The Myth of Retraining: Joe and Matilda Fuzzypants

One of the oft-cited "solutions" to the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs is "re-training". It sounds helpful and hopeful. If you can't do "A" anymore, we'll just teach you to do "B" and Bob's your uncle. Unfortunately it is not enough to simply teach someone to do something different. They also must be have ability and desire. I want to tread lightly here. I'm a believer in hard work and self-improvement. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from going back to the drawing board and reinventing themselves. As a re-inventor myself I know it can be rewarding! The problem with many folks however, is the technology curve and the speed of adaptation.

Joe's Saga

To illustrate let's talk about Joe. Joe's coming out of high school with ok grades and he wants to do something to "make good money" so he can feed his video game addiction and marry his cat (don't judge). Joe decides to become a computer programmer. Programming seems like a good choice. He can certainly make a living doing it. Even though Joe has little to no experience with programming, he did take a class in High School. Although he wasn't an "enthusiastic" student, he did eke out a B.

Joe enrolls in the local university as a CS major. Along with everything else Joe learns the basics of programming from three classes in Java. His classes prepare him to build software objects and classes, work with UI's, compile and jar up his code and work with a group. He scrapes by, graduates (Thank God - no more school!), finds a job doing java and marries Matilda Fuzzypants (don't judge).

A few weeks into his job he comes to a startling realization. Only 60 percent of what he learned about Java in school is useful (I'm being generous). His new job consists of "figuring things out", implementing new frameworks, and preparing for the massive changes that are coming with the next version of Java. Far from being done with school he is embroiled in an entirely new learning experience and his job is on the line. He decides programming is too much like being a student, so he and Matilda move back in with Mom and he takes a job at the local Petsmart where his dalliance with a calico is a source of constant domestic tension.

Muse pro-tip: If you are a CS major, by the time you take a job using Java, much of what you have learned will be deprecated (that's how programmers say "useless and out of date").  The next version of Java will be on the horizon. Six months later and you will need to be learning Java 9 (or whatever) in preparation for the upgrade. The next buzz-worthy framework will be peculating through the blogosphere and your manager will ask you "what do you think about retrofitting application A to this new approach?" This is simply what tech jobs are like. In my company we call this the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the time you are working on something and 20 percent you are preparing for the next thing by learning something new.

Lessons Learned

So in the new economy it's not enough to know something - to have been taught a skill. You must also have the aptitude for change. The most important aspect of this aptitude is curiosity. The best employees of my consulting company are those who are learning because they can't help it. They are just naturally interested. The second most important aspect is "speed leaping" - the ability to grasp a new paradigm, metaphor, approach etc. and know without a book or a seminar how to take advantage of it.

I'm not sure anyone can "train" a worker to succeed at high levels in the new economy without these qualities - at least not at wage levels previously provided by manufacturing (although there are certainly exceptions). Workers have to be equipped to quickly grasp and master new technologies on an ongoing basis. New technologies drive changes in software, systems and management processes. The days are gone when mastering 6 or 7 skills was enough to keep a worker employed. Instead, he or she will need to devote some portion of their time to "staying current".

What happens if you are not personally wired to be curious and make mental leaps? What if you don't pick up a new phone or tablet or laptop and intuitively grasp how it works and the ways you could use it? You end up taking a service job.

This Ain't Weimar Germany

For all those hyperbolic folks looking for a toothbrush mustache on the sandy haired emperor of Trump Tower I have a few thoughts. First a disclaimer. Yes, Trump favors "toughness." Yes, he likes strongmen. Yes, he's said nice things about dictators.Yes he has allowed space for racism to fester in his camp. Yes he has bullied his way to the top. But, to paraphrase Roy (Mathew Quigley), "This ain't  Weimar Germany, and Trump ain't Adolf Hitler." Let's all take a breath shall we?

Like most things in his life (his attempt to look wealthy for example) Trump is a caricature that reminds folks of Hitler. The raucous rallies with sycophantic fans, the hyperbole, and the in-your-face approach to the media, combined with racist overtones hint at a dictator in waiting. Fortunately the similarities end at the shallow end of the pool. Here are some important things to keep in mind.

Hitler Co-opted a Failed State

Weimar Germany existed at a time when communism was a powerful force in Europe. Far from being the "default government system", democracy seemed like an experiment with a real downside. The far right wing was a reaction to communist forces and the uncertainty of democracy. The German hard-right wingers were in favor of strong executive power. Many preferred a return to the monarchy. They saw the rising tide of communism using democracy to eventually take over the state. By the late 20s in Germany, a center right coalition insured that the cabinet and president (Hindenburg) ruled the country through emergency powers with little input from the Reichstag (parliament). The military served as stamp of legitimacy on this arrangement. It was a tenuous structure with a small cadre of true players and it teetered and tottered and threatened to collapse annually.

By 1933 (Hitler finally becomes Chancellor) the Republic had suffered 2 attempted coups in the decade plus since WWI. Hitler himself was central in one of the coups in 1923. He served little more than a year as the leader of a plot to overthrow the republic. Let that sink in. The republic was so weak and unpopular that the government and citizens were willing to give coup plotters an "E" for effort and a slap on the wrist as punishment for failure. That's how very weak Weimar was as a government system.

