victimised daily, just as his misspelling, and incoherence in his tweets, and the mockery they promote, supports this ideal connection; and as does the dismissive snobbishness of much of the ‘intellectual’ response to Trump – that will not recognise the real base of his power in people’s discontent and powerlessness.

However, his victimisation is fictitious, and it is easy for him to stand against it – he is squarely part of the inherited wealth elite, he has wealthy and powerful contacts in the US and internationally, and he is President of the United States – an elected King, with power of war, secret police, appointment of justice, pardon and preferment. This victimisation distracts from his overt power, and creates the illusion he is fighting against what oppresses the people, and that he is standing up for them, and mastering their problems. And he can invent solutions which have never happened, but such is his persuasive power that his supporters do not seem to question this, as these events should be happening, and will if we hold strongly to the belief and don’t challenge it.

Given the problems he identifies are immigrants, Mexicans, black people, rioters, professors, journalists, feminists etc., these are also relatively easy to defeat. They also fit in with the already established modes of hatred in the community – people who are different – people who are sometimes unpleasant, or up themselves, but who have little power.

These processes also disarm the Democrats and other opponents, who seem to think, even after these past four years of Presidency, that the law will stand up and act to enforce the conventions and fair play, when the law is largely a tool of power, and Trump and his party are the power.

Occupy Washington

The current occupation of the White House illustrates how this works.

Before the elections, Trump tried to cast doubt on the results if he lost. He threatened to challenge the results. He campaigned on the idea that his followers were going to be cheated and disenfranchised – while attempting to disenfranchise large parts of the population by making pre-polling difficult where possible, by casting doubt on postal votes and trying to suggest postal votes should not be counted, or would not be counted. This was on top of the usual Republican efforts to prevent people in their outgroups from voting. He was doing what he alleged the enemy was doing. That someone was doing it, made it plausible the enemy would do it. This would also distract from the fact that his side was doing it.

However even if these Republican threats to disenfranchise people did not disturb the awareness of his followers, they were still rightly feeling cheated (the system does not work for them) and disenfranchised (the vote and the party, really does not deliver people who really represent them or do anything for them). Corporations ride over them. They are even threatened with losing employment, livelihood and survival to protect the despicable weak because of Covid.

On top of that, if the other side is truly evil and victory is all that counts, then Trump’s behaviour is perfectly ‘reasonable’. If the outgroup won then it would clearly be dire, because even when ‘our group’ wins the consequences are not great now (possibly in the future) – imagine how bad it would be if the others got in?

So Trump used people’s sense of disenfranchisement to increase their disenfranchisement, and set up the possibility of a rule by force. A rule in which he stayed in the White House whatever the people voted. This rule would sever any responsibility to the people, because he had broken the system. What keeps it going is he, himself and his shamanic power to channel unconscious rage at the system, whose workings people are not conscious of. He can appoint who he wants to, and do whatever he wants, because he spoke directly to the people and reinforced the deception through scapegoating. Republican politicians would know that they have depended on the deception for their power and, if the real fraud was revealed, their party would probably suffer – although in reality many people would never believe the fraud was unreal. How could the President, the magic man, the success icon, really loose?

The politicians would also know that nobody would protect them from the President’s vengeance, if they did not support him.

At this moment what does it cost them to play along with the President? If he goes, and the fraud charges stick, they can use them to justify attempting to tear Biden down. If the fraud charges fade away, they can carry on as usual, without fearing others in their party, and if the President succeeds in his coup, then they can claim to have supported the fraud charges all along and without having risked the wrath of the autocrat. Also they might find it reassuringly useful to believe that the Democrats cheat and lie like they do themselves, that makes it fair.

Comments by Jung

As some people will recognise this piece is influenced by memories of Jung’s work on the period before World War II.

After writing this piece I browsed Jung’s collected Works Vol 10 Civilisation in Transition, to see what I had forgotten. In this section are some very free paraphrases of what Jung wrote, together with a few paragraphs from an old interview, and a few additions by myself I have substituted Americans for Germans for example – please don’t take these as direct quotations from Jung, hopefully they add to the ‘analysis’ above.

Of course Jung is talking about Hitler, not Trump, and while they may be very different, the similarities seem significant enough for the purpose.

