Becoming a President Not Intelligence Proof of Is

I first learned about the very existence of Mango Mussolini when he decided to run for the office of POTUS at the end of Obama’s second term. Until that time, I had no idea who he was or that he existed at all. Although I had read Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal several times at that time. It took a while, but I did eventually realize that Reacher Gilt is his parody, albeit with one difference – Reacher is intelligent and well informed, albeit ruthless and manipulative.

Trump has none of Reacher’s good qualities, only the bad ones.

I listened to some of his speeches at the beginning of his political career, and frankly, I was appalled at their quality, or more precisely, their lack thereof. From the very beginning, he demonstrated profound ignorance about history, current politics, law, economics, and indeed about how the world works in general. I became very quickly convinced that he is an idiot, and the only reason why he is neither in jail nor without a penny to his name is that he was born to riches and that has always shielded him from the most egregious negative consequences of his actions.

But although I was unimpressed with the content of his speeches from the very start, he was at least speaking coherently and staying on topic back then. It went downhill from that time on; his speeches deteriorated both in quality with regard to content, as well as regarding the execution. Nowadays, he trips over words, is unable to follow a coherent thought to the end, and rehashes old grievances all the time, all signs of dementia.

So IMO, he was always a fool, and now he is a demented fool. Yet he won the presidency twice, and just barely lost once. And to this day, many people keep saying that this is proof that he is neither demented nor a fool, but actually intelligent and a masterful manipulator. I disagree for several reasons.

Mainly, he did not actually have to manipulate the American public to vote for him. A sizable portion of said public was always racist, bigoted, ignorant, and resentful, and these “qualities” were nurtured and elevated as virtues by the USA right-wing pseudonews apparatus for decades prior to his entering the political arena. A self-feeding loop was thus created just prior to 9/11, and it has fed on itself ever since, culminating in the rise of the Tangerine Tyrant. He was at the exact cross of a crass, boorish, racist, ignorant, and resentful asshole and a dude whose riches served as an easy-to-understand shorthand for competence for the voter base to look up to. Because actual competence requires effort to recognize.

He was just lucky to be the exact guy that the already pre-manipulated masses of hateful peabrained bigots wanted. He did not win their vote because he was intelligent; he won it because he fit the mold of hate that was formed in their minds through decades of propaganda.

That he became president is not proof of his intelligence, knowledge, or competence. It is proof of a profound lack of all those qualities in the American public.

I Got My Voter ID Today…

… and I honestly do not know how many times I have had to renew it since I was 15, when I got it first.

WTF am I babbling about?

Well, I am not a US citizen, and the ID is not exactly a voter ID; it is just that, as I was picking up my government-issued piece of plastic with my picture on it today, it reminded me again of the voter ID controversy that has been brewing in the USA over the last decade or so. A controversy that was completely incomprehensible to my european mind at first, and still is, to be honest.

When an average European who is not overly informed about the minutiae of US politics hears that laws are being proposed in some states in the USA to require voters to provide picture ID when casting a vote, in all probability their first reaction will be profound befuddlement. “What? They do NOT have such requirements already? And why would anybody oppose such laws?” And the more said European learns about the voting systems in the USA, the more said befuddlement will probably grow, until they throw their hands up in the air and say something along the lines, “The US so called “Democracy” is completely idiotic, undemocratic, and the voting laws and systems make no sense whatsoever”. That was my reaction, and it was also the reaction of at least two of my friends. I admit that a sample of three is not particularly representative, but a plural of anecdotes is still data (it is just not conclusive data).

Here is how the system works in CZ, which, AFAIK, is relatively representative of how things work in EU countries:

At 15 years of age, every citizen is required by law to apply for a citizen’s ID at a local district office. There, they will be issued a picture ID, free of charge, that is valid for a fixed period (said period gets longer with each iteration). When the ID is close to its expiration, the citizen is then required to apply for a new one, and they are officially reminded of that requirement. As long as they do so within a reasonable time period, it is renewed free of charge. The only time a fee is charged is when someone loses their ID and needs to apply for a new one outside of the regular renewal period. The fees are high enough that people do not want to pay them frivolously, but not so big as to punish someone for having their wallet stolen – 8-40€, depending on how fast one wants to have a new ID issued.