The US on the other hand, has much less structural weakness. Far from having true power concentrated in a few hands, power in the US is diffused through a dizzying array of states, branches, and bureaucracies. There is no conceivable path to "take over" the US government without a military coup. That seems the least likely of all the scenarios to this writer. Hitler exploited structural weakness to become dictator of Germany. No such weakness in US government is evident.

Hitler had Organized Para-Military Forces

The SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Detachment aka the Brown Shirts) were three million strong at the beginning of 1933. They had commanders, hierarchy and rank and file "soldiers". They were armed and functioned as military units. They were frequently used as a force to put pressure on local and state government. In essence, they were Hitler's private police force and he used them effectively to implement his will. The SA served as pending threat of civil war - a sword of Damocles - insuring the NAZI party received accommodation.

Trump forces on the fringe are not organized, nor does Trump have any compulsion to control them. He seems to prefer to ignore them altogether. They don't seem to interest him. In spite of press hyperbole, a DC rally in a Washington hotel where Richard Spencer leads seig heil is not the same as men marching in rank through Jewish sectors of a city and smashing windows, or kidnapping, torturing and killing key community members systematically. One is play-acting, the other is deadly serious. One wonders why the press covered the Spencer side show at all.

Hitler's WAS an Ideologue, Trump is not

Trump has a goal of favoring himself within his office. Hitler had a complex (albeit insane) world view that he preached and acted on constantly. Both were opportunists, but Hitler had folks following his ideology. That ideology included overt acts of violence, war and conquest, the creation by force of an "ethnic German community", and the Führerprinzip - a particularly insidious ideology with dire consequences for Europe and the Jews.

In spite of Trumps flaws (and they are legion) he has little if any of these overriding drives. Hitler's world had him seated on an imperial throne ruling the Aryan west with an iron hand and subjugating all people to his will. Trump's vision has him living out his days in Trump Tower fabulously wealthy and finally able to stick his finger in the eye of the fancy pants NY debutantes who have laughed at him all his life. If he has a vision for America it's provincial and it stops at economics.

Conclusion

Historians hate these sort of "It can happen again" comparisons. Yes, there are things about Trump's rise that are troubling and alarm bells should be ringing. Yes we should work to preserve our institutions and push back against any encroachment - it's a slippery slope. But no, Trump is not Hitler. The US electorate should be saying (again paraphrasing Roy), "I said I didn't have much use for constitutional liberty, I didn't say I didn't know how to use it."

Media - You Keep Using That Word...

The Media is a handy whipping boy. Consider these takes:

• Over Coverage - By over-covering Trump's shenanigans the media provided so much coverage that it engineered a Trump win.

• Imbalance - By over covering Clinton's email scandal and under covering Trump's ugly statements about women and minorities the media was in the tank for Trump.

• Corrupt  - The media was clearly anti-Trump post to post and in the tank for Hillary.  Trump won by pointing it out to the common folk who voted for him, ignoring the them completely.

• False Equivalency - The Media, afraid to call a spade a spade, pitched a false equivalency matching (for example) Trump's financial dealings against the Clinton foundation or Trumps misogyny against Clinton's spouse. The result was pulling Hillary down to Trumps level. 

• Bait and Switch - Trump tweets something outrageous to cover for a different, more complicated story that is emerging. The media takes the bait and the better story is buried while the media pontificates about how Trump is silly and incautious.

Examples abound to support each of these narratives. For example, CNN gave airtime to dozens of trump rallies and events - even events promoting his hotel - resulting in billions of dollars (by some estimates) of free publicity. Yet each of these has contra-examples as well - and all of them suffer from a fatal flaw. They misrepresent or narrowly define "the media" and they fail to present an alternative universe where things might be different. 

The Media - You Keep Using that Word.

The first issue is that the media is not one thing. It's not even a cohesive conglomerate of many things. If you think of media as the way people receive information then twitter itself is a direct conduit from news makers to eyeballs. People get their news from Facebook, Instagram, memes, snap-chat, and a Byzantine array of web sites that may or may not be tied to actual news rooms. It's a giant amalgam of technologies, approaches, print, television and new media.

For cost reasons each outlet has to find a niche to serve - conservative, liberal, center, objective, opinion, advocacy etc. All of this serves to blur the line between news and opinion. Meanwhile news has become so varied and outlets so ubiquitous that people are free to window shop for the news that suites them. They pick their own echo chamber, and that outlet happily caters to them. They know who pays the bills. In a competitive landscape where eyeballs matter you choose a constituency and make them happy. What's the incentive to do otherwise.

There is no Illumedianatti

The second issue is collaboration. There is this notion that the media is collaborating on how coverage is handled. In my view this is ridiculous. Media coverage is market driven. Coupled with free speech it may be the best example of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" you could dream up. The idea that there is some overarching subversive goal that all media is working toward is a conspiratorial fantasy - and it exists in spades on both the right and the left. 

Clearly there is no media grand council, no secret meetings, no "illumedianatti" of Machiavellian editors and journalists who are engineering our society from behind the scenes. Instead there are a lot of dedicated professionals trying to do their jobs with a good number of charlatans mixed in. Yes many outlets put forward a point of view - but that is hardly a secret. Breitbart is right, Huffpo is left, CNN in the middle somewhere (I'll get comments on that I'm sure). If such collaboration exists, it would surely be more coherent than our current goulash of views and insights. 

