How to Change a Society from a Largely Free Democratic Republic to a Fascist Socialist Totalitarian State

1.  Divide individuals by gender, by ethnicity, by wealth and income, by education, by age, and by sexuality; 

2.  Pit one group against another using the force of government to provide unearned rewards to some at the expense of others by putting limits on the rights of individuals to earn a living, limiting their freedom of association, and their freedom to cooperate with one another; 

3.  Thereby, creating distrust and hatred as the factions fight to control the government that insists on hurting many, making it a threat to all, thereby making it a matter of life and death for each group to control the government;

4.  Watch a country that once honored merit in the market place, but became an unlimited democracy, succumb to greed for the unearned with the development of ever more special interest groups dependent upon government largess;

5.  The government-run and funded education system becomes a tool promoting more and more government powers, seeks to suppress all private education alternatives, seeks to suppress individual rights especially freedom of speech and the freedom of the press or media, promotes the collective rights of some groups at the expense of the rights of the individuals in other groups, and promotes versions of the country's prior history that diverge ever more from the truth such that more and more power and money flow to the government and the education system;

6. In which a majority coalition of those who have less wealth and want government forced transfers of wealth to themselves and those who most lust for power turn the country into a socialist, fascist country (very poor, primitive countries usually turn communist instead);

7. Which in turn comes to be ruled by the most brutal elements of the power lusters with a total loss of individual rights.

I read William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the summer after the 9th grade and came to understand most of this.  I think I understood some of these lessons better than Shirer did.  There have been many further examples of this process since WWII.

Here is a very interesting analysis video of what we are presently facing based on a young woman's experience during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Robert Bidinotto -- Many People Embrace Altruism Because They See Relationships as Win-Lose in a Zero-Sum World

I, Charles Anderson, have long argued that the private sector -- a broader concept than the free market -- allows everyone to pursue relationships offering mutual benefits, while the government sector is "dog eat dog" under the rule of brutal force. I have not railed much against altruism as a chosen philosophy, though Ayn Rand and many other Objectivists have. Instead, I have simply tried to convince people that our relationships should be worked to our mutual benefit and government should be limited by the principle that it should not be hurting anyone, not even with a rationale that it was acting for the "Greater Good."  

Yet before reading Robert Bidinotto's comments below, I did not quite recognize that many people were so repulsed by being an oppressor in a world they saw as a zero-sum game that they chose instead to be a victim.  In dealing with zero-sum win/lose governments, I have made this choice myself.  This repulsion for being the bully/oppressor serves as the reason that many people act as though they are altruists, the philosophy of self-sacrifice.  Fortunately, the free private sector is very accommodating to win/win relationships and we can develop a society in which self-sacrifice is not a necessary choice to avoid becoming a monster oppressor.

In a Facebook discussion, Robert Bidinotto, the author of the Hunter thriller novels, made what I believe to be unusually perceptive and brilliant observations that made this much clearer to me. As he says, this explanation for the popularity of altruism needs to be understood and promulgated with vigor.  With his permission, I am reproducing his comments here:

Robert Bidinotto:  On the Origins of "Self-Sacrifice" as Moral "Ideal"

Politics is force -- and the initiation of force necessarily creates zero-sum situations of victimizers vs. victims. This means politics necessarily fuels resentments, hatred, and social "polarization," because politics invariably, unavoidably results in "win/lose" relationships.

  

This state of affairs is the exact opposite of the voluntary, non-coercive trade relationships in a free society, which are to mutual benefit and are thus "win/win." In the marketplace, all parties to an uncoerced transaction walk away afterward believing that they are better off than before. It's why when we pay for something in stores, we customarily say "thank you" -- and so do the sellers. We are happy to get the goods and services sold to us, and they are happy to get our money in exchange. There are no victimizers, and no victims.

You'd think people who truly wanted a peaceful, benevolent, harmonious society would realize this, embrace the free market, and reject government coercion as the central organizing principle of society. But no. 

Why? 

I think that's because a huge percentage of people harbor a fundamental zero-sum, winner-loser view of economic and social relationships. Few people ever become leftists because they read turgid tracts by Marx and Engels about "class warfare." They become leftists because they see social and economic relationships in terms of either gaining power over others, or of submitting to the power of others. They see human interests as being fundamentally in conflict, so that the "self-interest" of some necessitates the "exploitation" of others.

This worldview or Narrative is rooted deep within humanity's tribal past, where human relationships *were* all about either domination or submission. We have to remember that capitalism, historically, is very new -- and from the outset it was misinterpreted through the conventional, long-standing filter of that zero-sum, win-lose worldview. Capitalists were thus "robber barons," not society's creative benefactors. Marx, and generations he influenced, interpreted capitalism and all human relationships in terms of class warfare. Today, "identity politics" rests on the same view of inherent conflicts of interest among demographic groups. Society, to the left, is all about "power relationships."

If I'm right about this, then many people's idealization of the ethics of "self-sacrifice" makes a kind of sense. Altruistic self-sacrifice is not so much the result of philosophical/ideological persuasion, as it is the result of a deep-seated core belief in inherent conflicts of interest -- and the subsequent conclusion that the only way for people to live in social harmony is to forgo their "selfish interests." 

This puts a different interpretive spin on the age-old popularity of altruism. On its face, self-sacrifice makes no sense. Acting in opposition to one's best interests is bizarre, and why people should *want* to accept it as a "moral ideal" is even more bizarre. So Ayn Rand, for one -- viewing human action as powered by abstract philosophical ideas -- tried to explain altruism's prevalence by imagining that malicious philosophers and thinkers have pushed it upon the gullible as a self-contained "ism," and embedded it into various philosophies. You can read endless articles from Rand and her followers bashing "altruism" per se, as a causal force in society. You also see that their critiques have had little societal impact.

