Assassination

We don't yet know the motive for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but while we're waiting to find out, it's a good time to talk about the company. It's conceivable that this was an entirely personal matter, having nothing to do with Thompson's job -- maybe Thompson was boinking the guy's wife. But that seems highly unlikely, all the more so because the hit happened in Manhattan, a thousand miles away from his home in Minnesota.

 

On the other hand, if the motive were political, we'd expect to have seen some sort of public manifesto or claim of rationale, and so far that hasn't happened. What I can well believe, however, is that the motive was more about a personal grievance against the company. An earlier ProPublica investigation found that United HealthCare flags expensive accounts for added scrutiny and in at least one case, had improperly denied paying for a treatment apparently because of the expense. This is anecdotal, and the company disputes that the denial was improper. But lack of transparency by insurers, and lack of enforcement action by government, leaves us in the dark about the extent of the problem.

A more recent investigation by ProPublica finds that United systematically denies payment for behavioral health services. The company uses algorithms to arbitrarily limit the number of therapy sessions it will pay for, without regard for patient’s needs. It’s practices have been found illegal in three states, but there is no relevant national regulatory authority for plans that people buy in the marketplace, or plans funded by Medicaid. As many people with behavioral health needs are Medicaid beneficiaries, this means that some of the most vulnerable people are routinely denied needed services. New York’s Attorney General won a $14.3 million judgment against United for illegally denying mental health services, but this had no effect in other states.

 

According to an analysis in The Economist, 45% of medical spending in the U.S. goes to just nine firms: insurers, drug distributors and pharmacy benefit managers.  UnitedHealth had revenues of $324 billion in 2022, second only to Walmart, and it is now America’s 12th most valuable company. United is the health insurance provider for 50 million people. So Thompson was making millions, much of it off of the government,  juicing  profits by denying desperately needed services to the most desperate people. I'm not saying that the proper response was to assassinate him, but I think that's the likely motive. Maybe some other people ought to be looking over their shoulders right now.

Wednesday Bible Study: Descent into gibberish

 Chapter 20 is just weird. God commands Isaiah to go around naked, which he does for three years. Then God prophecies that the king of Assyria will conquer Egypt and Cush (the upper Nile region) and lead the captives away naked. Needless to say, this never happened.

Then we get Chapter 21. Nobody can explain what most of this is supposed to mean. The last part - the prophecy against Arabia -- is not actually a prophecy. Assyria had already conquered the region  at the time this was written. But as far as all the jive about the watchman, it can mean whatever you want it to.

 

20 In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it— ² at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot.

³ Then the Lord said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush,^{[a] 4} so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame. ⁵ Those who trusted in Cush and boasted in Egypt will be dismayed and put to shame. ⁶ In that day the people who live on this coast will say, ‘See what has happened to those we relied on, those we fled to for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?’”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 20:3 That is, the upper Nile region; also in verse 5

 

21 A prophecy against the Desert by the Sea:

Like whirlwinds sweeping through the southland,
    an invader comes from the desert,
    from a land of terror.

² A dire vision has been shown to me:
    The traitor betrays, the looter takes loot.
Elam, attack! Media, lay siege!
    I will bring to an end all the groaning she caused.

³ At this my body is racked with pain,
    pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor;
I am staggered by what I hear,
    I am bewildered by what I see.
⁴ My heart falters,
    fear makes me tremble;
the twilight I longed for
    has become a horror to me.

⁵ They set the tables,
    they spread the rugs,
    they eat, they drink!
Get up, you officers,
    oil the shields!

⁶ This is what the Lord says to me:

“Go, post a lookout
    and have him report what he sees.
⁷ When he sees chariots
    with teams of horses,
riders on donkeys
    or riders on camels,
let him be alert,
    fully alert.”

⁸ And the lookout^[a] shouted,

“Day after day, my lord, I stand on the watchtower;
    every night I stay at my post.
⁹ Look, here comes a man in a chariot
    with a team of horses.
And he gives back the answer:
    ‘Babylon has fallen, has fallen!
All the images of its gods
    lie shattered on the ground!’”

