Donald Trump: Joking His Way to a Dictatorship

 Fintan O’Toole is one of the most incisive and entertaining observers of the US pollical scene.  In a recent article for the New York Review of Books, Laugh Riot, he turns his sights on Donald Trump and his use of large rallies to fire up his believers.

Large rallies were a standard tool of the twentieth century fascists.  O’Toole points out that a nasty form of humor was common at these events.

“Racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, xenophobic, antidisabled, and antiqueer jokes have always been used to dehumanize those who are being victimized…as Sigmund Freud pointed out, jokes can also be a way of shutting down pity itself by identifying those who are being laughed at as the ones not worthy of it…”

O’Toole quotes Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer who analyzed the relationship between Nazi rallies and degrading humor. 

“The rally, they suggested, was an arena in which a release that was otherwise forbidden was officially permitted:

The anti-Semites gather to celebrate the moment when authority lifts the ban; that moment alone makes them a collective, constituting the community of kindred spirits. Their ranting is organized laughter. The more dreadful the accusations and threats, the greater the fury, the more withering is the scorn. Rage, mockery, and poisoned imitation are fundamentally the same thing.”

Trump plays the same game at his rallies, but the implementation in the current century is different: bombastic rage is replaced by ugly humor in the form of “jokes.” 

“This is not the 1930s or the 1940s, and we should not expect this toxic laughter to be organized quite as it was then. Trump functions in a culture supersaturated with knowingness and irony. In twentieth-century European fascism, the relationship between words and actions was clear: the end point of mockery was annihilation. Now, the joke is ‘only a joke.’ Populist politics exploits the doubleness of comedy—the way that ‘only a joke’ can so easily become ‘no joke’—to create a relationship of active connivance between the leader and his followers in which everything is permissible because nothing is serious.”

“It requires the lifting of taboos to create a community of kindred spirits. It depends on Trump’s ability to be pitiless in his ridicule of the targets of his contempt while allowing his audience to feel deeply sorry for itself. (If tragedy, as Aristotle claimed, involves terror and pity, Trump’s tragicomedy deals in terror and self-pity.)”

This approach of saying outrageous things implying that they are being said in jest is an effective but terrifying practice.

“Violent words and violent actions are all covered by the same disclaimer—one that Trump’s apologists use to blur the relationship between his words and his followers’ actions in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In the Trumpian twilight zone where democracy is dying but not yet dead, the connection between words (‘fight like hell’) and deeds (the armed invasion of the Capitol) must be both strong and weak, sufficiently ‘no joke’ to be understood by the faithful yet sufficiently ‘only a joke’ to be deniable to the infidels. The comic mode is what creates the plausible deniability that in turn allows what used to be mainstream Republicans (and some Democrats) to remain in denial about what Trumpism really means.”

Just as the twentieth century fascists used violent words to obtain violent actions, Trump has demonstrated the same power over his followers.

“This is the thing about Trump’s form of organized laughter, in which the idea of humor obscures the distinction between outlandish words and real-life actions. Sooner or later, the first becomes the second. The in-joke becomes the killer line.”

 

Plastics and Human Health: A Poison Like No Other

 In Death by Plastic: Yet Another Threat to Humanity, a book by Matt Simon, A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, was discussed.  His findings were a revelation and a warning.  We are terribly wrong if we consider plastics merely as the annoying water bottles that float onto our beaches or are tossed by the side of our roads.  Plastics are structures that, in all their applications, contain thousands of chemicals, many of which are considered dangerous.  They are not rigid structures that last forever.  They continually break down into smaller structures, emitting some of their chemicals at each fracture.  The quickest way to ingest plastics and their chemicals into your body is to take a drink from one of those plastic bottles.  If the particles are small enough, they can pass from the digestive system into the blood stream and onward to our organs, bringing their chemicals with them.  Perhaps we are putting our infants at greatest risk by feeding them milk or formula in plastic bottles with plastic nipples to suck on.

Plastic particulates are everywhere, from the highest mountain top to the deepest ocean beds.  Every time we wash our plastic clothes, we generate trillions of nanofibers that enter our water systems.  Every time we drive our cars we generate massive amounts of plastic particulates from the tires.  When it rains, some of these particulates that are not circling the globe in the atmosphere also wash into our waterways.  So many particulates have been added that our waterways are now a significant source of airborne plastic pollution.  That pleasant ocean breeze that we enjoy is bringing plastics into our respiratory system.  If plastic particles are small enough, they and their chemicals can enter our blood stream through our lungs. 