Registering for voting is nonexistent, or to be more precise, it is automatic. By applying for an ID, one confirms their formal residence and citizen status. Whenever a vote is due, local, state, or EU-wide, voting ballots are delivered by post to said residence in advance, so everyone can read them and decide at their leisure.

Voting lasts two days – Friday and Saturday – so everyone who wants can cast their vote no matter what work they do and what shift they are assigned. People with mobility issues can request to have their vote collected at their residence. There is a system for voting by mail, but I never looked into it since I did not need it.

When casting the vote at the county office, every person shows their picture ID, and a clerk checks their name and address against a list. If someone forgets to bring their ballots from home, they can get a new set at the office. Then they go to a voting booth where they can choose and fill out their chosen ballot, put it in a grey envelope, and then cast it in the ballot box.

The votes are usually counted within hours and known to the public the next day.

If you are a USAmerican, you can now imagine the depth and width of the cultural chasm here. In the EU, the system is set up to make voting as easy and convenient as possible, although in my opinion, it would be greatly improved by making voting mandatory, at least for state-wide and EU-wide elections. In the USA, the system is set up to make voting confusing, difficult, and the system is for many people downright impossible to navigate.

Yet the American Mango in Chief, his Vice Couch-Fucker, and his minister Kegsbreath have the audacity to lecture us in the EU about freedom and democracy. To which I say, fuck’em.

 

In a Way, This Makes the Iran War Worse

One of the political commentators on YouTube whom I watch regularly is Phil Moorhouse from the channel A Different Bias. He offers the perspective on global and European news from a British perspective, and thus has insights that cannot be easily gleaned from either American or EU-based sources. And today I learned that British diplomats were present in negotiations with Iran, and they concluded that

  1. Kushner is clueless, and Witkoff is witless
  2. Iran posed no immediate threat and was behaving actually reasonably as far as international power politics go.

To me, it looks like the obvious has been confirmed again:

  1. Trump is an idiot who only succeeded by gulling the circa 30% of Americans by playing on the combination of their bigotries, gullibility, and even greater stupidity than Trump’s.
  2. Negotiating with Trump is useless; he is a treacherous asshole who will backstab or betray anyone, renege on any deal made, ignore any treaty or law, as long as he thinks he will get away with it. Any agreement with such a person is worthless.

There (Probably) Will Be Another 9/11 Level Event

On September 11, 2001, I was working in the USA with an H2B visa, in Sun Valley Resort in Idaho. I worked late shift in the hotel laundry, so I usually slept a bit late in the morning. I do not know the exact time when I walked into the communal area, still bleary-eyed and foggy-minded, and saw it suddenly packed with people glued to the TV set in the corner. I glanced at the TV, and I saw the smoke billowing from the WTC towers.

“What is that, some new American action flick?”

“No, the news, someone flew planes into the WTC,” was a reply that did not wake me up immediately. When it finally dawned on me what I just heard, I joined the group.

One of the things that I remember seeing that day (or shortly after) was an interview that was, AFAIK, aired only once. I never found any transcript, I do not remember who was interviewing whom or which channel aired it, and I was never able to find it on the internet either (YouTube did not exist back then). But I do remember that the interviewee said something along the lines, “This attack, whilst unconscionably horrible, is the direct result of America meddling into other people’s affairs. I mean, given how we behave in the Middle East and how we treat the people there, it is not entirely surprising that it happened. America is responsible for the political climate that leads many people around the globe to hate us.”

The self-proclaimed president of peace claims to have stopped 8 wars, while in reality, he bombed 7 countries in just his first year and keeps illegally killing civilians at sea. And whilst his latest warmongering escapade might not lead to an outright WW3 (although that is too close to being the real outcome than before), it has, in my opinion, greatly increased the possibility of another 9/11-like event happening in the foreseeable future. Maybe not directly on US soil, it might happen somewhere in Europe or the Middle East, but a lot of innocent people will die. Killing the spiritual leader of a religion of over 190 million people, a religion that has a notoriety for producing terrorists, will not lead to anything good.

I only hope that when that happens, people will not forget who is to blame for those deaths – the USA and their war-mongering, sociopathic, criminal (adjudicated rapist, convicted fraudster/scammer,  34 felonies under his belt), and frankly, downright evil president. His personal responsibility and blame in this are much clearer than the collective responsibility of the USA as a whole was before 9/11.