¹⁰ My people who are crushed on the threshing floor,
    I tell you what I have heard
from the Lord Almighty,
    from the God of Israel.

A Prophecy Against Edom

¹¹ A prophecy against Dumah^[b]:

Someone calls to me from Seir,
    “Watchman, what is left of the night?
    Watchman, what is left of the night?”
¹² The watchman replies,
    “Morning is coming, but also the night.
If you would ask, then ask;
    and come back yet again.”

A Prophecy Against Arabia

¹³ A prophecy against Arabia:

You caravans of Dedanites,
    who camp in the thickets of Arabia,
¹⁴     bring water for the thirsty;
you who live in Tema,
    bring food for the fugitives.
¹⁵ They flee from the sword,
    from the drawn sword,
from the bent bow
    and from the heat of battle.

¹⁶ This is what the Lord says to me: “Within one year, as a servant bound by contract would count it, all the splendor of Kedar will come to an end. ¹⁷ The survivors of the archers, the warriors of Kedar, will be few.” The Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 21:8 Dead Sea Scrolls and Syriac; Masoretic Text A lion
2. Isaiah 21:11 Dumah, a wordplay on Edom, means silence or stillness.

 

 

Sunday Sermonette: Jean Dixon was better than this

As we have noted several times, Isaiah's prophecies tend not to come true. Apologists have tried to explain this by imagining that they refer to events in the far future, that maybe sorta kinda can be twisted into something like Isaiah's description. This requires ignoring much of what he literally says. His prediction of Immanuel cannot possibly refer to the eventual birth of Jesus because Isaiah quite literally says that Immanuel's mother is already pregnant, in the 8th Century BC, among other compelling reasons. 

But the only thing they can do with Chapter 18 is ignore it completely. None of this ever happened and nothing like it ever could happen. The Nile has never dried up. The Canaanite language has never been spoken in Egypt and it is now extinct. The Egyptians have never worshiped Yaweh, there has never been an altar to Yahweh in Egypt, and all of the rest of it is equally absurd. I'll just leave it at that.

 

9 A prophecy against Egypt:

See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud
    and is coming to Egypt.
The idols of Egypt tremble before him,
    and the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear.

² “I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian—
    brother will fight against brother,
    neighbor against neighbor,
    city against city,
    kingdom against kingdom.
³ The Egyptians will lose heart,
    and I will bring their plans to nothing;
they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead,
    the mediums and the spiritists.
⁴ I will hand the Egyptians over
    to the power of a cruel master,
and a fierce king will rule over them,”
    declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

⁵ The waters of the river will dry up,
    and the riverbed will be parched and dry.
⁶ The canals will stink;
    the streams of Egypt will dwindle and dry up.
The reeds and rushes will wither,
⁷     also the plants along the Nile,
    at the mouth of the river.
Every sown field along the Nile
    will become parched, will blow away and be no more.
⁸ The fishermen will groan and lament,
    all who cast hooks into the Nile;
those who throw nets on the water
    will pine away.
⁹ Those who work with combed flax will despair,
    the weavers of fine linen will lose hope.
¹⁰ The workers in cloth will be dejected,
    and all the wage earners will be sick at heart.

¹¹ The officials of Zoan are nothing but fools;
    the wise counselors of Pharaoh give senseless advice.
How can you say to Pharaoh,
    “I am one of the wise men,
    a disciple of the ancient kings”?

¹² Where are your wise men now?
    Let them show you and make known
what the Lord Almighty
    has planned against Egypt.
¹³ The officials of Zoan have become fools,
    the leaders of Memphis are deceived;
the cornerstones of her peoples
    have led Egypt astray.
¹⁴ The Lord has poured into them
    a spirit of dizziness;
they make Egypt stagger in all that she does,
    as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.
¹⁵ There is nothing Egypt can do—
    head or tail, palm branch or reed.

¹⁶ In that day the Egyptians will become weaklings. They will shudder with fear at the uplifted hand that the Lord Almighty raises against them. ¹⁷ And the land of Judah will bring terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom Judah is mentioned will be terrified, because of what the Lord Almighty is planning against them.