Most people who hear these facts get extremely worried, but then ask, “if this is such a dangerous situation, where are all the sick people?”  The answer that could be given is that the problem has only recently been realized and it takes time for the evidence to appear.  We can perform experiments on animals which demonstrate the threats that arise, but with humans we must wait until, for some, it is too late.  A recent journal article presents some evidence of why we must be concerned.  The findings are summarized in Microplastics may be new risk factor for cardiovascular disease, researchers say.  Here is the main conclusion.

“…an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not.”

Here are the details. 

“The 257 patients who completed the study all had asymptomatic extracranial high-grade internal carotid artery stenosis — in other words, their carotid arteries were blocked with plaque. The patients underwent carotid endarterectomies, a procedure in which the artery is opened and the plaque is cleaned out. Patients who’d had previous heart failure, valvular defects, cancer or other causes of hypertension were disqualified.”

“The researchers then examined the plaque and found polyethylene micro- and nano- particles in 150 of the patients. Thirty patients had polyvinyl chloride particles in their plaque. Images from electron microscopy showed visible, jagged-edged ‘foreign bodies’ along with the biological plaque in these patients.”

“Polythylene, or PET, is the plastic used to make soda and water bottles. Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is the plastic used in water pipes, packaging, medical devices, toothbrushes, children’s toys and window frames, to name a few.’

“The two patient populations were roughly the same in terms of age, sex, weight, smoking status, geographical location, blood pressure and heart rate.”

“The one glaring difference, the authors noted, was the two groups’ susceptibility to heart disease in the months following the surgery — an indication that the presence of microplastics may have played a role. Indeed, indicators of inflammation were higher in the plastic-exposed group. Nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke, or death from any cause occurred in eight of the 107 patients who did not have microplastics in their plaque and 30 of the 150 patients with microplastics.”

This study cannot explain the causes of the results, both plastic particles and plastic chemicals were present.  Either, or both, could be at work here.  But the first shoe has fallen.  There will be more to come.

 

Solar Storms: Yet Another Thing to Worry About

 For those of us who have the time to spend thinking about what is going on in the world, contemplating the future can be terribly depressing.  Earth’s climate seems to be using its increasing energy to make life miserable: melting ice, dryer droughts, hotter heatwaves, wetter floods, and fiercer winds.  Surviving the COVID pandemic merely reminds us how much worse the next one might be.  Our civilization is ever more rapidly polluting the planet with dangerous chemicals.  We may some day eliminate the burning of fossil fuels, but it will be lot harder to stop using them to make chemicals like those in plastics that are growing in concentration everywhere, including within our own bodies.  The geopolitical trends are scary.  We appear to be experiencing a redo of the 1930s when fascism arose and tried to control the world.  Fascism is on the rise again, but this time it appears much stronger.  The United States which led us to victory previously now struggles with the rise of fascism in its own country. 

Apparently, there are additional horrible things possible.  Kathryn Schulze tells us in a New Yorker article, What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet, that wind, snow and rain are not the only components of storms that put us at risk.  Now we must worry about solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

Our sun is an ongoing thermonuclear explosion.  It rotates in space and possesses a magnetic field.  Since it is a plasma without a rigid structure, its dynamics can produce unstable concentrations of energy that can initiate the ejection of radiation and plasma charged particles into space, and occasionally toward the Earth.  The world first took notice of such an event in 1859.  It became known as the Carrington Event.

“The first such storm to cause us trouble took place in 1859. In late August, the aurora borealis, which is normally visible only in polar latitudes, made a series of unusual appearances: in Havana, Panama, Rome, New York City. Then, in early September, the aurora returned with such brilliance that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up at night and began making breakfast, and disoriented birds greeted the nonexistent morning.”

“This lovely if perplexing phenomenon had an unwelcome corollary: around the globe, telegraph systems went haywire. Many stopped working entirely, while others sent and received ‘fantastical and unreadable messages,’ as the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin put it. At some telegraph stations, operators found that they could disconnect their batteries and send messages via the ambient current, as if the Earth itself had become an instant-messaging system.”

“Owing to a lucky coincidence, all these anomalies were soon linked to their likely cause. At around noon on September 1st, the British astronomer Richard Carrington was outside sketching a group of sunspots when he saw a burst of light on the surface of the sun: the first known observation of a solar flare. When accounts of the low-latitude auroras started rolling in, along with reports that magnetometers—devices that measure fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field—had surged so high they maxed out their recording capabilities, scientists began to suspect that the strange things happening on Earth were related to the strange thing Carrington had seen on the sun.”

