Confronting Mediocrity

Ever since Trump’s implausible victory, experts have been scrambling to explain the ties that created his winning coalition. For all practical purposes, American presidential elections are binary – pitting one Republican nominee against a Democrat nominee. It sounds simple enough. Members of each party elect delegates that choose a candidate to represent them and a … More Understanding the Trump victory: “It’s the amygdala, stupid.”

I know I’m a little late to this game, but I recently read Seneca’s essay, On the Shortness of Life, and was struck by how his message continues to be as relevant today as it was when he wrote it nearly 2,000 years ago (AD 49). Unfortunately, in all those years it seems most of … More When ambition and avarice distract from living a life

I believe there is value in trying to understand how a person has a different position than yours, but try as I can, I have been unable to understand the diversity of Trump’s base and their zealous commitment to him. I have tried to understand the thought process that brings them to believe in things … More A failure of Janusian thinking – I simply do not understand the thinking of a Trump voter.

I must confess that I’m growing weary of hearing Trump’s critics expressing their incredulity at his actions. The refrain from this group is that Trump’s actions are irrational and are almost always at odds with the facts. I couldn’t agree more, but at some point, it’s important to understand that no amount of fact checking … More How to understand Trump and his base? Begin by dismissing facts as neither absolute nor relevant.

I don’t think I’ve ever done more than a single posting in a day, but today will be an exception. This morning, I opined about how fear and emotion instead of logic and reason persuaded enough voters to give us a president elect Trump. I blamed the amygdala.[1] A key point of that post was … More Dear President Obama – Thank you for those long answers.