The real question is, if you care about objectivity, what do you do for news?

The Muse Method

If you want my personal view on how to choose news I would say this:

1. Read print journalism - subscribe to the Washington Post, the NYT, the Wall Street Journal and your local paper. The coverage is more complete and there is more thought and less "hot takes." 
2. Don't believe anything that you really really want to believe. If you hate Trump and see a story that says he was caught in a love nest with a hooker and giant wombat you may really want that to be true. That's a reason to check yourself. When your passion becomes a filter for the news you are in real trouble trying staying objective.
3. Follow many sources from all angles. In my twitter feed  I try to follow lots of people from right, left, center and even la la land. It keeps me from buying anything on credit, and keeps me checking facts.

(Thanks to Zeynep Tufekci - @zeynep - of the NYT for stimulating my thoughts in this area)

The Hamilton Kerfuffle

This week I smelled ozone coming from the internet. When I checked it appeared to be lit up because VP Elect Mike Pence, attending Hamilton the musical, was booed by the audience and then lectured by a cast member. With this kindling almost everyone seemed to have a match at the ready. Trump, sensing an opportunity, tweeted his displeasure and demanded an apology.

So what does it mean for people of color artists to lecture the incoming VP on civility and the importance of diversity. How did Trump use or react to the hubbub?

Trump's Play

One media take that seems to be gaining steam is that Trump once again used his mad media skills to suck all the oxygen out of the media landscape, diverting people from his 25 million dollar settlement in the Trump University class action civil suit. To that the Muse says "meh".

A settlement is an end game for the story - a wrap up. Yes, it looks bad for trump, but not as bad as having the suit hanging around. I don't think the story had legs. Did Trump intentionally leverage the Hamilton kerfuffle to take the wind out of the sails of the Civil suit story? I doubt it. He's not the High Sparrow. He's more of a joffrey - A petulant, inwardly focused neophyte with a shallow, un-nuanced view of the world.

I think the media is constantly giving Trump more Machiavellian credit than he deserves. He is a media savant in that he can find an audience, cater to it, and wield it as leverage. But these are intuitions not over acts of planning and discipline. What happens most often is that he stumbles into tiffs, then plays them well.

It is not the media that determines salience. People want to talk about Hamilton and they don't seem to want to talk about the civil suit - which seems old news. Trump, better than those who decry the oxygen sucking ploy, seems to know how people respond better than much of the media. Social media plays the role of alternative platform. The result, hard core, nuanced stories are left out in the cold while everyone is in a tizzy over Hamilton.

The Hamilton Kerfuffle

This week I smelled ozone coming from the internet. When I checked it appeared to be lit up because VP Elect Mike Pence, attending Hamilton the musical, was booed by the audience and then lectured by a cast member. With this kindling almost everyone seemed to have a match at the ready. Trump, sensing an opportunity, tweeted his displeasure and demanded an apology.

So what does it mean for people of color artists to lecture the incoming VP on civility and the importance of diversity. How did Trump use or react to the hubbub?

Trump's Play

One media take that seems to be gaining steam is that Trump once again used his mad media skills to suck all the oxygen out of the media landscape, diverting people from his 25 million dollar settlement in the Trump University class action civil suite. To that the Muse says "meh".

A settlement is an end game for the story - a wrap up. Yes, it looks bad for trump, but not as bad as having the suite hanging around. I don't think the story had legs. Did Trump intentionally leverage the Hamilton kerfuffle to take the wind out of the sails of the Civil suite story? I doubt it. He's not the High Sparrow. He's more of a joffrey - A petulant, inwardly focused neophyte with a shallow, un-nuanced view of the world.

I think the media is constantly giving Trump more Machiavellian credit than he deserves. He is a media savant in that he can find an audience, cater to it, and wield it as leverage. But these are intuitions not over acts of planning and discipline. What happens most often is that he stumbles into tiffs, then plays them well.

It is not the media that determines salience. People want to talk about Hamilton and they don't seem to want to talk about the civil suite - which seems old news. Trump, better than those who decry the oxygen sucking ploy, seems to know how people respond better than much of the media. Social media plays the role of alternative platform. The result, hard core, nuanced stories are left out in the cold while everyone is in a tizzy over Hamilton.

The Internet is the Work of Gnomes

I am continually gobsmacked that politicians are tech-clueless. The world of IT might as well be French Cuisine or the Navajo language for all they appear to know (my apologies to the Navajo - the French are on their own). 

There's no better illustration than the the former Secretary of State (a demonstrably smart and detailed person) choosing to run a private email server in her house -- something to cause the most laissez faire IT professional to recoil in horror. In its current state of understanding the Hill has "virtually" no chance of solving any problem in IT (see this Wired article). Why is our government so stubbornly Luddite when dealing with IT?

Newsflash Senator Doe, your "social media director" is not a technology expert. Tech isn't "what the kids are doing these days". I started making a list of "important IT concepts for legislatures, but let's start with just one - the The ISO Network stack. If I get some positive responses I'll add to this thread and create a series of posts. First the techy stuff:

ISO Networking Stack

The ISO stack is an network model that helps troubleshooters like the Muse think through problems in layers of services or technologies. It helps techs get our arms around the "Big Picture". I won't explain it in detail here - read the Wikipedia article for a full description - but let's talk about why it's important.

