Trump, Corona, and the Trolley Problem

Upon hearing the news, a lot of normally perfectly nice people said "I hope he dies."   

But Twitter apparently doesn't want people to say that. 

A lot of people have said they hope he suffers.  I'm not sure what Twitter's policy on that is.

He seems to have recovered, but for the record, I'll state here you're not necessarily a bad person if you hope he suffers, or dies, or suffers and dies.

It's a lot like the now-hackneyed Trolley Problem and all its variants.  If you can save two people by killing one innocent person, what should you do?  What if it's hundred of people?  Or, in the case of Trump, in the minds of some people, potentially the entire world?  Of course, nobody is talking about killing Trump.  We're just evaluating the question of whether it's ok to hope he dies.  

The question of whether it's ok to hope he suffers is similar.  That's a lot like hoping your own child suffers a little bit as a result of making a bad decision, so that the child learns a valuable lesson, and becomes a better person.  That's not wrong either, is it?

Morality is a difficult thing.  A lot of perfectly nice people think it would have been ok to have killed Hitler, and a lot of them are convinced that if they had been in Germany (or even Austria) at the right time, that's what they would have done.  Many Romanians were happy to see Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife executed.  And the US Government quite deliberately brought about the death of Saddam Hussein.  

In each case, it was essentially because the political leader's narcissism and desire to maintain power led to practices that caused great harm to their countries, and, at least in Hitler's case, the world at large.

Luckily, in our country, the President simply does not have that kind of power, and we have perfectly democratic processes for getting rid of really bad ones.  

Also for the record, here's a link to a CIA report documenting US involvement in assassinations or attempted assassinations of Diem, Schneider, Trujillo, Lumumba, and Castro.  In some cases, there's pretty good evidence that the President at the time (Eisenhower or Kennedy) knew of and/or approved the actions.  

And here's an excerpt from a Guardian article describing a number of foreign leaders that the US Government has tried to kill or helped to kill:

"In spite of this, the US never totally abandoned the strategy, simply changing the terminology from assassination to targeted killings, from aerial bombing of presidents to drone attacks on alleged terrorist leaders. Aerial bomb attempts on leaders included Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003.
"Earlier well-documented episodes include Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, judged by the US to be too close to close to Russia. In 1960, the CIA sent a scientist to kill him with a lethal virus, though this became unnecessary when he was removed from office in 1960 by other means. Other leaders targeted for assassination in the 1960s included the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, president Sukarno of Indonesia and president Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.

"In 1973, the CIA helped organise the overthrow of Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, deemed to be too left wing: he died on the day of the coup."

Perhaps it's ok for us to want leaders of other countries dead, but wishing that for our own leader crosses the line?  It's an honest question; I just don't know.

Just Let the Republicans Appoint Someone ASAP, Ideally Before the Election

I'm not sure if I am kidding here.

Just in case nobody has already thought of this, I thought I should mention that it might well be in the country's interest to let the Republicans just appoint someone.  The mistake here was already made -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (bless her heart, may she rest in peace) should have stepped back in the middle of Obama's second term, and she could have been properly replaced.  She could have died any time during Trump's term and we would have had this problem.  As a survivor of multiple cancers, she could have seen this coming.  Of course, she was hoping for a democratic president in 2016, but like I said, this is a decision she had to make in 2014, where there was no way of predicting the election.

So we're in a very interesting situation now.  If everyone agrees NOT to let Trump appoint someone, then that will almost CERTAINLY make every single election this November that much closer.  Up until RBG's death, Democrats were almost certain to win not just the presidency but the Senate as well.  That's not because anybody really likes Biden or any of the other Democrats.  It's because most sensible people realize that Trump is horrible and dangerous for this country during challenging times in which the country can ill afford to have a dangerous and horrible leader.  Electing Trump (either by voting for him over Hillary or by not voting at all) might have seemed to some people like a good joke on the political establishment at the time, but most of those people will not want the joke to go on for a second term.

I'm pretty sure the polls have been underestimating what was going to happen.  This year, lots of people who would otherwise sit the election out will find a way to vote, in order to vote AGAINST Trump.

But if RBG's vacancy is not filled BEFORE the election a whole different set of people will be mobilized -- single issue voters who care more about having a right-leaning Supreme Court than how the country is governed.  I'm not sure who that is exactly, but it includes just about every single right-to-lifer, and that's just a start.  