The conservative inability to consider others as people

A sign that says: "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people"My favourite aunt in law married a card carrying conservative guy. He is, like many of them, a wonderfully nice person when you’re a member of the in group and I actually do like him as a person.But his politics… Now, I have decided that I will not discuss politics with him until he’s back in the workforce. You see, the current conservative motto here is that people unjustifiably have a life and don’t work enough. There are plans to abolish the 8 hour work day for more “flexibility”, i.e. 12 hour shifts. They keep telling us that not only do we need to retire later, we also need to keep working once we are retired.

My conservative uncle? After he worked very hard to inherit money from his aunt, he decided at 63 that he has now worked enough and can live off his savings, especially since he’ll accomplish another great achievement by inheriting more money from his dad. So in short, he’s the perfect example of preaching water and drinking wine. There’s no use trying to argue with him, so I tried to steer clear of political topics at my cousin in law’s wedding last weekend, until…

Well, it wasn’t even a discussion, it was the perfect example of an old white man being completely unable to even consider that other people’s lives might be different from his. Somebody mentioned that food has gotten terribly expensive, as every statistic you care to look at will show, and while all other people in the group sighed and agreed, he told us that THEY hadn’t increased their food budget in three years. As a couple each of them contributes a fixed amount to their food budget, and while this isn’t how want to run a family budget, that’s none of my business. Anyway, he then explained that they achieve this by combing through the special offers, making a shopping list with the things they need and the places where they’re cheapest and then just go from one place to the other. I said: “Yeah, that’s good and well, but the two of you are both retired, you do have the time, us, we both work full time”, something that everybody should easily agree with, right? Oh no, I was informed that this had nothing to do with retirement. This was just a matter of planning and priorities! You see, looking for the offers just takes 10-20 minutes! A lie, if I ever saw one. It takes about 20 minutes for us to make a normal shopping list and that’s with us having a whiteboard on the cupboard where we write down what we need already. Comparing different supermarket brochures to find the best offers and combinations would surely take at least twice as long, if not longer. And of course it’s then just 2 to 3, maximum 4 different shops! All across town, of course…

I kindly informed him that I’m so busy, if he tells me that I have to spend just one more hour on shopping a week, I will cry. That was met with baffled silence. Again, he’s not a bad guy. If you told him “I need you here” he’d drop everything and come running. But he is completely unable to even recognise his own privilege. If he can do it, so can everybody else! I’m pretty sure that he’d pout if I even mentioned the word “privilege”, and I think he’s the poster boy of the kind of old white men who will be literally literally the death of us.

Teacher’s Corner: It’s Ramadan

I am a life-long atheist. I didn’t have to deconvert  and I’d go as far as saying that I’m anti theist, because I do think that religion is a net evil in the world. But here and now I share the planet mostly with religious people and for the majority of my teaching career I’ve been teaching at schools with large Muslim populations, so I’m well used to the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. Thankfully, it’s moving backwards in the year, now being in early spring and no longer in the middle of summer. Those years were pretty hard. I won’t say I’m a fan of children not eating and especially not drinking, but I also understand that it’s important for the kids. Where religion takes a backseat for most of Germany’s Christians, it’s still at the centre of most Muslim children’s identity, especially of those who arrived from Syria in recent years. It’s not just religion, it’s a piece of home.

With that in mind, it’s important to me to support my students, all my students, in growing into the best version of themselves and they can only do that when they’re feeling safe, accepted and respected. We’re talking a lot about teaching kids respect and tolerance, but many colleagues simply don’t do that themselves.

I took over a year 5 ethics class* four measly weeks ago, and this week the Muslim kids practically ambushed me during break because of one of my colleagues. During class, one of the Muslim kids had not felt well and was tired. The teacher asked him what was up, he said he was fasting, and she turned around and audibly murmured about “victim religion”, which greatly upset the kids. How, I mean how on earth can you do that to kids? Does she think that any learning was happening after that remark? And most of all, does she think those kids will trust her when she tries to teach them about humanist values? In my experience, if you turn it into an “either your religion or being part of our community” situation, their religion wins. From that point on, any new idea will be seen as an attack on their faith. Also, they’re children. They’re still closely linked to their families of origin. If you bring them into conflict with their families, you put them in a position they shouldn’t be in.