These events occurred at a time when our civilization was not critically susceptible to electromagnetic events imposed on the Earth by the sun.  Subsequent events did occur over time, but none were as large as the Carrington Event.  However, as civilization became more complex, it was recognized that the potential for massive damage was increasing.  Eventually, scientists would put their knowledge in a form that would warn the world what could happen.

“…space weather remained a mostly marginal subject until 2008, when the National Academy of Sciences convened a group of experts to assess the nation’s capacity to endure its terrestrial effects. Later that year, the N.A.S. published a report on the findings, ‘Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts’.”

“The title was dry; the contents were not. The report noted that the Earth hadn’t experienced a Carrington-size storm during the space age, or, for that matter, during the age of widespread electrification, and that much of the country’s critical infrastructure seemed unlikely to withstand one. Extensive damage to satellites would compromise everything from communications to national security, while extensive damage to the power grid would compromise everything: health care, transportation, agriculture, emergency response, water and sanitation, the financial industry, the continuity of government.”

“The report estimated that recovery from a Carrington-class storm could take up to a decade and cost many trillions of dollars.”

That report got peoples’ attention.  Studies were initiated and directives were issued requiring the entities most at risk to prepare to weather a significant solar storm.  Any such preparations are complicated by the interactions of our electromagnetic systems, but progress is undoubtedly being made.  Perhaps an analogy can be drawn with the frequent climate-change predictions dealing with the complex Earth system.  Such modeling predicts what is going to happen, but it was far off in predicting how fast change would come.  One might be suspicious that anyone can predict all the effects of a major solar storm.  One might also be suspicious that anywhere near the money and effort required to protect our technology will be allocated.

Just one more thing to worry about.

 

IVF Could Become a Required Procedure for Human Reproduction

The recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that embryos should be considered human beings caused an uproar across the nation and a rush to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a technique to assist in fertilization.  It is an expensive and time-consuming process, so practitioners usually produce a number of embryos and select the most promising ones for implantation.  This leaves leftover embryos.  If they are considered “persons,” what do you do with them?  This will get resolved in such a way as to allow IVF to continue to be available to those who need it.  It is too beneficial a procedure to be inhibited.  It is also a procedure that could become increasingly required in supporting fertility rates across the world.

In Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Intersex is Rising, Sperm Counts Are Falling, we discussed results of the ever-increasing level of poisons we are producing in our environments.  In particular, the concern was with endocrine-disrupting compounds and their effects on the intersex incidence and the global decrease in male sperm count.  Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are those that are sufficiently similar to human hormones that they can fool the body’s hormone receptors into responding at an inappropriate time or trigger a response altogether inappropriate.  Encountering such chemicals is particularly risky if the occurrence is in the fetal stage where growth and development depend on hormonal surges at the correct time and with the correct intensity.  Body function depends critically on proper hormonal function, making encounters with these disrupting chemicals dangerous.

Endocrine disruptors cannot be avoided.  They have become an integral part of our lifestyle, being produced by plastics, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides, and numerous other products used in our households.  As the production of EDCs has inexorably increased (and continues to increase), sperm count in males across the globe has been falling, along with the quality of the sperm being produced.  Consider these findings from the BBC article How pollution is causing a male fertility crisis.

“In 2022, Levine and his collaborators published a review of global trends in sperm count. It showed that sperm counts fell on average by 1.2% per year between 1973 to 2018, from 104 to 49 million/ml. From the year 2000, this rate of decline accelerated to more than 2.6% per year.”

“Seemingly small changes can have a powerful effect on these highly specialised cells, and especially, their ability to fertilise an egg. The crucial aspects for fertility are their ability to move efficiently (motility), their shape and size (morphology), and how many there are in a given quantity of semen (known as sperm count). They are the aspects that are examined when a man goes for a fertility check.”

“Sperm count, explains Levine, is closely linked to fertility chances. While a higher sperm count does not necessarily mean a higher probability of conception, below the 40 million/ml threshold the probability of conception drops off rapidly.”

At the current rate of decline we are only a few years from this 40 million/ml threshold, and we will accelerate down past it. 

Protect the IVF process and strive to make it cheaper and more efficient.  There may come a time when it will be needed if we wish to propagate the human population.