¹⁸ In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty. One of them will be called the City of the Sun.^[a]

¹⁹ In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border. ²⁰ It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. ²¹ So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. ²² The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

²³ In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. ²⁴ In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing^[b] on the earth. ²⁵ The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 19:18 Some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls, Symmachus and Vulgate; most manuscripts of the Masoretic Text City of Destruction
2. Isaiah 19:24 Or Assyria, whose names will be used in blessings (see Gen. 48:20); or Assyria, who will be seen by others as blessed

 

Movie Review

Last night I saw Bonhoeffer, about the German theologian who resisted Nazism and paid with his life. (I don't think that's a spoiler, most people know that already.) I've done a little research and I can tell you that the story follows the general arc of the history. It omits a good deal, which is necessary, and sometimes you would need a bit of background knowledge to understand what's going on. It also includes some invented scenes which are intended to condense larger events or realities into succinct metaphors. It completely fabricates the circumstances of Bonhoeffer's execution, for the sake of a symbolic scene that turns him into a Christ figure, which I consider an indulgence by the writer and in some ways contrary to the main point of the thing, which is precisely not to do that with any human, and which is precisely what Bonhoeffer says at one point from the pulpit.*

 

In any case, the movie is very well acted and the period ambience is created with great conviction. The holocaust itself takes place largely off stage, and the movie foregrounds what was in fact quite a small and futile resistance. The cowardice of most of the clergy and German citizens in general is represented, but constitutes the background. That's alright, I think, because the auteur Todd Komarnicki is trying to speak to those of us who might be inspired to resist. When we see even immensely wealthy and influential people rushing to Palm Beach to kiss the ring even before the malignant clown take office, we know that moral courage is in short supply right now.

 

* It also has Martin Neimoller make a version of his famous statement ending "Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me," from the pulpit before his arrest. He did make statements against Nazism from the pulpit but those exact words were made after the war. He survived 11 years in concentration camps.

Beyond outrage

I'm still trying to figure out why the MAGA movement, which is not conservatism, per se, although it does incorporate authoritarianism, also incorporates denial of scientific facts including the fundamental facts about disease and public health. There doesn't seem to be any coherent ideological basis for believing that vaccines are harmful and remedies that don't work are effective. It's just an arbitrary requirement for club membership.

Which brings us to the insanity of nominating Robert Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy's lies, or delusions -- there's no telling which -- are directly responsible for the deaths of seventy children in Samoa, which suffered a measles outbreak after Kennedy's grotesquely named organization Children's Health Defense campaigned against vaccination in that country. Trump called Kennedy a "radical left lunatic" earlier this year, but was happy to bring him on board when Kennedy kissed his ass. Kennedy has said he will advise against fluoridating drinking water, fire 600 NIH employees, stop the FDA from condemning useless Covid-19 remedies, and prosecute medical journals for publishing scientific findings of which he disapproves. He has insinuated the HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that gender dysphoria is caused by chemicals in drinking water, and that Wi-Fi causes leaky brains (whatever that means). He is in short completely fucking nuts.

Can we find four Republican senators who refuse to murder their constituents? We'll see.

Wednesday Bible Study: False Prophecy

It is a great mystery why anybody takes the Book of Isaiah seriously, since he makes a whole lot of prophecies which quite evidently turned out to be false. Damascus was never destroyed. It is today the capital of Syria and is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth. Whether Cush (today Ethiopia) suffered some sort of catastrophe (exactly what's supposed to happen is vague), and/or sent gifts to Jerusalem at some time after Isaiah wrote this I cannot say but nothing major of that nature happened. Perhaps he is recalling the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (also a name for Ethiopia) and expecting it to happen again? Anyway this is just silly.

17 A prophecy against Damascus:

“See, Damascus will no longer be a city
    but will become a heap of ruins.
² The cities of Aroer will be deserted
    and left to flocks, which will lie down,
    with no one to make them afraid.
³ The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
    and royal power from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be
    like the glory of the Israelites,”
declares the Lord Almighty.