Most computer programmers do not actually program "computers" (CPUs). The actual CPU code is  so low level that it consists mostly of instructions to open and shuts little gates in address registers. Instead, most programmers program against a service layer which in turn depends on another service layer and so on. 

Here's an example to keep your eyes from glazing over. Consider a simple task like tweeting. The Muse types "Trump is a Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins" into Tweetdeck and clicks "send". 

Tweetdeck: Yo Chrome, I gotta message here to send to Twitter. My guy thinks he's got an opinion someone cares about - heh. (For some reason my Tweetdeck sounds like Di Niro's Al Capone).

Chrome: Got it Tweetdeck, I'll transpose it into the right format and get it sent down to transport. Hey transport, pretentious Mr. "Muse" thinks he needs to grace the world with his thoughts on twitter again. Here you go.

Transport: Okey dokey, let me fire up the old segment packager and box it up. Hey NIC I gotta another clever tweetery thingy from Mr. smarty pants.   (Transport sounds like Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction - shows how old I am).

NIC: Sending out packets. Confirming acknowledgement, Message sent and received.  (NIC is at the physical layer. He doesn't have much programming - just a driver - so his personality suffers). 

Of course I've left out many other things that have to happen. Notice that a Tweetdeck programmer didn't have to inform his program of how to segment his message, transcribe it into packets or guarantee it's delivery. He knows one or two things and he "hands off" the process to modules written by other programmers who also know one or two things - but none of them know everything.

This is the entire tech universe. Very few people "get" how the whole stack is intertwined - and no one understands very much. I have 30 developers -engineers working for me but there are only a few that get this "big picture" idea. The rest are "specialist". They can write complex stock option charts in Java or create OLAP cubes for data research, but they are happily stuck specializing at the level they understand. 

So what? Why does this matter? 

No one -- not Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates or Steve Job's ghost -- understands what is actually "there" when we talk about the internet. Even God probably has to consult some ginormous user manual. The net is not some planned city of carefully crafted pieces that fit together. There are dozens of avenues to do any one thing and dozens of ways to circumvent controls that are implemented.

It is as if a crew of gnomes worked independently creating cool things. Instead of showing their work the gnomes exposed only how to use them to each other. Eventually, they all began to use each other's cool things and some larger, cooler thing emerged. Before long they were dependent on the larger, cooler thing to create other cooler things and so on. It is not intelligent design. It's not even innovation writ large. It is evolution and natural selection. 

Understanding this idea is the genesis for common sense solutions. Specific legislation that addresses narrowly specific problems will be obsolete a week after it is signed. There are too many ways to do everything and waaay too many gnomes.

Meanwhile, when it comes to finding broad principles to use we seem to atrophy. What we need is legislatures who see the big picture and are able to work in a non-ideological way toward broad common goals at the same speed as the advancing technology. Also, we need unicorns in the National Zoo.

Post Election Civil Unrest... Meh

Will we have riots and revolution on November 9th? Not to spoil the ending, but the Muse doubts it. Trump's pledge to "wait and see" before honoring the results of the election is an empty threat. It is increasingly clear that, while his handlers cannot control him, he is not the head of some powerful "movement". True, he has brought to light some of our worse fears and least savory undercurrents as a nation - but on November 9th I expect the adults to pick up the mantle and begin to deal with those issues in a serious manner.

Donald, meanwhile, will find ways to keep his "movement" afloat so that he can attempt, over the course of whatever years he has left on this earth, to wreak revenge on those who betrayed him. If this does not sound familiar to you, let me recommend the movie "Downfall". Why am I so sanguine about the possibility of violence? Two words - historical perspective.

In our haste to remember the 60s fondly we often forget the unrest that accompanied our last cultural upheaval. Here's a quote from a times blog article, "1969, a Year of Bombings":

"The hearing, part of an investigation led Senator John L. McClellan, Democrat of Arkansas, concluded that from January 1969 to April 1970, the United States sustained 4,330 bombings — 3,355 of them incendiary, 975 explosive — resulting in 43 deaths and $21.8 million in property damage."

That's right - the US experienced 4300 plus bombings including 975 explosive bombings (as opposed to fire bombings) in a 15 month span. Detroit riots in '67 saw 43 dead and 1100 injured. Newark NJ riots of the same period left 26 dead. In contrast, protest riots over Freddy Grays death in Baltimore were short lived and resulted in zero fatalities. There were none killed in Ferguson protests riots.

Certainly we have had fatalities and violence in the last 2 years. Police violence continues to be a problem in some jurisdictions. Issues of justice are at the top of the agenda in minority communities who suffer an undue burden from unequal treatment. That's the Muse view born out by many studies and a great deal of evidence I find compelling. Five policemen were shot in Dallas and the gunmen himself killed. The horror show of the pulse nightclub illustrates the danger of terrorism, lone gunmen and virulent bigotry.

