June 3, 2017
It has been 4 years since I have posted anything on this blog. The original purpose of this blog was to give me something meaningful to do in retirement. I planned to monitor insects around my house and post the observations on the blog. The idea was to document any changes that may be happening and see if they correspond to climate change. I thought I could make it such that it could be a small contribution to scientific knowledge.
I still think that and that remains the long-term goal here. I am still working full-time and don't have the time to put into it right now. I have vastly increased my knowledge of insects since I last posted ... mainly by reading biological textbooks and trying to identify pictures of insects that I have taken in the backyard. I am 66 years old and don't know how much longer I will be working, but retirement isn't imminent.
However, something else not directly related to that project has happened that makes me want to blog. It happened a while back, November 8, 2016. Donald Trump got elected President of the United States.
There is an outrage in this country that I didn't appreciate. It is an outrage that even now, I do not fully understand. It is an outrage that is sparking a backlash of opposing outrage that is in my opinion a potential existential threat to my way of life. By not understanding it, I think I am in a small way contributing to it.
I certainly bear some responsibility for this. Politics is certainly not my forte. I am politically liberal, but I haven't followed politics as closely as I follow many other things. When this most recent election cycle began, the Republicans -- who have a long history of science denial is more and therefore people I generally oppose -- were in disarray. They had a mass of candidates. I thought Jeb Bush was most likely going to be their candidate. The one candidate that I thought was dangerous for this country was the Senator from my state of Texas, Ted Cruz. I have followed him somewhat and believe him to be duplicitous and willing to sacrifice anything in order to maintain power. His rise from political obscurity to a most-talked-about member of the Senate scared me. I didn't want him to be the nominee. I thought almost anyone would be better.
When the Texas primary rolled around on SuperTuesday, March 1, 2016. Bush was effectively gone. I thought Rubio would probably be nominee, but if not Rubio I thought it would probably be Cruz. I heard a political pundit comment about the Trump juggernaut. He implied that Trump had a chance of beating Cruz in Texas. Here comes my culpability.
I reasoned that in the primary Hillary Clinton -- my preferred candidate -- was going to win in Texas and was going to be the Democratic nominee no matter what. I now wish it had been Bernie Sanders, but that ship has sailed. I thought that my vote for Hillary would not be particularly meaningful. However, if Trump beat Cruz in Texas, then Cruz would be eliminated from the race and my biggest fear would be gone. Texas has an open primary so I could vote in the Republican primary, so I did. I voted for Trump.
It didn't do any good. Cruz won Texas anyway. Trump won most of the other SuperTuesday states and established himself as the front runner. I was not too concerned. I still at that time did not take Trump seriously as a candidate. At that time I still did not seriously consider that he would be the Repulican nominee. I was still most worried about Cruz.
As the election process progressed, I saw the Trump juggernaut roll on. I still did not take him seriously as a candidate. He kept doing things that would kill the candidacy of ... anybody. He said things like he could go on the street and kill someone and get away with it. He said his celebrity status allowed him to grab women by the pussy and they would allow it. He tweeted that global warming was a hoax created by the Chinese and then denied he said even though one could google the tweet. It was a joke he said, when clearly it wasn't. He straight out lied.
I thought it had to catch up to him sometime. There was no way he could come out as the nominee. But he did. I did worry about it a little at that time. The idea that he was 50% of the people who had a realistic chance of being the next President of the United States scared me ... but only a bit.
The Democrats had treated Bernie Sanders unfairly, and Hillary had a lot of Clinton negatives in the general public, but there was no way people would elect Trump, who was clearly not qualified to be anything in public service over her.
I felt this way up to the point where James Comey announced he would renew the investigation into her Benghazi emails a week before Election Day. Then when he announced that nothing had come of it a day or two before Election Day, I again became reasonably confident that Hillary would win.