⁴ “In that day the glory of Jacob will fade;
    the fat of his body will waste away.
⁵ It will be as when reapers harvest the standing grain,
    gathering the grain in their arms—
as when someone gleans heads of grain
    in the Valley of Rephaim.
⁶ Yet some gleanings will remain,
    as when an olive tree is beaten,
leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches,
    four or five on the fruitful boughs,”
declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

⁷ In that day people will look to their Maker
    and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
⁸ They will not look to the altars,
    the work of their hands,
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles^[a]
    and the incense altars their fingers have made.

⁹ In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.

¹⁰ You have forgotten God your Savior;
    you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
    and plant imported vines,
¹¹ though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
    and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
    in the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹² Woe to the many nations that rage—
    they rage like the raging sea!
Woe to the peoples who roar—
    they roar like the roaring of great waters!
¹³ Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters,
    when he rebukes them they flee far away,
driven before the wind like chaff on the hills,
    like tumbleweed before a gale.
¹⁴ In the evening, sudden terror!
    Before the morning, they are gone!
This is the portion of those who loot us,
    the lot of those who plunder us.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 17:8 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah

18 Woe to the land of whirring wings^[a]
    along the rivers of Cush,^[b]
2 which sends envoys by sea
    in papyrus boats over the water.

Go, swift messengers,
to a people tall and smooth-skinned,
    to a people feared far and wide,
an aggressive nation of strange speech,
    whose land is divided by rivers.

³ All you people of the world,
    you who live on the earth,
when a banner is raised on the mountains,
    you will see it,
and when a trumpet sounds,
    you will hear it.
⁴ This is what the Lord says to me:
    “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place,
like shimmering heat in the sunshine,
    like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
⁵ For, before the harvest, when the blossom is gone
    and the flower becomes a ripening grape,
he will cut off the shoots with pruning knives,
    and cut down and take away the spreading branches.
⁶ They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey
    and to the wild animals;
the birds will feed on them all summer,
    the wild animals all winter.

⁷ At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord Almighty

from a people tall and smooth-skinned,
    from a people feared far and wide,
an aggressive nation of strange speech,
    whose land is divided by rivers—

the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the Lord Almighty.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 18:1 Or of locusts
2. Isaiah 18:1 That is, the upper Nile region

 

Cleaning up Brad DeLong

Don's comment on my previous post quoting Brad DeLong was particularly interesting because it's more or less what Brad himself said before he somehow switched gears. Yes, Trump voters do generally believe a lot of crap that isn't true, but on the other hand there are legitimate reasons why many Americans are unhappy with the state of the nation. Obviously they've misplaced the blame and misdiagnosed the problem, but that doesn't mean Democratic politicians have nothing to answer for.

To summarize the history of the world, ever since the neolithic revolution the vast majority of Homo sapiens have lived on the edge of subsistence. The only way to escape that was to be a priest or a warlord and extract whatever surplus was available by force or fraud. So you have a small upper caste living large by oppressing everybody else. Of course they fought over the scraps and spent a lot of effort on making war and killing each other, which just made the masses all the more miserable.

Then things started to change, slowly at first but accelerating in the 19th Century. It became possible to gain affluence by invention and investment, not just force and fraud, and humanity escaped the Malthusian trap. There was still enormous inequality, but living standards for ordinary people in the United States and western Europe really did improve, quite notably by the early 20th Century. After World War II, inequality was also much reduced. Great fortunes had been destroyed, but rebuilding was more equitable. Labor unions were strong, and the productivity gains from technological innovation were shared more broadly than in the past. We had progressive taxation, and substantial investment in education and public amenities.

Sadly, plutocrats regained control over public discourse in the 1980s, creating what was called the neoliberal consensus. This was essentially a return to 19th Century laissez faire capitalism, and yes, the Democratic party bought into it -- with Bill Clinton hook, line and sinker. Living standards for people without advantages of inheritance or expensive education (and state universities were no longer cheap) stagnated and even fell. People don't compare their circumstances to their long dead ancestors. Telling them that they are in fact richer in many ways than Henry II isn't going to cut any ice.