Such shootings and protests all have a political taint to them of course - but none of them are really central to this campaign. There is no equivalent to the Weathermen or the Black Panthers working overtly to bring down our government by violent means. If you think the circus of WWE fans at Trump rallies yelling the F word and breaking out in fisticuffs amounts to the same thing as the bloody confrontations of the 1968 democratic convention, you need to watch the footage of that event to see what real unrest looks like.

So I'm not on pins and needles worried about alt-right rioters in the streets. I'm sure there will be some (hopefully casualty free) side shows of men playing soldier in the South and West. But overall I still expect a peaceful transition of power. But I will say that it does suck that I have to come out and say that.

Trump's Problem with Hillary is Her Age and Looks

Last night Trump once again proved he has not idea what America is or what it represents. When asked by Chris Wallace if he would support the results of the coming election regardless of the outcome (i.e. if he loses) he answered, "I will look at it at the time."  If you accept the rhetoric coming from the Trump camp about a rigged election, Trump is saying this because he believes he's being cheated by the process if he loses.  Yet in spite of his stream-of-consciousness speaking style and spitball policy pronouncements Trump is not a stupid man. He doesn't believe even half of his own talking points. He is a man with enormous talent and enormous blind spots. Here are two of them.

Women, Can't Live With 'em.

Donald has a problem with women. I don't mean women voters - I mean he has issues dealing personally with women. His Porky's-come-Manhattan urge to use and dominate women is only one facet of a genuine psychological fear and loathing of the opposite sex. If there was ever a candidate that could relate to Norman Bates, this is the one. 

His philandering is not of the garden variety. He careens from desiring women as sexual objects or possessions to loathing them as disgusting (a favorite word) and nasty (his new adjective for Sec. Clinton). When Trump says a woman is ugly he seems to think that judgement is a final nail in the coffin - a way to write her off as worthless. He has no idea it only really says something terrible about him. 

I believe that Donald simply can't believe he's losing to woman - especially this woman. Hillary has plenty of negatives, but I'm betting it's her age and looks that push him over the edge. It drives him crazy. Every poll showing Hillarymentum stokes his loathing for that "nasty woman." I'm surprised he hasn't said "nasty old woman" by now. The Muse has no proof for any of this - but notice how his reaction to women who oppose him is visceral, unhinged, and rooted in base emotions like disgust. It is not within the continuum that we usually think of as normal - even for politicians. If the democratic candidate was a man I suspect he would be much less emotional his second place finish.

A New Hope

If it worries you that Trump will somehow parlay his pathology into a revolution I would say take heart. I think a revolution takes a ground game, ideology, planning and execution. These are not really in his bag of tricks. Meanwhile, Trump surrogates, campaign officials and GOP leaders are all saying that Trump should and will accept the results of the election. It's hard to see how he starts a movement out of that goulash. Starting a TV network based on resentment and conspiracy theories may be well within reach however. 

Most Humorless Candidates Ever

Donald Trump telling a joke:

"A horse walked into a bar... I owned a horse, a fantastic horse, a thoroughbred. This horse, not my awesome beautiful horse but some other horse.. sit's down and the bartender... I have many bars in my fantastic hotels... top shelf ... you should see them.. many people say they are the best bars... the bartender says 'why the long face' ... I have the best face. I've been on many many magazine covers... I'm very photogenic."

What does Trump think is funny? Based on debate transcripts which the muse has painstakingly reviewed, the following is full recounting of where either candidate attempted to use humor to lighten the mood, make a point or engage with the audience. 

...

...

...

...

Seriously - that's it. 

Have we ever had two more humorless candidates? Donald "thinks" he makes jokes, but mostly they are just outrageous statements. Famously, Trump suggested that "Second amendment people" might be able to do something about Hillary - a seemingly veiled reference to assassination. His campaign manager declared it was a joke a day later. When Trump called out Clinton and Obama as the "founder of ISIS," he subsequently excoriated the media for not be able to recognize sarcasm. Saying outrageously untrue or provocative things is not a joke - and almost never funny.

Clinton can deliver a joke - but not terribly well. When she had a coughing attack and was advised to not talk for a day or two she laughed about it telling reporters it wouldn't happen. Self-deprecating and mildly amusing. She joked about Pokemon Go - saying she wanted to create "Pokemon go to the polls."  But examples are pretty slim. 

In a debate being able to elicit a laugh at your own expense is a crucial and endearing quality. Reagan's most memorable debate line - I will not make an issue of my opponents youth and inexperience - was a poke at his own age. Neither Clinton nor Trump seem able to spontaneously "quip" with audience members, moderators, or each other. It's one of the things that makes the debates difficult to watch.

So the Muse is looking for a third debate devoid of humor. I suppose I'll do what I usually do, make jokes on twitter and laugh at myself. :)

Why Doesn't the Main Stream Media Cover....

I'm a fan of Julie Mason and her excellent show "The Press Pool" on Sirius/XM's POTUS channel. Almost everyday she receives tweets or calls from listeners that go like this:

• Why isn't the main stream media (MSM) talking about Hillary's emails?

• Why isn't the MSM talking about Trumps Taxes?

• Why isn't the MSM talking about Hillary's health?

• Why isn't the MSM covering Trump's bankruptcies? 