My explanation for this failure is that the attacks on altruism per se are strategically misplaced. If what I said above is valid, then altruism is less a moral cause than a moral *conclusion* -- a logical choice for those who believe that socio-economic relationships involve inherent conflicts of interest. If that's your Narrative about the social world -- if you see transactions as nothing but power relationships about dominance and submission -- then you have a logical choice to make: either to become a cold-blooded, predatory brute, or to become (or remain) "nice" and allow yourself to be an exploited victim. Those who truly believe in this Narrative may conclude that they'd rather keep their self-respect by being victimized than join the ranks of criminals and brutes. Altruism thus becomes evidence not of low self-esteem, but rather the misguided quest to *retain* one's self-esteem and humanity in a world of brutes and barbarians.

Is this interpretation far-fetched? I observe that in discussions of emergencies and "lifeboat situations," even many Randians recoil from a view that sees these as zero-sum conflicts, which would require them to behave as ruthless brutes, surviving at the expense of others. Most would prefer to keep their humanity and self-esteem by dying nobly, rather than survive like predatory beasts.

Well, then imagine how you'd *live* (and vote) if you truly believed that *normal social life* was all about zero-sum conflicts of interest -- that each transaction under capitalism entailed someone gaining at someone else's expense. You'd conclude, logically, that economic winners were all rapacious predators and "robber barons." You'd conclude, logically, that to keep your soul, you'd have to sacrifice your prospects for economic well-being and do your work solely for the love of it, not for commercial success. You'd conclude, logically, that to keep the economic predators in check, you needed a powerful, highly regulatory government to suppress predatory "greed." You'd conclude, logically, that Marxism's "class warfare" worldview was valid -- as were Marx's proposed remedies -- which would explain the stubborn, indelible appeal of socialism, despite its epic, bloody failures wherever it is tried. 

If I'm right about this, then the *main* target of individualists' moral proselytizing ought to be the Zero-Sum Narrative, i.e., the belief in inherent conflicts of interest among people -- and not altruism per se, which is mainly an emotionally driven *reaction* to the zero-sum worldview. We need to teach people that economic relationships in a free society are "win/win," not "win/lose." We need to teach what 19th-century thinker Frederic Bastiat labeled "Economic Harmonies." 

And we ought to teach that the "win/win" marketplace, based on voluntary, unforced trades, is the moral antithesis of the world of politics, where all relationships *are* in fact coercive, zero-sum, and "win/lose." We ought to teach that if you want a world that minimizes the coercive victimization of some people by others, then we need to keep relationships in the *private sector* -- that the *political sector* is the *last* place you should turn for solutions, and that politicians are the *last* people you should turn to as saviors. 

And that my friends is a very wise analysis of most of our societal problems, if you think this through for yourself.  Thank you ever so much Robert Bidinotto.

By the way, the Bidinotto novels are a rare pleasure to read.  Here is his author page on amazon.com.

The Otherworldly Mind of Poor, Lost Joe Biden and Implications for Black Americans

This is a satire with a mix of the facts as Joe Biden sees things and real world facts.  Be intelligent enough to take it as such.  I have observed far too much emotion unguided by reason of late.

Joe Biden, the Democrat who would be President, has said that 150 million Americans have died by gun violence.  More recently, he said that 120 million Americans have died from the "novel coronavirus", to use the flimsy name for the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus preferred by the Democrats and other socialists.

In 2017, 52% of homicide victims were black.  The percentage of the American population who are black is 13.4% and the American population is thought to be 329 million by normal people, though it is clearly much less in Joe Biden's world of mass deaths.  Doing the math, normal people would conclude there are 44 million black Americans.

If 52% of homicide victims are black and Biden's 150 million deaths by gun violence is true, then 78 million black Americans died by gun violence or by equally violent means.  Oddly enough, 88% of their killers were other blacks, so Joe must think that of the 78 million black Americans he thinks were killed by gun violence, nearly 69 million were killed by other blacks.  The Democrats' response to this unbelievable black self-extermination is to defund the police.  The Democrats' agenda does not include the preservation of black lives.

The man who would be President, says 120 million Americans have died of the coronavirus.  He and his socialist party have complained that black Americans are dying from the coronavirus in disproportionate numbers.  Black Americans are dying from the virus at rates several times that of white Americans, though the data on black deaths from this cause is not at all complete.  Nonetheless, it is likely not far from the case that about half of all coronavirus deaths are those of black Americans.  Then using the deaths due to coronavirus according to the man who would be President, Joe Biden, about 60 million black Americans have died from this virus.

The man who would be president and the socialist party that so lusts for power to rule the American people that they have in desperation put forth Biden as their knight in tarnished armor, apparently think that 78 million black Americans died from gun violence and another 60 million died from the "novel coronavirus", for a total of 138 million black American deaths.  Without an overwhelming percentage of the black vote, Joe Biden cannot ascend to the presidency, so he must be extremely worried about the upcoming 2020 presidential election.  According to Joe, from his bunker in his basement, there are no longer any black Americans left to vote for him.  In Joe's otherworldly mind, all 138 million out of 44 million black Americans have recently died from either gun violence or the "novel coronavirus."

Fortunately, Joe and his basement bunker, appear to be in another dimension and not in that of normal people.  As bad as gun violence is among black Americans and as bad as the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus has been for the health of black Americans, there are still many millions of black Americans ready to vote for poor Joe.  Despite the fact that Democrats insist on the poorest public education for black communities, despite their refusal to provide adequate police protection in those communities, and despite the anti-business policies of Democrats which suppress jobs in the communities they rule, millions of black Americans will vote for Joe, the one-time segregationist, the present searcher for his lost marbles, and the future numb-minded pawn of the socialists.  If American blacks placed a high value on their own lives, they certainly would not vote for poor, lost Joe and his Democrat socialist handlers.

My Critique of the Washington Post Pulitzer Prize Winning Global Warming Lead Article

The article in the Washington Post, whose arguments I tear to shreds in this post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 for:

Explanatory Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Complete nonsense is Pulitzer Prize worthy in the minds of the elitist collectivist left who make these awards.