*****

[#454] The individual Americans’ feeling of weakness, indeed of non-existence brought about by the social system and its response to them, was thus compensated by the eruption of hitherto unknown desires for power. It was the revolt of the powerless. Americans wanted order, wanted revenge, and wanted a meaningful life, but they made the fatal mistake of choosing a victim, and creator, of disorder and unchecked greed, for their leader.

This man was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat.

[#419] Another diagnosis of Trump would be ‘pseudologia phantastica’ which is characterized by a peculiar talent for believing one’s own lies. … Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident. Especially if it can be changed for another lie as needed – which one also believes is true. A person who tells people what they want to hear, at that moment, will nearly always be more persuasive, than one who is consistent, or checked by reality.

[#418] All these pathological features — complete lack of insight into one’s own character, auto-erotic self-admiration, denigration and terrorization of one’s fellow man (how contemptuously Trump speaks), ability to summon the shadow, falsification of reality, determination to impress by fair means or foul, bluffing and double-crossing — all these were united in the man whom a strange fate chose to be the political, moral, and religious spokesman of the USA for four[?] years.

Is this pure chance? Or is it some kind of destructive compensation? Some longing for death and destruction to break the monotony and desperation of people’s lives?

[#454] Because of his closeness to the shadow, Trump spoke for that shadow (the inferior part of everybody’s personality), to an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why people went for him. These failings of psychic development allowed the President to crystalise the problem, and symbolise a way forward…. He gave them other people to denounce; a focus for their hatred and loss. He joined them together in their collective shadow. He forged that shadow from the ruins of the country and its despair. He gave relief with a cause identified, even if wrong.

[#455] In Trump, every American should have seen his own shadow, his own worst danger. It is everybody’s allotted fate to become conscious of and learn to deal with this shadow. But how could the Americans be expected to understand this, when nobody in the world can understand such a simple truth when it applies to them? How many on the left, gained a sense of righteousness for themselves by denouncing Trump’s followers as their own shadow, rather than engaged with them as people? The point of the shadow is to separate, and promote retreat into fantasy and violence, to keep oneself proud, while bonding with others who denounce the same people.

[interview] Trump’s voice is nothing other than his own unconscious, into which the American people have projected their own being; that is, the unconscious of seventy or so million Americans. That is what makes him powerful. Without the American people, and their collective psychological states, he would be nothing…

[interview] Trump does not think – he listens to his shadow and its whispers and speaks it directly. He is like a man who listens intently to a stream of suggestions in a whispered voice from a mysterious source, and then acts upon them….

[interview] Trump’s power is not political, it is magical. With his unconscious perception of the real balance of political forces at home and in the world, he has so far overcome the merely rational expectations of any opponent. His apparent irrationality is a strength, which undermines any supposedly rationally acting opposition with its unreal, customary and derogatory, expectations of him….

[#426] Believing one’s own lies when the wish is father to the lie is a well known hysterical symptom and a distinct sign of a sense of inferiority – one cannot face up to truth… Reality, only dimly perceived at best, is to be completely blotted out. In an individual we call this sort of thing an hysterical twilight-state. When a whole nation finds itself in this condition it will follow a mediumistic leader over the housetops with a sleep-walker’s assurance, only to land in the street with a broken back.

[interview] With Trump you are scared. You know you would never be able to talk to that man; because there is nobody there. He is not a man, but a collective. He is not an individual, but a whole nation, or the nation’s disruptive unconscious. What he thinks at that moment is taken by him as righteous with no quarter. Agreeing with him merely 95% of the time may not be enough to satisfy him. I take it to be literally true that he has no personal friend. How can you talk intimately with such a person?

[#432] The phenomenon we have witnessed in America is nothing less than an outbreak of epidemic insanity, an irruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a tolerably well-ordered world (but which, ultimately, was not), channeled by an otherwise empty shaman, probably initially by accident, until he came to crave the power and meaning it gave his own life.

Trump is no mere gangster or thug and understanding him as such will not help combat him.

Addenda June 2025

Trump celebrates the Shadow of America. It is all out in the open: greed, pettiness, bluster vindictiveness, fear of difference (whether political, racial, sexual, intellectual), sacrifice of the inferior, attraction to violence and dominance, vicious hierarchies, and multiple people beating up on much fewer people. Through identification with the leader people can throw off repression of the shadow, which is energising and exuberant. You can hurt anyone who is not approved. It feels good to throw off repression along with crowds of others. By following Trump you can be free.

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