Ms. Mason's response is typically a radio version of the eye roll followed by the question, "How did you hear about it?" Of course the MSM (however you define it) covers all of the above. How do listeners who are obviously engaged in the political discussion (they are listening to POTUS just like the Muse after all) come to believe that something is not being covered? What they are really saying is, "The coverage doesn't match what I perceive as the truth." The emphasis is wrong! It's really a struggle with internal dissonance.

As voters we come to believe the world is like us - or that it would be like us if only everyone saw the truth. This, more than any other thing, is the bane of modern politics. If you are a conservative with liberal friends, stop believing they will "understand if they ever get their head out of the clouds." If you are a liberal, quit saying of your conservative friends, "If they just picked up a book once in a while..." 

The truth is the gulf between us isn't a matter of education or a dearth of common sense. We have simply forgotten that those around us may see the world quite differently from us. We have been trying very hard to persuade people over to our world view - to get them to wear our prescription glasses instead of their own. I believe that's a fool's errand. Our task, should we choose to pick up the mantle and stop sniping at each other, is to put our shoulder to the same wheel and find middle ground. We need the politics of the possible.

What Then Shall We Do?

If you are dismayed by the level of vitriol coming from the Trump campaign, you might be tempted to throw his followers into the now infamous basket of deplorables. I suggest you consider what you intend to do. 

After the election these millions of people will still be with us. We aren't going to deport them or jail them. They are exercising their constitutional rights in proclaiming these values. Do we choose to create a permanent ideological underclass or do we encourage these folks to pay heed to the better angels of their nature? Do we make room for them at the table again? 

I'm not advocating that we give in to demands and ban Muslims, build a wall and put women's rights back to the 50s. I think these are expressions that come from the top and I find them reprehensible. But such crude and simple policies are not the only expressions. Conservatives have been responsible for much that is good in our society. Conservatism serves as break on change. That's sometimes bad, but often good. Revolution is painful and often hurts more people than it helps. The tension between left and right keeps us flexible and growing but also stable and thoughtful. There should be room for both. 

Book Recommendation

Finally, let me recommend that you pick up Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. Read the chapters that cover the events from 1968 to 1970. You will quickly realize that America has been here before and survived. As a student of history I never good too riled up - perspective helps! 

The Biggest Loser: the Concept of Evangelical Leadership

The unrepentant Trumpzilla continues to destroy Tokyo while his surrogates assure the faithful that the city was condemned already and that it is only minor remodeling. Meanwhile, Ben Carson, (Bless his heart!) is doing his best to defend Donald Trump's behavior. Ralph Reed put up a spirited defense of Trump on NPR after the Access Hollywood revelations. Jerry Falwell Jr. is actually stumping for Trump - parroting trumps talking points that his accusers are lying. Across the board Men (always men!) thought of as leaders of the Evangelical movement are sticking with Trump. Even "Focus on the Family's" James Dobson is sticking with Trump (come on Jim - you know better). 

As an Evangelical in the center who thinks Trump is an megalomaniac dictator wannabe, you might think I'm discouraged by this apparent Faustian bargain. Let me reassure you that Chicken Little is not in the Muse nature. Instead I say "meh". Let me explain:

Evangelical Leadership is a Misnomer

We do not think of Anderson Cooper or Megan Kelly as "main stream media leadership", but we do make that mistake with these Evangelical leaders. Instead of casting James Dobson as a popular radio host, we sometimes think of him as the head of something - a person with legions of loyal followers. But Evangelicals are not particularly loyal. They are a fuzzy mass of (often contradictory) doctrines, beliefs, and cultural preferences described with a jargony lexicon of tired phrases. Indeed, they are simply not what the media thinks they are. 

I attend a church of 3000 in Omaha NE. I would wager that about 20% of the people in my church know they are "Evangelical". It's not stated from the pulpit and it's not in our literature. Attending an Evangelical church does not make you subject to the whims of some guy with a TV ministry. In most cases you can disagree with the church you attend on many points and still be an accepted participant in service activities. If you attend a modern mega-church and you are a low information voter, you may not be equipped to answer the questions on a survey that would put you on the Evangelical tab. More to the point, just like the political parties in this country, only an small sample of parishioners are so heavily engaged in church culture that they can list "Evangelical leaders." Average attenders are more likely to list their favorite Pop-theology author or their own preaching pastor.  

Badges? We Don' Need no Stinkin' Badges!

Leadership implies a certain base loyalty. Jame's Dobson is a good example. He has been around long enough to acrue a large base of listeners and readers. He has influence with them and some of them are doubtless swayed to vote for Trump. But the majority of Evangelicals will feel free to simply ignore him if he strays beyond the pale. For Muse readers who want to cite polls to me, take note that this is a process that happens slowly among Evangelicals -- more slowly than an election cycle. If enough people ignore him, his celebrity dissipates and he goes away as an influencer. Dobson's "leadership" is dependent upon his popularity and ability to draw a crowd. 

This flexibility is the beauty and the curse of evangelicalism. It's the part that puzzles those from traditions with popes and bishops. With no large hierarchy and no "general will" you choose the church that suits you. The dizzying array of stylistic choices of church rivals a gay pride parade. Of course this ability to shop your faith leads to all kinds of sorting and false consensus - but it also means that Evangelicals are pretty innovative and flexible with regard to who they think of as "leaders". Meanwhile, leaders currently going down with the Trumptanic have an opportunity in a year or so for a redemption narrative and a book on how terribly deceived they were. 

