Day 1230 – A New Day, A New Realization

Day 1230 – A New Day, A New Realization

Monday June 1, 2020 

153 Days until the election on November 3^rd

233 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

My conservative friend and I have agreed that continuing our discussion seems to be fruitless. The very things I think she is guilty of doing she accuses me of doing. She wants to know my viewpoint on something. I tell her, and she dismisses it. She makes broad statements about liberals, Democrats, and progressives. Those statement aren’t backed up. They are more “feelings” in the sense of vague observations. If I ask for specifics she says there are plenty around, and doesn’t provide any. Sometimes she has referred to a wacky right wing site. She thinks Prager and his site PragerU have lots of good information. I think it is a right wing site to spread disinformation. Clearly, we can’t agree on the basics.

I mentioned the plight of the poor in this country. Her response was there are always poor people. As if that solved the problem.

It’s exhausting for me, and I’ve determined it’s not worth my time. I know, some of you will say, “told you so.” I’m sure her right wing friends are saying the same about me to her.

It’s hard to have a discussion when you can’t agree on the basics.

I think we should do something about the gap between rich and poor in this country. She wants to know if I believe in a 90% tax rate and would I want to be taxed at that rate. Additionally, she wants to know if I support limiting how much money a person can make. These are “when did you stop beating your wife?” type questions. 

The 90% tax rate question makes it sound like one would support all their income being taxed at 90%. No one would be for that. However, a progressive tax system is a series of steps. At each step of rising income you would pay more tax. It might be that at a very high level a system could put a very high percentage of taxation on income. If that upper end rate should be 90% I don’t know. But the rich want to focus on that because it would really affect them. 

There’s Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. He’s made tons of money by hooking a server up as close as possible to the real stock market trading server. He has algorithms that allow him to trade stocks on the slight differences between buy and sell prices. This is called arbitrage and a smart person looking at the data can figure out how to make a guaranteed profit. This is based on the work of Edwin O. Thorp who wrote “Beat the Dealer,” wherein he described his strategy for winning at the game of twenty-one. After getting kicked out of every casino in Las Vegas and Reno he went on to make tons of money in the stock market with similar math strategies. 

Mercer is a newer slicker version. A congressman in Oregon found himself running against a nutty guy who had the idea about drinking your own urine or something like that. That fellow’s thoughts included stuff about electricity and magnetism too. Seemed kind of turn of the Twentieth Century when folks didn’t really understand it and the county fairs had places where you could pinch your fingers on a block that the huckster would crank up and give you a shock. All of a sudden that guy had a huge bunch of cash. The Congressman was in trouble. He couldn’t compete dollar for dollar. What was going on? Turned out Robert Mercer had given urine man a lot of money. Why? Was it that he believed in this fellow’s thoughts about urine and electricity? Naw. 

Mercer gave the money because he wanted to see the Congressman defeated because that Congressman had the audacity to suggest that stock trades be taxed. If you’re Robert Mercer and you make millions of trades a year, that could cost you money. So much for ethics of the right wing Mercers. 

If you’ve read Democracy in Chains you know that the objective of the really rich, like the Mercers and the Kochs is not to improve mankind or anything like that. It’s to keep as much money as possible. The way to do that is to have power. Period. Full Stop.

The fact that they support buffoons, nut jobs, and religious quacks is all fine with them as long as those people can be manipulated to do their bidding. In this regard their tactics and Putin’s are the same.

Then we get to the tough guy stance of someone like Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil. He talks tough, real tough. He tells everyone he’s going to fix things and he’s not taking any crap from anyone. Then along comes the pandemic and what does he do? Talks tough, ignores the reality. Why? It doen’t fit his machismo image, hence it can’t exist. People die. So what?

I wasn’t making sense of all this until I ran across an old article that mentioned my dad. My father worked at Yerkes Observatory while a grad student at Northwestern. Yerkes was the largest telescope in the world at that time. It was owned by the University of Chicago. Dad worked for a Dr. Lee, who was associated with Dearborn Observatory. It was during his time there that Dad laid out the grid for finding and identifying stars. Dr. Lee apparently was interested in classifying red giants and other stars. The person writing the article said those working for Lee knew most of what he wanted done was garbage, but he let them alone to pursue other things provided they did the classification stuff he wanted done.

This guy decided to study the craters of the Moon. At the time the given hypothesis was that the craters were caused by volcanic activity. He thought otherwise. He thought they were caused by impacts. At the time, the 1940s the common thinking was that the craters on the Moon were caused by volcanic activity. No one was studying the Moon, because it was common knowledge and nothing more could be gleaned from looking more. This left the field open to this one man for twenty years.

When he presented his initial findings to a group that included many of the top astronomers of the day, he couldn’t get any interest. They flat out, by and large, didn’t believe him. Why? Well, the simple explanation is that at that time everyone knew that the craters were caused by volcanoes, not meteors. 

He tried to get people to look at his evidence. Just look! It’s right there. Nope. Sorry.

He thought about Galileo. Galileo was famous for the trial he was put on by the Roman Catholic Church for heresy, because of what he said about the movement of the planets. It is reputed that after being found guilty and walking out of the courtroom he said, “It still moves.” Btw that quote has been questioned as to its veracity. AT one point Galileo tried to get one of the cardinals to look through his telescope. The guy wouldn’t do it. Why? He was afraid of what he might see.  

But the story my faces-of-the-moon friend told was about Galileo looking at Saturn. He looked at Saturn and saw three spheres. He didn’t see the rings. How could that be my friend asked. The answer came to him. The human brain got in the way. Rather than seeing what was there, the brain saw what it thought should be there.

History is replete with examples of people ignoring the facts for long periods. Looking back, one is left to wonder, “Why did it take so long?”

People tend to be more tribal than rationale. It’s really that simple. There’s a saying in the computer business. “Why do we do it that way? Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Elon Musk said something very interesting during the launch of the SpaceX rocket. He said that technology does not progress on its own. It takes a dedicated and focused team willing to work hard to accomplish a goal.

153 Days until the election on November 3^rd

233 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS My team of dedicated individuals.