Also, in my experience, if you treat them with respect, you can set some ground rules that will be accepted. My rule is that we don’t comment on how another person practises their faith. If or when to fast, or wear a hijab, varies greatly between groups and populations, and I especially don’t need any competition about who’s the best Muslim. I tell them that if Allah is almighty, he doesn’t need 5th graders to do his work. This works well for me. They understand that this rule protects them as much as it binds them. They know that their way is accepted and tolerated, and in return they tolerate others. That’s how you actually teach those values, and not by insulting 10 year olds who can’t argue back.

 

  • In Germany school must provide religious education for Catholics and Lutheran protestants. If you don’t belong to those groups, you get ethics class. I teach them quite a lot and like them pretty well.

Will USA Suffer Brain Drain?

Watching the Trumpidency from afar is not fun. Even though that idiot will have less of an impact here in the EU, the way things are going, he might start a worldwide recession that will make the Great Depression look insignificant in comparison.

He might start a WW3 by giving Putin and Xi Jinping carte blanche to do whatever they want to their neighbors, who won’t just roll over.

But it is his anti-science position that will inevitably hamper scientific progress worldwide that makes me wonder – will young scientists flee the USA in significant numbers to be considered brain drain? They will have one barrier less than scientists from other countries who try to do the same – English language is currently the language of science and thus can be used anywhere in academia. No doubt many competent scientists will be welcome in the EU, or even in China.

Nazi Germany suffered from loss of scientific knowledge prior to WW2 and some of those immigrant scientists did eventually help the USA to invent the nuclear bomb first. But I doubt that stupid narcissist suffering from dementia is capable of comprehending that by targeting science, he is shooting his country in the foot whilst simultaneously giving others a boost.

German elections, quick and dirty rundown

So Germany has voted, and yes, it’s bad, but it could be a lot worse. We needed early elections after the FDP (libertarians) broke up the coalition with the SPD (labour) and the Greens. The campaigns were overshadowed by two deadly attacks by Afghani refugees, one probably with an islamist background.

First, the naked data, and yes, it looks grim:

See post

Source: Tagesschau

The black ones are the conservatives. Their leader worked together with the far right AfD to “stop immigration” a few weeks ago, sparking wide protests all over the country. Merz will be our next chancellor and apart from his politics, his Black Rock past and lack of experience, he is lacking the character to lead a country. They are the strongest party, followed by the far right AfD, Elon’s and Trump’s favourites.

SPD and Greens lost big, also pretty much deserved. they allowed the FDP to run the show and they also allowed the conservatives and the right wingers to dominate the whole discourse with nothing but immigration.

Then we have the FDP, who rightly got kicked out. Their treachery didn’t pay off and neither did their ultra libertarian course.

And the BSW, the “Union Sarah Wagenknecht”, which split off the party “die Linke” (the left) about a year ago, because the Left wasn’t racist and homophobic enough. Actually, they’re mostly like the AfD minus the ultra capitalist angle. I always say that Sarah puts the “national” in “socialist”. She’s also an absolute Putin pal. Good riddance.

Leaves us with the Left. Now, that’s where my sympathies lie. I know, their Ukraine policy is shit and my one big issue, but I’ll say this: if you think that their Ukraine policy is a dealbreaker, but can overlook the Greens’ and the SPD’s policy on Palestine, then be at least honest: you don’t care about human rights, you care about white people. What is amazing is that after the split off, everybody thought that was it. In the polls, they were at 3%, well below the magiv 5% you need to make it into parliament. And then they did something no other party did: they actually fought for the  votes. They refused to bow to the “we need to stop refugees” narrative and were the only party to have a truly humanist position. They were also the only ones that positioned other topics like high rents and inflation. They pushed hard on social media, actually reaching young voters and made a huge come back.

And this is why I’m not desperate. Before the CDU started campaigning, they consistently polled way above 30%, at 37% at their highest. And then their shenanigans lost them a lot of votes, with only a minority of them going to the AfD (about 1%).