The August 14, 2019 Washington Post had a front page, above the fold article which continues to fill the entirety of pages A10 and A11:

This article is also posted on-line here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?noredirect=on

There is a salient bias exhibited here.  The temperature change is measured from 1895 to 2018.  Why is 1895 the starting time for that measurement?  Because 1895 was a very cold year.  Let us examine the average US temperature plot below by Statistica:

The average temperature in 1895 was 50.34⁰F and in 2018 it was 53.53⁰F, so the temperature difference was 3.19⁰F or 1.77⁰C.  Had the Washington Post chosen to start the comparison in 1900 when the average US temperature was 52.77⁰F, then the increase in average temperature from then to 2018 would be 0.76⁰F or 0.42⁰C.  Now no one seriously believes that man-made global warming caused 1900 to be 2.43⁰F or 1.35⁰C warmer than 1895.  So, a change of weather, not a change of climate was the likely cause of this substantial difference in temperature over a 5 year period.  But this 5-year change is 67.5% of the 2⁰C temperature change that the Washington Post, on the authority of the UN, is claiming is a critically disastrous temperature increase.  The choice of a particularly cold starting point for a comparison of temperatures is a common trick of the alarmist game-plan.

The warmest spots on the map from the Washington Post article are about 3⁰C warmer relative to 1895.  Subtract the 1.35⁰C difference in the average temperatures to shift to a 1900 starting point in time and there are no spots in the U.S. with a 2⁰C increase relative to 1900.

There is a second interesting problem which is revealed by the map itself.  Carbon dioxide is always said to be a well-mixed atmospheric gas by the catastrophic man-made global warming crowd.  While it actually is not as well-mixed as they represent it to be, its variations are nonetheless gradual and spread over large areas.  Yet, the hot spots in the Washington Post U.S. map are in very much smaller sized areas.  If the warmer areas are warmer due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, then those areas should be of much larger dimensions than those of the map.  The strong temperature differences in the map are much too localized and suggest that they are due to chaotic weather differences, not real climate differences.

Further examination of the U.S. temperature change map shows a large area in the Southeastern U.S. where the temperature has actually cooled since 1895 as shown in the light green color.  If one maintains that the warming of 3⁰C in some small areas is due to an increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since 1895, then isn't the near 1⁰C cooling in the Southeastern U.S. also due to that same increase in carbon dioxide?  The larger area and more gradual changes in the cooled area is a better match for the somewhat well-mixed carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.  There actually are cooling effects due to carbon dioxide as I have many times pointed out in prior articles.  Those who have greatly exaggerated the warming effect of CO₂, claim the cooling effects are insignificant.  Remove the exaggeration of the warming effect and the several cooling effects are not so trivial and many of them are not saturating or saturating as rapidly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as is the warming effect.  I am not actually claiming that the cooling in the Southeast is due to carbon dioxide.  It is unlikely that it is.  However, if you are in the business of assuming that the temperature change since 1895 is due to carbon dioxide, then you ought to consider its cooling effects also.

Some of the hottest areas are near our two largest metropolitan areas, New York City and Los Angeles.  Perhaps these areas have warmed due to the urban heat island effect since 1895?  Virtually all the growth of population in southern California and in Arizona around Phoenix has occurred since 1895, undoubtedly contributing to that major hot spot in the Washington Post temperature map.  The article is full of stories about the warming of the state of New Jersey.  Averaging the population of that state from the 1890 and 1900 U.S. Census results to estimate the 1895 population, the 1895 population was about 1,660,000 people.  With the advent of automobiles, it became possible for people working in New York City and in Philadelphia to live in New Jersey, so those metropolitan areas expanded far into New Jersey.  The population of New Jersey in the 2015 estimate is 8,958,000, which is a increase by a factor of about 5.4 times compared to the 1895 population.  There are extensive urban heat island effects in New Jersey as a result.  The article bewails the fact that the only state in the contiguous 48 states with an average temperature increase above 2⁰C is little Rhode Island.  Its population in 1895 was about 387,000 people, which by 2015 has increased to about 1,056,300.  This factor of 2.7 increase in population in this high population density state has most likely also been accompanied by a significant urban heat island effect.  The warmer area around Miami is another area affected by a very large population increase since 1895.

Many of the areas showing the larger increases in temperature are also low population areas such as that on the California - Oregon border and southeastern Oregon, the area on the Utah - Colorado border, most of Maine, and the stretch across northern Michigan, northern Minnesota, most of North Dakota, and northern Montana.  An examination of the number and quality of weather stations in these areas used to generate this data might turn up interesting results.  Could it be the case that these high temperature areas are largely projections of temperatures outside these areas, which projections predominantly produce warming in rural areas?  In any case, since the population density is low in these areas, any affects on humans is also likely to be low.  These are not particularly warm areas in the first place, so any warming that does occur is quite likely to be very welcome.

Outside of the warmer areas of the Southwest and a small area around Miami, most of the areas showing the most warming since 1895 are rather cool parts of the U.S.  Given that Americans are much inclined to take vacations in warmer climes during the winters from such areas as the Northeast whose warmer winters since 1895 are much decried in the Washington Post article, it is hard to see the warming of such cooler parts of the U.S. as a general disaster.  People upon retirement still move to much warmer parts of the U.S. such as Florida and Arizona.  Apparently, they rather like warmth, however the Washington Post may pretend that warmth is a catastrophe.

Yes, it may be true, as lamented in the article, that ice cannot be cut from northern New Jersey lakes as it used to be for ice boxes, but then again we now have refrigerators. If we did not have refrigerators, the disappearance of that northern New Jersey ice might be a disaster.  Perhaps the Washington Post wants us to lose the use of electricity and to force us to return to the use of ice boxes as a result. In that context, it is a disaster that this return to primitivism in the name of radical environmentalism may be harder to accomplish.  This is not one of my goals and I do not believe it is a goal of most Americans either.