What they see instead is the fabulous wealth of the very few, while they feel their own lives and the lives of their children are stuck in neutral. Sure, Republican policies are even worse for them but Republicans have messages they can understand. The "They" who are getting over on you aren't Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who are rich because they're smart and industrious; it's people who aren't like you and who are getting what they don't deserve but you do. Now, this is 100% bullshit but we have to ask why people are so eager to believe it. They want change and Kamala Harris was precisely not offering that. She ran a campaign based on Liz Cheney and protecting existing institutions. And I'll be the first to tell you that our existing institutions need to change. They definitely don't need to change into what the president-elect wants, but that's much too complicated of an argument for most people. So this is our dilemma.

Sunday Sermonette: Let the trashing begin

With Chapters 15 and 16, Isaiah starts predicting the ruin of all the neighboring people. These have mostly been people who Judah has often been at war with, and the Assyrian empire did as a matter of historical fact destroy their nations. The Moabites, the subject of chapter 15, have been a subject of particular derision and hatred throughout the Deuteronomistic history, so it's no surprise to see Isaiah fantasize about their destruction. (Actually I think the Bible has already had them exterminated three times, but here they still are.) The theological significance of all this to modern people I will leave to your own imagination.

15 A prophecy against Moab:

Ar in Moab is ruined,
    destroyed in a night!
Kir in Moab is ruined,
    destroyed in a night!
² Dibon goes up to its temple,
    to its high places to weep;
    Moab wails over Nebo and Medeba.
Every head is shaved
    and every beard cut off.
³ In the streets they wear sackcloth;
    on the roofs and in the public squares
they all wail,
    prostrate with weeping.
⁴ Heshbon and Elealeh cry out,
    their voices are heard all the way to Jahaz.
Therefore the armed men of Moab cry out,
    and their hearts are faint.

⁵ My heart cries out over Moab;
    her fugitives flee as far as Zoar,
    as far as Eglath Shelishiyah.
They go up the hill to Luhith,
    weeping as they go;
on the road to Horonaim
    they lament their destruction.
⁶ The waters of Nimrim are dried up
    and the grass is withered;
the vegetation is gone
    and nothing green is left.
⁷ So the wealth they have acquired and stored up
    they carry away over the Ravine of the Poplars.
⁸ Their outcry echoes along the border of Moab;
    their wailing reaches as far as Eglaim,
    their lamentation as far as Beer Elim.
⁹ The waters of Dimon^[a] are full of blood,
    but I will bring still more upon Dimon^[b]—
a lion upon the fugitives of Moab
    and upon those who remain in the land.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 15:9 Dimon, a wordplay on Dibon (see verse 2), sounds like the Hebrew for blood.
2. Isaiah 15:9 Dimon, a wordplay on Dibon (see verse 2), sounds like the Hebrew for blood.

16 Send lambs as tribute
    to the ruler of the land,
from Sela, across the desert,
    to the mount of Daughter Zion.
² Like fluttering birds
    pushed from the nest,
so are the women of Moab
    at the fords of the Arnon.

³ “Make up your mind,” Moab says.
    “Render a decision.
Make your shadow like night—
    at high noon.
Hide the fugitives,
    do not betray the refugees.
⁴ Let the Moabite fugitives stay with you;
    be their shelter from the destroyer.”

The oppressor will come to an end,
    and destruction will cease;
    the aggressor will vanish from the land.
⁵ In love a throne will be established;
    in faithfulness a man will sit on it—
    one from the house^[a] of David—
one who in judging seeks justice
    and speeds the cause of righteousness.

⁶ We have heard of Moab’s pride—
    how great is her arrogance!—
of her conceit, her pride and her insolence;
    but her boasts are empty.
⁷ Therefore the Moabites wail,
    they wail together for Moab.
Lament and grieve
    for the raisin cakes of Kir Hareseth.
⁸ The fields of Heshbon wither,
    the vines of Sibmah also.
The rulers of the nations
    have trampled down the choicest vines,
which once reached Jazer
    and spread toward the desert.
Their shoots spread out
    and went as far as the sea.^[b]
9 So I weep, as Jazer weeps,
    for the vines of Sibmah.
Heshbon and Elealeh,
    I drench you with tears!
The shouts of joy over your ripened fruit
    and over your harvests have been stilled.
¹⁰ Joy and gladness are taken away from the orchards;
    no one sings or shouts in the vineyards;
no one treads out wine at the presses,
    for I have put an end to the shouting.
¹¹ My heart laments for Moab like a harp,
    my inmost being for Kir Hareseth.
¹² When Moab appears at her high place,
    she only wears herself out;
when she goes to her shrine to pray,
    it is to no avail.