Now the work begins. Since Merz deemed to insult all of those protesting against fascism as “not having all the cups in the cupboard” (aka being several cards short of a full deck), the motto is: get up, fill the coffee cup, keep fighting!white coffee mug with rainbow heart

Russian “Morality”

The almighty algorithm recommended this video to me, and it is really good:

Describing Russia as a pseudo-feudal society with components of a Mafia-esque hierarchy is very interesting and very apt, in my opinion.

And unlike many other people who opine on Russia online, this one cannot be easily dismissed because she is Russian herself.

Please Stop Pretending Like You Care About Palestine

The presidential election in the USA is near and what astounds me about it the most is that there are apparently still some people who claim to be on the political left who insist on calling a vote for Harris a “vote for genocide” under the pretense that not voting for her will be better for Palestine.

Please stop saying that nonsense already. We had already one election where Trump won the presidency and we had almost a decade of listening to his speeches (if his incoherent ramblings can be called that)  Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows at this point that the next president will be either Harris or Trump and that of those two a vote for Trump is not only a “vote for genocide” but a vote for genocides. And it is also clear, given how the US election works, that not voting for Harris is almost the same as giving a vote to Trump too, because he has an extremely hyped-up and irrational base. Anyone pretending otherwise either denies reality or does not have two brain cells to rub together. I think these people do have functional brains, so why do they knowingly lie and deny reality?

In the real world, there will never be a candidate who can both have a realistic shot at winning the election and agree with everything these people want them to say and do, so there is, in fact, a 100% guarantee that they will disagree with any candidate on something. And from the behavior of some of these people online, I surmise that this is, in fact, what they want. They do not want to make the world better; they want to feel morally superior.

I am generally not someone to kink-shame people but I do consider furiously masturbating in public over your own perceived moral purity unseemly. If you cannot vote for Harris because you are an asshat who wants to see the world burn, at least have the decency to say so.

Land unter (Floodings)

Did you ever read that quote “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it”? (afaik by Perthsire Mags on the dead bird site)

Well, here I am

muddy brown water of a flooded river under a bridge. There#s less than 30 cm of space between the bottom of the bridge and the water

©Giliell, all rights reserved

This is our village centre. If you want a reference: Normally, if you jump off that bridge, you’ll fall for 3m and then break both your legs. On Friday, heavy rain started falling in the southwest of Germany, especially my Bundesland, the Saarland. While there had been warnings, it was even worse than foreseen as the rain just didn’t move on. Within 24 hours, more than 100 l of rain fell per square metre, in the capital more than 150l , which is twice the amount we usually get during the whole month of May. The situation evoked bad memories of the Ahrtal flooding three years ago, when hundreds of people died, but at least they seem to have learned from that and the crisis management worked really well, with just one person injured and no deaths.

Personally, I’m fine, our house sits above the wetlands that are there to absorb the rain and our village wasn’t that badly hit, though the people next to the river had flooded basements. Other places are much worse off, with evacuations and water up to the ground floor. Rebuilding will take time and money. Oh, do I need to mention that the same day we were hit by this, the legislative finally gave green light to gutting our climate protection laws?

A Question About the Student Protests.

I have a question to ask regarding current student protests against the genocide in Gaza. Police in the USA is cracking down on them violently, as is usually the case. There have been a lot of student protests throughout history all around the world. I am of course not familiar with too many of them, but two from my own country were most remarkable. One such protest in 1939 led to a violent crackdown led by the Nazi secret police Gestapo and extrajudicial executions of a number of students and it is today the reason for November 17 being International Student’s Day The other was in 1989, the violent crackdown was led by the Communists secret police StB and it has sparked the Velvet Revolution.

In those two instances a pattern arises, one that is not difficult to spot. That leads to my question:

Was there at any time and any place in history an instance of violent smackdown on student protests where the judgment of history was on the side of the police and not on the side of the students?

From the top of my head, I do not know about such an occurrence.

A Good Rebuttal of “Capitalism is Good” Video

Someone posted this in comments on Pharyngula a few days ago and I think it is a very good video, worth highlighting in case you did not notice it before.

It mentions amongst many other things what I alluded to in my post, i.e. that the Industrial Revolution predated capitalism and was initiated by advances in science, not that it and the scientific advances were caused by it.