So if you are an Evangelical take heart! Jim and Tammy Baker didn't "destroy" the movement in 1987/88. Droves of Pentecostals didn't say to themselves, "Now that Jimmy Swaggart is a lech I'm going to worship Cthulhu." It turns out that their influence and leadership in both cases was simply a chimera. Instead, like choosing not to watch season 8 of "24" they simply put down the DVD and listened to new voices. 

If you lived through those days in the late 80s as I did -- being both an Assembly of God pastor and a pastor's son at the time (I'm still a pastor's son) -- you would have heard all sorts of yammering about the demise of the church. Yes Muse readers, Evangelicals call the "Evangelical church"  simply "the church" - just like to Chinese people, Chinese food is just "food". But the church survived and even thrived. So take heart my Evangelical friend. Jesus still loves you and loves the world. He even loves Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump IS who we THOUGHT he was

With all due respect to those who are suddenly coming to the realization that Donald Trump is a sexist pig who's mind is permanently locked in a towel snapping high school locker room, I give you Dennis Green infamous tirade about the Chicago bears. Green said, "They are who we thought they were. If you want to crown them, then go ahead and crown their A**."   

In case you missed it, the Washingington Post released this video and story titled, Donald's Trump's Woman problem just got much, much, much worse. The 2005 video is a casual conversation between a married DJT and Billy Bush where he brags about trying to have sex with a woman who turned him down, riffs about big breasts and grabbing a woman's P***, and takes a breath mint in case he gets to do any kissing. Honestly the Muse feels a bit dirty just describing it to my readers.

Why is this News?

The Muse question is this - why is anyone (anyone!) surprised at this behavior? This is the Donald Trump we all know - he is who we thought he was. He's a perennial guest on the Howard Stern show (and indictment in my view), a serial adulterer and a man who's objectification of women is obvious based on his own words and choices on the presidential campaign trail. Why anyone would think he is not trying to leap into bed with every woman he meets is beyond me. Such men belong at the strip club stuffing dollar bills into the G-strings of women who can clearly do better. 

TRUMP'eting Predictions.

Pundit predictions about the presidential race have been dismal. The Muse has not been any better. I predicted Bernie Sanders would give Hillary more of a run for her money. I predicted Trump would fade on at least 3 occasions (in writing). Little more than a month ago I was waxing eloquent at the dinner table that, "The GOP will not allow Trump to be the nominee." 

Of course I was in good company. Very few of the 500 or so journalists, political scientists and pundits I follow on Twitter were clued into Trump's maddening resiliency. It didn't matter if they were PhD's from Tuft's Fletcher school or local reporters from Iowa or New Hampshire. Almost no one saw it coming. Now we are facing the GOPocolypse with a 70% (and rising) chance of Trump as the GOP nominee. 

It's not just his shoot from the hip misogyny and racism, or his constant refrain that things "disgust" him. He a neophyte with little clue how government functions. To be sure he's hired lobbyist to hit up government on behalf of his interests, but that's just a citizen looking for help writ large. On foreign policy he's clearly out of his depth. He isn't all that familiar with the world map. He admires raw strength over moral strength. He wants to put us on an "equal basis" with Isis by torturing and murdering them the way they do to their victims. His trade policy would lead us out of the world market -- where our economic power makes us the main player on the world stage.

That Trumptastic Appeal

So why is he winning? What is it about him that people find so compelling? There's not a clear answer, but people often say they want to "shake things up" in Washington. Here's the Muse version. No group of people are more despised than Washington politicians. They stand for office on the same rhetoric year after year. They pander to interests and then say they "want to get things done in Washington." Yet progress is non-existent. People feel deceived because they vote for a change and get the same old same old. It's a huge carny show and people feel like they are the marks. With apologies to Senator Sanders, the game is rigged.

Enter Donald Trump -- a man so devoid of self-awareness he proclaims his chief consultant is himself because he, "has a really good brain." He waffles from one position to another like a creaky weather vane. He says silly, stupid things about torture, immigrants, violence and foreign policy – all with a wink and a nod. He gets away with it. His constituents eat it up. How is this working?

I believe his followers see him as amoral free agent. Trump is telling the truth about lying. He is saying, "I don't really care about character, policy, ideology or whatever. I will say whatever is needed and do whatever it takes to win." If that means pandering to white resentment and overt racism, so be it. That's just the cost of doing business. He's an honest panderer and people (his people anyway) seem to respond positively to that. He'll go to Washington and be a carny there. It's the Washington politicians who will be the marks this time. This is his promise -- his only real promise. This is what he means by "making America great again." He'll run riot through the halls of government. He'll burn the house down to save it. In this respect he seems authentic. And authenticity is selling this year ladies and gentlemen.

In some ways I applaud the sentiment and abhor the message. But even with backhanded admiration, Trump has practically no hope of succeeding. It's not enough to be a say-anything rabble rouser. Even if he wins against an admittedly weak candidate in Secretary Clinton, the president simply doesn't have the power Mr. Trump seems to think he has. The president's power resides in his influence -- his ability to project ideas and vision. There is almost nothing within the power of the president that cannot be checked by another branch of government. And even within the executive branch there are forces embedded within the huge, unwieldy, byzantine fortress that is the federal bureaucracy that are perfectly capable of putting the president on the slow burn.