I have carried out the above discussion generally accepting the temperature record data provided by the Washington Post article.  However, the thermometer temperature data of 1895 and of 1900 has been heavily adjusted downward and recent data has been heavily adjusted upward by NASA GISS.  The U.S. temperature data given below is based on the USHCN2 historical network, which adjusts recent thermometer readings upwards by a substantial amount before releasing the data to the public.  Here is a comparison of the high and low daily temperature results for the measured or unadjusted data compared to the adjusted data comparing the 1895 cold year with 2010, as discovered by Tony Heller in a 2010 post on Real Science:

The fact that this data cuts off about a decade earlier than 2018, makes little difference, since the temperature has changed very little in the last decade.  The daily maximum temperatures in the unadjusted data shows smaller areas warming and larger areas cooling.  The unadjusted warming areas are usually areas of high population growth (Los Angelos, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, and the metropolitan areas of the Northeast) or areas of very low population density in the western US and northern Great Plains states.  The unadjusted cooling areas are mostly areas significantly affected by weather from the Gulf of Mexico.

The minimum temperature data (night time lows) is interesting in the unadjusted temperature hottest spots are actually more common in the western US than in the adjusted data.  There are many more areas of substantial cooling in the unadjusted data also.  Most of this cooling is in areas of the Southeast and the southern Great Plains.  There are larger areas of gray, the temperature unchanged areas, in the night time unadjusted temperature record.  Where warming has occurred it is often in the higher elevation areas of the US, where the day-night temperature variations tend to be larger than in lower elevation areas.  A slight reduction in these day-night temperature swings is more likely to be beneficial than harmful.  The night-time warming just south of the Canadian border is very unlikely to have anything but benefits for the people who live there also.

The land area sum of the unchanged and the cooled areas in both the maximum and minimum temperature unadjusted records, suggests that the average affects of temperature changes are actually rather small.  I expect the overall cooling of the Southeast brings more benefits to the USA than does the warming of the Southwestern and Rocky Mountain states of the USA where few people live.  As mentioned, the warming of those rather large areas just south of the Canadian border surely brings advantages to the people living there.

This Washington Post article by four of their radical Climate Change writers, is an excellent lesson in the massive dishonesty of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmist faction.  There is no attempt to distinguish the general warming of the post Little Ice Age period from any real effects that might be caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  There is nothing but assumption that the official data warming since the particularly cold year of 1895 has been due to man's use of organic fuels causing greenhouse gas emissions.  They are most insistent that mankind should feel a strong, collective sense of guilt that it is destroying the Earth and the future of mankind.  This is baloney.  It is moldy, rotten baloney.

It is a very sad observation that so many Americans actually believe in this irrational nonsense.  It is even sadder that every scientist in the nation is not working hard to reveal this con game.  Quite a few of them are on the take and many of them are intimidated by the lockstep socialism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism of our academic institutions and most of our information media.

The Destruction of Property Is Not a Minor Crime

Too many people claim that property is unimportant compared to the life of a thief or a nihilist. No. Property is the result of real people investing many hours of their life in creating things of value. Those things of value are the store of the hours of productive work people have spent a part of their life creating. When property is stolen or destroyed by someone, that person is taking a portion of another's life by force which the creator can never get back. The lives of creators are finite. Every hour of their time is of great value. In some cases, many years of the creator's life are wiped out by the destruction of his property. In some cases, the property owner is left destitute and with no means to provide for his old age. I find it obscene that so many Americans cannot think these consequences through.

The thievery and destruction going on now is Anti-Life in the extreme. It must not be tolerated. The perpetrators must be dealt with as severely as the law allows. If the laws are inadequate to the task of protecting the lives of those who create values, then the laws need to be brought up to the task.

Anyone who is not completely appalled by the beatings of innocent people and even the murder of some people has forfeited the right to claim that they are appalled by the murder of George Floyd. These people make it obvious that human life is not important to them. The murder of George Floyd is appalling, but so are the murders, the vicious beatings, and the property destruction which have followed in short order.

 
A moral society works hard to see to it that these horrible acts do not occur. When they do occur, the offenders have to be dealt with very sternly. The offenders are a very real threat to all moral and all productive people. If they are not controlled, they will destroy our civilization and bring horrors of destruction upon everyone in our society, including all minorities and all of the poor, which will exceed our imaginations. Imagine the darkest of the dark ages, but the thugs are now armed with modern weapons. This must not be allowed to happen.

Further Evidence of Biden's Cognitive Decline -- His Public Health Advisory Committee

If you were an elderly person in a state of rapid cognitive decline, but still early in the process, you would not choose a man for your Public Health Advisory Committee who is essentially an assassin of elderly people, especially those suffering cognitive decline.  No, you would be afraid of such a person and you would certainly not promote such a person.

Joe Biden hastily assembled a Public Health Advisory Committee to provide him advice on how he would handle the Covid 19 epidemic.  One of his picks for an adviser was Ezekiel Emanuel who played a major role in developing ObamaCare with its Death Panels, which he advised should not waste limited healthcare resources on older people.  Dr. Emanuel has been especially assertive that older people who are no longer very productive should not be provided health care.  Specifically, he says people with dementia or other mental decline are simply not valuable enough to the collective to be maintained.  Not only are healthcare resources for the elderly expensive, but the world is over-populated, which is destructive of the planet, according to such leftists as Ezekiel Emanuel.

Joe Biden's mental decline has been very evident and has been frequently pointed out by many Democratic Party promoters in the media, as well as party leaders.  At least many pointed it out prior to their recently falling into lockstep behind Biden in their desperate effort to defeat Trump in November.