To put it in simple terms -- everyone on the "left" -- and then some -- has already been mobilized, on the basis of Trump himself.  Up until now, there has not been any countervailing "cause" to mobilize people from the right.  A vacant Supreme Court seat will do that, and it could well neutralize the anti-Trump bump.

Biden might win anyway, but having that seat vacant will almost certainly make it a much closer race than it otherwise would have been.  And again, many of the other races where Democrats had hopes of unseating Republican senators could go the other way too.  

The question right now is whether the country can really take that risk.

I honestly don't know the answer.  When the democratic party strategists figure this out, they will have a difficult choice to make -- allow the Supreme Court to go 6-3 conservative and possibly overrule Roe v. Wade, or be all the more certain to win the presidency plus some Senate seats.  

Of course they might have already realized this, and just aren't saying it.  They are just trying to figure out how to step aside and let the Republicans have their way without making it look like they didn't put up a fight to save Roe v. Wade.

And perhaps if it does happen, the next administration will pack the Court to blunt those extra votes.  Or else hold a constitutional convention and really sort things out.

Does anyone miss pro sports?

I see baseball plans to start up again on July 23.  Basketball will restart its suspended season on 7/30. Seems like a bad idea to me, corona-virus-wise.

But apart from that, I have to wonder how die-hard sports fans are doing.  They don't have that daily (in the case of baseball) rush of whether their team won or not, how good the pitching was, and which batters are hot. 

I'm a recovering pro-sports addict.  From the ages 10-21 I cared very deeply about pro baseball and pro football.  But I got busy with real life and at first reluctantly parted with that daily or weekly rush, and then eventually embraced the separation.  I've saved countless hours -- possibly amounting many months of time, over the decades -- by not watching or otherwise seriously following pro sports. 

Nowadays I follow only barely, and simply because of the social pressure.  Since nearly everyone else (even women) seems to care about sports, I look at the standings every once in a while, and try to get a sense of who some of the players are -- as opposed to the old days, when I literally could name just about every player on every team and give you his approximate batting average and home run count.  And I make an effort to know who will be in the World Series and the Super Bowl (and sometimes even the playoffs) just so I won't be caught completely empty-handed in a water cooler conversation about sports.

I get no real pleasure out of it.

Part of it is because this is just one more manipulation by a bunch of mega-rich, super-big corporations who are trying to make money off of us at all costs.  They've got literally the corporation's dream -- customers who are insanely rabid fans, who go around trying to convert others, who regularly buy themed merchandise and pay for subscriptions and tickets and absorb all the advertising that the teams can throw at them.  Baseball somehow gets to be called "America's pastime" and intelligent people study it like a science -- or like a treasured history -- and write book after book about it.  Football, in its season, dominates whole weekends -- college on Saturday and pro on Sunday -- plus Monday nights.  And every time, fans are on the edge of their seats, rooting for their team, hoping for the right series of little miracles (the amazing run, the acrobatic catch) will occur that will enable their team to prevail.

And Superbowl ads cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per second:

.

I don't deny that watching a football or baseball game (well football especially) with a group of like-minded friends is a fun thing, and perhaps a socially good thing.  And I don't have any immediate suggestions for replacement -- except having the same people act out, or at least read out, a Shakespeare play.  Or else do volunteer work.  Or else spend quality time with their children or spouses.  I will work on my suggestions.

Anyway, it all disgusts me because it's another example of artificially intelligent corporations using humans to essentially extract money and time and (amazingly) loyalty from other humans.  Maybe I'm wrong to feel this way, but it disgusts me all the more because all the humans involved -- the players, coaches, and fans -- seem to feel so good about it and are having such a good time.

It's also interesting to watch the same artificially-intelligent motivations and responses to actual events.  Major League Baseball was painfully slow to react to the juicing scandals, with the result that many of the greatest records are held by people who were on drugs.  Major League Football has been painfully slow to react to the obvious damage that it has caused and is causing to so many of its players.  But they all did react, and sure enough -- because they are so intelligent -- have emerged as strong as ever.

Until now, that is.  Basketball had to be suspended, and baseball has been totally shutdown by Covid-19.   They have plans to start back up, but given the way things are going in this country, I sort of doubt they actually will.  Wouldn't it be great for people to learn to use this time for other, more productive activities, so that when the sports come back, nobody will want to watch?