Conclusion

Muse prediction: Trump will indeed win the GOP nomination and face Hillary Clinton in the general election. He will be defeated, but not "soundly" as the Democrats seems to believe. It will be a near thing. Why? Because his message resonates. In the end I believe she will win with 49 or 50 percent of the popular vote - eeking out a win in the Electoral College. Trump's showing will be (according the pundits) surprising, worrying, and "game-changing." After that who knows? It could serve as a wake-up call to both parties to come back from the brink. Let's hope so.

Presidential Power and Impotence

Why would anyone want the presidency? It's a puzzling question to us non-politicians. No matter who wins, half the people despise you. When you make a statement (any statement) twitter blows up with ridiculous hyperbolic praise on one side and vile recrimination on the other. If you try to make the compromises that are necessary to be the president for "all the people," you end up with just vile recrimination from both sides. The Muse is just thankful that there are at least some reasonable people willing to go through the crucible of an election campaign to take the job. And the folks who work on the campaign and (eventually) in the white house give up their families and their schedule to the unyielding and relentless pace of the executive branch - kudos to them! More to the point, and in spite of all the chicken-little journalist buck-buck-bucking about a possible Trump presidency, the president isn't all that powerful. Every president ages prematurely because he feels helpless in the face of intractable issues.

The Executive Branch

Don't get me wrong, the president does have influence. He appoints top bureaucrats, negotiates with foreign powers and since Wilson, he has set a policy agenda -- if he's collegial enough with congress. But that power is a chimera. Bureaucracies may be headed by presidential appointees, but they are staffed by folks who are just like the rest of us; cauldrons of different views and opinions. Sure he can dictate policy, but as anyone who works in business can tell you there is the way things are demanded from the top and then there is the way the machine actually operates. Buy-in is essential to turning an unwieldy bureaucracy. The attempted reforms of the FBI and CIA show how hard it is to reshape anything that large from the top. Foreign treaties are great and all, but congress has to ratify them and legislation is often required to implement them. Not to mention a bad treaty diminishes the president's power considerably (as the Iran treaty seems poised to do as we speak). As for a policy agenda, it typically requires parties willing to compromise on both sides of the isle - something increasingly unlikely in the current climate.

Yet it's worth remembering the genius of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Jay et al. They intentionally structured a government with power devolved into three branches. A truly awful president who tried to implement wacky ideas would find himself impotent. I don't mean things like the recent executive action on climate policy or gun control. These items seem like over-reach to U.S. legislators jealous of their own power (as well they might be), but the distance between policy positions in the U.S. is actually quite narrow. Indeed, EU legislators are prone to wonder what the fuss is all about. Meanwhile, each branch needs the other to perform its function. Yes the president can and does make a difference. Depending on your point of view Obama's executive actions are a crass over-reach or the "about-time" actions of a man stymied by a do-nothing congress. Either way they are an example of how the branches stretch and reach to find their boundaries and accomplish their goals. The congress, wielding its own power, can find ways to block and hinder while the judiciary will rule on their constitutionality. The power dance is nothing new. It's true the executive branch has become more active and powerful since FDR. But it's also true that true policy action in any radical direction can be effectively arrested due to the structure of the U.S. government. This layered and nebulous power structure has been both denigrated and lauded at various times in our history. It definitely works to avoid concentration of power (probably a good thing) but it stands in the way of efficiency and effective policy at other times (usually a bad thing).

The GOP Angst

Which brings us to the GOP and their spate of nominees. By most accounts the front runner is a crass neophyte with a pandering, populist message that appeals to the basest instincts of the disaffected majority (that's the best sentence in this piece). The second and third front runners (Cruz and Rubio) are farther right than is typical, but they look moderate in comparison to the Donald - moderate in terms of rhetoric at any rate. Meanwhile the "establishment" candidates (Jeb, Christie and Kasich) seem rudderless - unable to compete for the reality TV spotlight that has become the GOP campaign. GOP insiders are anxiously wringing their hands while the left is rubbing theirs together like Dr. Frankenstein (or ..stein) during a thunderstorm. What is happening to the vaunted GOP?

To which I say meh... The Grand Old Party controls more than 55% of all state congress seats and governorships. They control the federal legislature (house and senate) and, thanks to Bush era appointees, the Supreme Court has a conservative bent. The GOP is hardly doing poorly. In fact on some measures they are decidedly winning. One might wonder why the Democrats are so smug. Hillary is an accomplished woman with good credentials. She would probably be an outstanding president - but she has feet of clay and an albatross husband. And the alternative to her is... Bernie Sanders? I have nothing against Bernie, but his populism and demographic problems make him an immediate also ran. So how is it the Democrats they think things are so going so spankingly? Should the GOP lose the presidency (and Hillary will be a tough as nails opponent there's no doubt about that), they will still likely be in control of two thirds of the reigns of federal government and most of the states. So buck up GOP - Trumps a loony populist yes, but you do have a few other fish in the pan. Meanwhile Democrats - it might behoove you (as my Dad use to say at the dinner table) to think about something other than the presidency in 2016.