How far gone do you have to be to promote a man to your Public Health Advisory Committee who is advocating that elderly people such as Joe Biden, especially if they are in rapid cognitive decline, as Joe Biden is, should not receive valuable healthcare resources to deal with their decline and their subsequent health problems?  The Democrat coup to remove Trump from the presidency did not get this early a start in 2016 relative to Trump's taking office.  In effect, Joe Biden himself has started the process to remove him from office in March 2020 should he be elected!  Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is the spokesman for the Democratic Party offering us the criterion for establishing the value of elderly people with declining cognitive function, such as Joe Biden.

If Joe Biden wins the election, it may be a very easy task to remove him from office.  The Constitution has a provision for that:  Amendment 25 Section 4.  No one will have to create the kind of fraudulent attacks that have been made on President Trump.  We will all just get the message as he stumbles through stories about kids stroking his hairy legs, his dangerous encounters with Corn Pop, his thoughts about the Living Constitution that make American's rights look like roadkill, or his declaring that anyone who disagrees with him is a lying horse-faced pony soldier.  Who knows, perhaps the day will come soon when he tells us what the nuclear launch codes are because he is so proud of himself for remembering them, or maybe he doesn't remember them.  I am fully expecting to hear him offer to take Putin outside the school to the playground and beat him up.  Hopefully, Jill will step in and take on Putin for him.

Identity Politics Social Justice Hypocrisy

Senator Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, in front of the Supreme Court spoke to pro-abortion protesters on Wednesday saying

"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

This is over the top in political discourse and his later claims that he only meant that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would pay the price that the Democratic Party would take over the Senate is a bucket blasted with two 12-gauge shotgun loads of 00 buckshot.  This event and Sen. Schumer's ridiculous later claims have been much discussed and I will not discuss it further here.

However, this kerfuffle led to some claims that President Trump was also guilty of threats to judges.  One such claim was based on his saying that Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg should recluse themselves from cases involving the Trump administration because of highly biased remarks they have made about Trump.  Stating judges should recluse themselves hardly sounds like releasing a whirlwind and a threat to make them pay the price of their decisions.

There were also references comparing Trump's statements to Schumer's to presidential candidate Trump's claim that a Mexican heritage judge should recluse himself from judging a case against Trump that involved Trump University.  Trump had implied that the judge, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an Obama appointee, may have been biased.

Trump should not have said this at the time, at least not unless he had specific solid reason for claiming such bias.  However, Trump was adopting the identity politics of the Democratic Party.  The howls of outrage after the criticism of Schumer from those who hold with identity politics against Trump's assumption that an Obama appointee with a Mexican heritage might be biased against him are based on sheer hypocrisy.

Just think of all the times Democrats have claimed that those who do not think like other members of some identity group the Democrats have assigned them to are traitors to their identity group.  Justice Clarence Thomas is an outrage they claim because he does not think like and make decisions like a proper black man is supposed to.  Over and over they have claimed he is a traitor to his racial group.  The Democrats try very hard to put pressure on those shoved into some identity group of their formulation to all act and think alike.  To a surprising degree, they are often successful in getting this result.  Many blacks comply with this uniformity.  Many, though not quite so many, Latinos comply.  Many women also comply.

In fact, the Democratic Party is primarily based on the women's vote, with the Black, Latino, Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ identity group votes added in.  The Democratic Party as a whole also has a bias against that identity group they created for white males.  In fact, that bias against white males has been very evident in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's claim that she has been denied the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency because she is a woman.  Oops, but how can it be that the Democratic Party with its endorsement of group identity politics and a heavy majority of women supporters is biased against a woman presidential candidate?  Nonetheless, many of the media joined Warren in her claims that there was bias against her and in effect rebuking the women of the Democratic Party for not uniting behind her.  Those who did not are traitors.

So let us return to Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was appointed by Obama.  Now Obama certainly believed in identity politics.  Obama absolutely would not appoint a federal judge who would betray his ethnic heritage, at least not one the Democratic Party counts on to hold firm in its belief in the Democratic Party, thereby being true to its identity.  Presidential candidate Trump was to be judged by an Obama identity group appointee in a case even as the Obama administration is spying on his presidential campaign using FBI and CIA assets to do so in collaboration with the Democratic National Committee.  Is it so unreasonable that Trump might think this federal judge might be biased?

As I said earlier, Trump should not have raised the question without more supporting evidence of bias at the time.  But looking back with all we know about the many dirty tricks of the Obama administration in biasing the 2016 election results, in subverting the Department of Justice in doing so, given their strong assertion and dependence upon group identity politics, and in the way Obama appointed judges who have thwarted so many of the actions of the duly elected Trump administration ever since he took office, Trump would have been very justified in saying Judge Curiel might be biased had he then known all we know now.

This goes to show that if you support group identity politics, then there is no way that anyone assigned to a group identity that is supposed to oppose those assigned to other group identities can expect justice in our justice system.  If the judge is in an allied identity group to a defendant, the judge will be biased in favor of him.  If the judge is in an opposing identity group, he will be biased against the defendant.  Female judges will be biased against males, as male judges will be biased against females.  Latino judges will be biased against white males and white male judges will be biased against Latinos.  Black judges will be biased against white males.  Women, Black, and Latino judges will be biased in favor of more government and a living Constitution.  White males will want less government and the Rule of Law.  This is expected as a necessary outcome of a belief in identity politics.

Impartial, objective justice is impossible if you believe in group identities as determiners of the group members viewpoints and beliefs.  Any claim of justice is outrageous hypocrisy.  Perhaps worst of all, there is no possible way to even aim for justice in a system that acknowledges identity groups and their powerful effect upon how reality is seen.

This issue is far more important than Sen. Chuck Schumer's rantings and ravings.  His defense should have drawn our attention to the hell created by group identity politics and culture.  Far from the claim that the Democrats are using group identity politics to achieve more social justice, they are actually making the very concept of a justice system impossible.  The result is a choice between anarchy and totalitarianism.