I did give Trump a chance. The campaign had been stressful, but Trump had done himself no favors ... or so I thought. No one, not even me, was happy with the candidates. I thought it ironic that elections are popularity contests and somehow during this election cycle we had the two most unpopular people running come election time that I had ever seen. Due to Hillary's negatives, I thought Trump had a chance. But, if I am going to be honest, I didn't think it would be much of a chance.
Then came Election Day. I voted for Hillary. I went home and began to listen to the news. I was a bit anxious, but I hoped that early returns would relieve the anxiety. It did not. Hillary wasn't doing as well as expected. Long before the race was called, I decided she was going to lose. I went to bed.
But I didn't sleep. How could this have happened? I lay in bed and couldn't get this out of my mind. I was ... and I don't think this is too strong a word for what I was feeling ... horrified. I remember telling someone that I thought Hillary had the potential to be a great President. She would be the first female President. She had the experience working with Congress and if Trump took down the Republicans like I at one time thought he would, and she had a Democratic Congress, she could have 2 years to give people a reason to vote for her again. I also said that I thought that even though she had the potential to be a great President, she was probably going to be an ineffectual one. I had come to the conclusion that Congress was going to remain in Republican hands and with the country so politically divided there would be little she could accomplish. I told the person that I thought Trump had the potential to be our last President. He has now been President for over 4 months, and I think he has taken unbelievable strides toward achieving just that. I don't think it probable. I think our country has the resources to survive 4 (hopefully not 8) years of Trump. But I was wrong about Hillary's probable victory, I think it is possible I am wrong about our ability to survive Trump.
But, the most important question is, "How did this happen?" Coming from my side of the political spectrum there are plenty of theories. Certainly the Comey thing played a big role. Fake news played a role. A large part of that fake news came from the Russians who very much wanted Trump to win. But I think this all misses the main reason. I don't think any of these things would have been effective if there weren't a large underlying sense of frustration out there. I believe there was a huge number of people who felt ignored and ridiculed by people ... like me. I think Hillary's comment about a huge number of Trump's supporters being "the deplorables" hurt her more than is generally recognized.
I know I didn't take these people seriously. I just thought they were wrong and that being right generally wins out in the long run and things would work out. I don't think that anymore. It is not so simple as being right or wrong. Opinions are not based on facts limited to the topic at hand. They are based on feelings that are derived from experiences that may have no direct tie to the topic at hand. I think it is important to understand these as well.
Again, I think our country is facing a huge threat from the Trump administration. We are a dangerously divided country. There are frustrated people whose frustrations I do not fully understand. I am now a frustrated person and I doubt if these people truly understand my frustrations. If we can understand each other, we can certainly survive this. We still may not agree, but we will not vilify each other; areas of mutual interest will become apparent in which we can make this a better country for all of us. In words to paraphrase Trump, we can make America great again. Right now, it seems to me we are hellbent on making Russia great again.
I want to do some blogging that voice my concerns. I hope that Trump supporters will engage in a dialog. I want to understand their concerns. I want them to understand mine. This will not be easy because I am sure there will be areas that we are diametrically opposed. Areas that will be hard for us to respond in a reasoned way. I know that the anonymity of the internet does foster a mean-spiritedness that would never occur if we to talk face-to-face. But it also offers a chance to explain things in detail that is difficult to obtain in face-to-face talks. The longer time between responses allows one to better consider what the person is truly trying to say. The conversation is less likely to go off into tangents. Emotional responses can be reconsidered. There is a written record of what has been said so misunderstandings can be more easily corrected. And finally other people can read the conversation and make their own judgements.
I hope to make weekly contributions to this blog. I suspect readership will grow very slowly but who knows. In any case, it will give me familiarity with this blogging environment, so that once I do retire and begin the project for which I initially developed it things will go smoother.
***NOTE***
I am having problems using the Blogger editor with my iPad. My WordPress App works much better so I am transferring this to a blog there https://neosocraticdialogues.wordpress.com/
Thank you for your time.