¹³ This is the word the Lord has already spoken concerning Moab. ¹⁴ But now the Lord says: “Within three years, as a servant bound by contract would count them, Moab’s splendor and all her many people will be despised, and her survivors will be very few and feeble.”

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 16:5 Hebrew tent
2. Isaiah 16:8 Probably the Dead Sea

 

Many moving parts

I'm on Brad DeLong's email list, and I find the Berkeley prof of economic history often has worthwhile insights. Here's a link to a recent post of his which needs copy editing and also consists of a grab bag of disparate thoughts that don't always work together very well. Still, it gives us some starting points for trying to figure out what exactly is going on right now. Yes, people who believed things that simply are not true voted for the Dumpster, whereas people who believed true facts voted for Harris. We've been there before but here's a highly edited summary from BD:

 

Violent crime rates are about the same as they were in the 2010s, and perhaps 1/3 of what they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet many [The Reuters/Ipsos Core Political Survey] believed crime rates were at or near all-time highs. They supported Trump 26%-point margin. Those better informed about the actual crime statistics, by contrast, broke for Harris by a 65%-point margin.

The United States achieved its “soft landing” with respect to inflation some 18 months ago. The inflation problem caused by the plague and the rapid-recovery ... is no longer a significant issue. Yes, overall prices are about 20% higher because of the inflation episodes, but so are incomes. And no big redistributions of wealth were generated by the process. The key and salient indicator of gasoline prices has returned to its pre-plague levels. Those who undersood that the inflation rate has fallen back to near-normal supported Harris by a margin of 53%-points. Those who believed inflation remained high broke for Trump by a 19%-point margin.

The American media report on the stock market multiple times a day. They have decided it is the summary scoreboard for the economy as a whole—god alone knows why. Over the past nine months, the stock market has reached an all-time high on about one out of every four days. Near ubiquitous coverage of the stock market's performance should makes it difficult to avoid being aware of this. Those who had listened and remembered at least once broke for Harris by a margin of 20%-points. Those who were misinformed went for Trump by a 9%-margin.

And then there is the border: those who knew that unauthorized border crossings were at a low relative to the past few years gave a 59%-point edge to Harris, while those who thought that claim was false gave a 17%-point edge to Trump.

The recent election was extremely close. In such a close vote, each small factor made the decisive difference. But misinformation and its correlation with voting intentions is not a small but rather a very big factor.

It may be that beliefs about the world shape who people decide to vote for. But it also may be that people hold beliefs because of who they have already decided to vote for. If the second is the case—if people decided to vote for Donald Trump because they liked his presentation-of-self on The Apprentice and since as a real asshole, and concluded that he would as president be mean to people and they liked that—then the present and future of the United States and indeed of the world is very depressing indeed.

But I think that is unlikely. I think people voted for Donald Trump because they believed what Fox News and others of that ilk put in front of their eyes on their screens. They knew that their one's own neighborhood and personal circumstances were relatively good, with low crime rates, gas prices at normal, and their incomes having kept pace with inflation. But they were shown that a lot of people were struggling, that the system was broken, and that we needed to do something to shake government into a better configuration—and the driving asshole boss that the Reality TV film editors on The Apprentice created out of a mass of low-quality footage appeared to be what America needed. Voting for change, not out of personal necessity but out of concern for the greater good, demonstrates a commendable civic-minded perspective focused on solving societal challenges, rather than just focusing on one's own immediate situation that case, the state of the American voter is good. 

 

Well, I'm afraid I don't agree with his conclusion. And that's because what he argued before all this convinces me that it is wrong. That's for next time.