Spending Plans of the Presidential Candidates

But don't worry.  Only the rich will be taxed to pay for all of these promises.  The socialists of the Democratic Socialist Party, who do not actually believe in democracy, have assured us that very few of us will be taxed to pay for all the goodies a much multiplied bureaucracy of swamp creatures and the special interests their handouts will spawn will provide.  We will just tax the producers of wealth in America and hand their money over to politicians and bureaucrats and we will be well taken care of.  No worries.

Reality: You will have to work mighty hard to become one of the special interest factions able to soak up the money unless you want to join the vast majority of Americans in a lower standard of life.  Forget about voluntary associations and acts of cooperation in a free society.  Forget about choosing your own values and dreams.  Forget about managing your own life in accordance with your self-chosen values.

Stop working hard -- if you do, everyone else will just take all you produce, stealing the very hours of your life.  Don't be a slave to government -- go fishing or watch endless hours of TV, or stare at your cell phone all day.  This is the good life according to the many socialists among us.  Any purpose but the pursuit of power over others is pointless.  Is it any wonder the majority of the people will turn to alcohol and opiates in their ideal society, while the ambitious will become brutal savages in the pursuit of the power to deny everyone else their voluntary associations and acts of cooperation?

Socialism only appeals to the unbelievably ignorant, the insane, and the most brutish persons of a society.

Update on 6 March 2020:

Only Sanders and Biden remain of the Democratic Party significant contenders of the spending plans plot above.  Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Steyer, and Klobuchar only wanted federal spending over 10 years of $68 trillion or less.  That was not enough for the modern Democratic Party.  They all failed to acquire enough votes from their highly socialist party adherents.  Biden promises to spend $75.6 trillion over the next 10 years and that might be enough to satisfy enough party members for him to secure the party nomination with the generous help of the party political hack delegates who do not need to get votes.  Sanders wants an unbelievable $139.5 trillion in spending over 10 years.

Sanders wants to spend enough to collapse the federal government.  This is the real revolution he has been advocating.  Collapse the federal government and in the ensuing chaos, create a communist government to take its place.  His passion has always been for the kind of socialism that makes everyone equally poor.  He has never had any use for people who produce the goods and services of the private market.  His is a real passion for socialism and he has no real interest even in stealing from the private sector in an ongoing manner.  No, he only wants to steal all its wealth once.  Once and done.

Biden and the political establishment of the Democratic Party do not want to collapse the government.  They do not want to entirely kill the wealth generating private sector.  No, they are parasites and they have just enough self-interest not to kill their host.  They need the wealth-generating private sector to generate the wealth they will steal and the money they will use to acquire more power over the American people.  These people include most of the media, almost all of academia and the bureaucrats, almost all the lobbyists, and some environmentalists and labor leaders.  They want to maximize the amount of wealth they can steal, which means they have to allow wealth to be generated still.  If they understood economics better, they would allow more wealth to be generated than they will allow and they would actually get away with stealing more, though at a lower percentage.  However, these are also envious people who depend heavily upon getting the votes of envious people, so they have to compromise by maximizing some combination of envy + stolen wealth.

Do Additional Greenhouse Gases Warm or Cool the Earth?

If the Earth’s atmosphere had no infrared-active gases, commonly and confusingly called greenhouse gases, at all, the Earth would be colder on average.  The Earth’s surface would absorb more of the sun’s insolation, since water vapor would not be present to absorb the incoming energy from the sun and there would be no clouds.  Some of the heat absorbed by the surface would still be transferred to the nitrogen, oxygen, and argon molecules or atoms striking the Earth’s surface.  The remaining energy would be radiated from the surface.  Virtually all the energy radiated from the Earth’s surface would travel at the speed of light through the atmosphere into space and be almost instantaneously lost.  The day to night temperature changes would be much more dramatic than they are now.  The greenhouse gases benefit us greatly by moderating the day to night temperature changes.  At sufficiently low concentrations, each infrared gas with a non-overlapping absorption frequency with respect to other infrared-active gases already present, will slow down the rate of cooling at the surface and in the troposphere.  This allows the surface and the troposphere to be warmer than they would be were the infrared-active gas not present.

This is how the idea of a greenhouse effect comes about.  This paper Is not disputing that infrared active gases allow the Earth’s surface to be warmer than it would be if they were not in the atmosphere.  The question being examined is whether the further addition of an infrared-active gas will warm or cool the Earth’s surface and its lower atmosphere, the troposphere, when its atmospheric concentration is increased.

How does a low concentration of an infrared-active gas significantly slow down the cooling rate of the surface and the troposphere?  Suppose this gas molecule absorbs the longwave thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface in the lower troposphere and enters an excited vibrational state.  If that absorbed energy were simply immediately re-emitted and carried off the previously absorbed energy at the speed of light, the absorption event would have no significant effect on the temperature of the surface.  The key fact here is that the excited molecule has billions of collisions per second with the 2500 times as plentiful non-infrared-active molecules of nitrogen and oxygen and atoms of argon.  That absorbed infrared energy is converted into kinetic energy passed to the molecules that collided with the excited molecule long before the lifetime of the excited molecule for re-emission of the absorbed energy by radiation.  What is the overwhelmingly dominant means of energy transport through the troposphere at this point?  It is the convection transport from warmer to cooler portions of the atmosphere, which is generally upward and to the higher latitude regions of the Earth.  The speed of that transport of energy is about 8 orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light.  So that first act of longwave thermal radiation absorption from the Earth’s surface is of immense importance, but after that initial conversion of infrared radiation from the surface into kinetic energy shared by all the molecules (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) and atoms (argon mostly) of our troposphere, the role of any further radiation from infrared-active molecules is a faster means of cooling than is the convection cooling mechanism.

