http://www.confrontingmediocrity.com
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.
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.”
A date certain February 19, 2017 will provide an early indication that will tell us if Trump has a chance of actually delivering on his campaign promises, or if he became president by pandering to a segment of the electorate desperate for simple solutions to complex problems. On February 19, Trump will have been in office for … More February 19, 2017 – Holding President Trump Accountable for “soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.”
Americans really did it. An angry majority of voters has launched us on a grand experiment called the Trump presidency. The country has elected a person who has no experience governing and who offered one-line slogans in lieu of reasoned policies. The vision of America he espoused was one rooted in testosterone-laden tribalism. It’s a … More A snap of his fingers – President Trump
I recently returned to the home I had left 14 years ago. When I left, I was a runner, and when I returned I was a walker. The knee surgery removed my daily pain, but at the cost of having to give up running – an exchange I’d gladly do again. Today, when I walked my old running route I … More The Paths and Tracks of Our Lives
Many surveys have shown that Americans are decidedly unaware of basic civics. As one example, a 2014 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only 36% of respondents could name the three branches of the United States government.[1] With that level of knowledge as a foundation, I have come to ignore (mostly) people’s … More Trump, Rubio, and Carson proudly display their confusion about the First Amendment
I like Bernie. I really do, and I like his populist socioeconomic message. It is hard for me to disagree with how he’s characterized the evolution of wealth distribution and its associated short-term and long-term consequences. It’s a huge problem that must be addressed to stabilize society. But I wouldn’t choose him over Hillary Clinton … More For progressives, does not supporting Bernie mean you’ve sold out?
Maybe it’s that almost every day in Southwest Florida is a slow news day, or maybe it’s that the quest for ratings drive the selection of stories that are covered, but it seems like there is an unusual fascination with reporting on the purported problem of “stranger danger.” After seeing yet another such stereotypical report … More We all lose when the news media reinforces the irrational fear of “stranger danger”
The peculiar nature of the campaign for the 2016 presidential election has provided political pundits an oversupply of fodder for their analyses. A prevailing assessment seems to be that Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina are achieving at least transitory success in the polls not because of any great depth of their policy discussions, … More The 2016 presidential race as viewed through a Dunning-Kruger lens
I am convinced that one of the limiting factors of the human species is our inability to understand cataclysmic events that are occurring because they develop at a rate that is outside our ability to emotionally comprehend. And, as humans, if something can’t be understood at an emotional level, then it is unlikely to receive … More Obliviousness to global catastrophes- if we can’t feel it, it simply doesn’t exist.
Confronting Mediocrity 