Let us examine why this is true.  If the mean free path for absorption of a given wavelength of the longwave thermal radiation from the surface is short enough that there is an absorption event by an infrared molecule in the lower troposphere, subsequent absorptions of any emitted thermal radiation by molecules at that wavelength at higher altitudes will prevent that radiation from escaping into space.  This does slow down the cooling of the lower atmosphere in this very limited context.  This is what the standard view of greenhouse gases focusses on.  The problem is that the alternative to that infrared-active gas emitting thermal radiation to a higher altitude is its being much, much more slowly transported to higher altitude by convection.  Adding more of that infrared-active gas to the atmosphere results in moving energy upward through the troposphere in steps at the speed of light instead of having more of it moving upward in the slow convection currents.  The implication here is that a very low concentration of an infrared gas in the atmosphere will produce a warmer Earth surface and troposphere, but subsequent additions simply speed up the transport of energy to higher altitudes.  Then the added infrared emitting gas molecules in the upper troposphere and the stratosphere radiate thermal energy at a faster rate directly into space.  For an infrared-active molecule, the initial effect of adding it to the atmosphere is likely to be warming effect, but its warming effect rapidly passes through a maximum and then further additions start bringing down the temperature at the surface and in the troposphere.

Let us pause and get a better understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs longwave radiation from the surface of the Earth.  An infrared-active molecule has an absorption spectrum over a range of wavelengths with absorption probabilities varying with wavelength over orders of magnitude.  The absorption probability at a wavelength is usually given in terms of an effective cross section, as though the size of the molecule were different for the absorption event at each wavelength.  Here, from a figure in Prof. Howard “Cork” Hayden’s The Energy Advocate, February 2020 (Vol.24, No.7) is the absorption spectrum near the main 15 µm (micrometer) absorption line for CO₂:

As Prof. Hayden explains, if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were only 40 ppm by volume (ppmv) or a bit less than one-tenth the present concentration, any radiation at the wavelengths above the red line in the figure at 1 x 10^-22 m² cross-section would be absorbed within a travel distance of 10 meters.  At that same very low concentration of CO₂, the absorption distance for radiation in the weaker absorption peaks above the lowest red line is less than 100 meters.  The troposphere in the U.S. Standard Atmosphere is 11,000 meters in altitude.  All parts of the absorption spectrum above the lower red line for as low a concentration of carbon dioxide as 40 ppmv are already absorbed many times traveling through the troposphere from the surface to the upper troposphere.  At 400 ppmv, carbon dioxide will add absorption events for the first time in the lower cross-section parts of the spectrum, but the additional first time absorptions are decreasing rapidly as more CO₂ is added to the atmosphere, while the rapid transport effects of carbon dioxide are moving more and more energy to space more quickly than convection would at an increasing rate as CO₂ is added.

I am going to develop a simple model for how the infrared-active gases warm the Earth, according to those who believe in catastrophic or even moderate man-made global warming.  This is not a model that I believe is correct.  This is intended as an exercise in determining a very generous upper limit on the size of the greenhouse gas warming claims based on additions of such gases to the atmosphere above those of the present and then showing that those claims are false in the context I have set up above.

I will start with a two layer atmosphere in which radiation from the Earth’s surface, is absorbed entirely in the lower layer L1, which radiates half that energy upward to atmospheric layer L2 where it is absorbed and half back down to the surface where all of it is absorbed.  All of the surface absorbed half from L1 is re-emitted upward and is re-absorbed in L1.  Layer L2 emits half the energy it absorbed from L1 directly to space, where it is permanently lost, and half back to L1 where all of it is absorbed.  Each layer L1 and L2 always emits half of its absorbed radiation energy upward and half downward.  The surface always emits its absorbed energy back to L1, where it is absorbed.  I believe this isotropic emission idea is incorrect, but we are going to do this exercise because it will give us insight and because it is rather a fun task to work out.  Note also that I am entirely ignoring convection as an energy transport mechanism for the sake of this argument.

The results are that space receives a series of emission energy originating with an emission of one unit of energy from the Earth’s surface, Sp, whose sum is

So, all of the unit of energy emitted from the surface is eventually emitted into space.  In fact, the first 5 emissions to space already total 0.7627 of the total energy of 1.  In this crazy model we have assumed all the energy emitted from the surface is absorbed in L1, despite the fact that the atmospheric window actually allows about 70% of all surface radiated longwave energy to pass through the atmosphere unabsorbed and directly into space.  So Sp really equals 0.3 and the first five emissions to space really equal 0.2288.  In this simple model with no thermalization of the absorbing molecule and no significant half-life before it re-emits energy as radiation, sending more than 3/4ths of the surface emitted energy into space takes about the time it would take radiation traveling at the speed of light, 3 x 10⁸ m/s, to travel through the troposphere about 11,000 m high five times.  That time is 3.7 x 10^-5 s.  In comparison, it takes hours for the alternative heat dissipation process of convection currents to raise surface energy to the top of the troposphere where it can be directly emitted to space as radiation.

Of course, the catastrophic man-made global warming argument does not emphasize the speed with which energy is emitted to space by a radiation-centric model.  They emphasize the added time radiation energy spends near the surface because of their isotropic emission model in comparison to the time it would take to go directly from the surface to space if there were no infrared-active molecules.  So what enhancement of radiative energy dwell time are they getting?  With this two atmospheric absorption layer model it would be that the sum of radiation back to the surface from L1, Su, is

This means that the energy dwell time in the lower troposphere has been doubled by this two-layer 100% radiative energy loss model with isotropic emission.  But keeping about 76% of this energy around for about 3.7 x 10^-5 s is not such a big deal.

What if we put three atmospheric absorbing layers into the model?  Then I find that the series of emissions to space from the top layer L3 is

Sp = 1/8 + 1/8 + 7/64 + 3/32 + 41/512 + 35/512 + 239/4096 + 577/16384 + ….

These first eight terms sum to 0.695129, so with eight emissions from L3 to space 69.5% of the unit of energy emitted from the surface has been lost to space.  Consequently, 69.5% of the energy is lost in about 8 (11,000 m) / 3 x 10⁸ m/s or 2.9 x 10^-4 s.

Su = ½ + 3/8 + 5/16 + 17/64 + 29/128 + 99/512 + 169/1024 + 577/4096 + 1731/16384 + …..

The first eight terms of Su sum to 2.01898.  So when Sp is a bit over 2/3 after eight terms and must sum to one, Su is a bit over 2 and seems most likely to sum to about 3.

So, let us make a leap here and assume that with an atmospheric absorption model of n layers with isotropic emission, Su will sum to about n.  [If someone has the time to work this series out to more terms or can find a way to solve it exactly, I would enjoy seeing the result.]

Alright now, let us assume that we have 100 absorption layers in our atmosphere, corresponding to an absorption distance of about 110 m.  Most of the radiation energy emitted from the surface will find its way to space in less time than 100 (11,000) / 3 x 10⁸ = 3.7 x 10^-3 s.  If you have 10,000 atmospheric absorption layers (an absorption distance of about 1.1 m), the time is then 0.37 s.  But the alternative means of removing that energy to space is convection and that takes hours to do the job.

In fact, radiation between the layers only occurs long after an absorption event during which time many, many collisions with other molecules would occur and the absorbing molecule would give up virtually all the energy it had absorbed from radiation from another layer to the 2500 times as plentiful non-greenhouse gas molecules in the air.  It is a comparatively very long time before the infrared-active molecule emits radiation again.  In the meantime, it is only 1/2500 of the molecules moving energy as part of a convection current.  Yet insofar as these infrared-active molecules do emit radiation, they are acting to speed up the emission of surface energy to space.  They are therefore acting to cool the atmosphere from top to bottom of the troposphere compared to the convection energy transport mechanism.

The lesson here is that the very first absorption event of thermal radiation from the surface in the atmosphere is very important because it puts the transfer of that energy into the hands of a much slower convection cooling process than is that of radiation.  However, whatever further thermal radiation events occur in the atmosphere simply speed up the loss rate of energy to space compared to the rate due to convection.  The addition of further infrared-active gases to the atmosphere causes there to be more absorption layers in the model.  If the atmospheric load of infrared absorption gases was so high that the mean free path length for absorption of their emissions was as short as 1 meter, then the time to dissipate most of the energy to space would still be less than a second, while the time it takes for the alternative energy transport by convection is still hours.

Do additional greenhouse gases warm or cool the Earth?  The addition of a gas in just enough concentration that there is absorption by that gas in the lower troposphere once which would not otherwise have occurred at a given wavelength slows the rate of radiative heat loss and may be regarded as effectively warming the Earth.  It does this by converting the cooling mechanism from rapid radiative cooling to that of slow convection cooling.  However, once that threshold concentration is exceeded for a given wavelength, additions of that gas simply cool the atmosphere more quickly than would the alternative of convection currents.  At such an above threshold concentration, that gas can be regarded as cooling the Earth faster compared to the rate it would cool without its addition.

The lapse rate is the temperature gradient with altitude in the troposphere.  At normal levels of humidity, the adiabatic lapse rate is less than the dry lapse rate is.  This tells us that at normal water vapor concentrations, the water vapor concentration is already high enough to produce a cooling effect on the surface and lower troposphere temperatures.  Water vapor does this with the cooling effect at the surface as liquid water becomes water vapor and then the water vapor rises with convection until it reaches an altitude at which it condenses and releases energy.  At the warm surface it cools with evaporation and at the cooler altitudes it warms by condensing.  The evaporation process increases the water molecule’s kinetic energy, including its vibrational modes, and the molecule carries that energy upward by convection and then releases the kinetic energy of evaporation as it condenses to liquid or solid form.   Each water molecule carries more energy per molecule at a given temperature than can a nitrogen or oxygen molecule.  Thus, as they rise with convection, they are transporting more energy upward per molecule than are the dry air molecules in the same convection current.  In addition, the water molecule is radiating energy to the layer of air above it, which is usually cooler and able to absorb that radiated energy if it also has water vapor molecules in it or sometimes if it has carbon dioxide in it. 

Unlike water vapor molecules, a carbon dioxide molecule carries less energy at a given temperature than do the nitrogen and oxygen molecules with which it shares a convection current.  This means an added CO₂ molecule causes a convection current to become a less effective cooling mechanism.  However, it retains the ability to warm the air layer above it throughout the troposphere as it cools its local surroundings by radiation to the layer above it.  In addition, more CO₂ in the upper troposphere and in the stratosphere means more molecules radiating energy directly to space.  There is good evidence that the addition of more hot molecules of CO₂ in the stratosphere has resulted in a measured  cooling of the stratosphere, as would be expected because these hot molecules are effective radiators.  I believe the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough that additions of CO₂ are cooling the troposphere as well or at least counterbalancing the mild warming effect of additional carbon dioxide molecules to a great degree.

Whether I am right or not about this, the claim that a very small warming effect by additional CO₂ will be amplified by a greater warming effect by increased water vapor (a positive feedback) is surely false.  The fact that the wet adiabatic lapse rate is less than the dry adiabatic lapse rate makes it clear that the claim of a positive feedback is wrong.  The IPCC and other alarmists depend upon this false claim of a positive feedback by water vapor to make it appear possible that additional carbon dioxide will cause significant harm.  The reality is that additional carbon dioxide has no net significant effect on temperatures at the Earth’s surface or in the lower troposphere.

Meanwhile, additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provides plants with the means for easier growth.  With a growing human population, this is very helpful in producing the additional food we need to produce.  This should be a factor in reducing human anxiety for the future.  Of course, I understand that some people just have to have something to worry about.  I suggest you worry, if you must, about another ice age which additional carbon dioxide in our atmosphere cannot prevent.  Or, you might worry about an asteroid  striking the Earth.  But it is even more foolish to worry about problems created by more CO₂ in the atmosphere.