DONNY APPLESEED

DONNY APPLESEED

Donald Trump's strongest argument for his presidency may have been his fabled dealmaking ability. Of course, the fable was largely created and spread by the man himself. The Trump version of the Johnny Appleseed story is perfect for modern America-- where Mr. Appleseed went around doing something, and was celebrated for it, Mr. Trump did something, and went around telling people to celebrate it.  
  In Trump America, the polarization makes people swell with pride when they oppose the other side. And when the other side has facts-- which they do, sporadically-- then the facts must be opposed also. Sometimes they are spun, but this takes work, while discrediting is available to the entry-level political thinker. And this discrediting process has been going on for years. Richard Nixon's peevish grumblings about NPR have metastasized into a widespread elephantine dismissal of media as "evil," a tiresome word. I've seen and heard Trump voters talk about this, and their collective thoughts about "the media" are one of the most transparently obvious examples of confirmation bias in American history.
  Full disclosure-- I'm a human being. Thus, I'm subject to confirmation bias just like the Trump voters are. This means that I respond to things emotionally, and after the fact I look for logic to bolster my emotional reaction. And I cherry pick the facts and spin that make my feeling look like truth. It must be said-- since I'm skewering the right and its ignorance today-- that smart people are as good as, or better at this confirmation bias game, than the less smart.


  (Incidentally-- the way I said what I just said is an example of low level political correctness. There's a perception that political correctness helps only non-whites, or non-conservatives-- and this is largely true. But it's also true that white conservatives want to be helped the same way; they just don't call it political correctness when they benefit from it. I'd define political correctness as "choosing words that avoid hurting someone's feelings." If I say "less smart" rather than "stupid," that's PC. The whole hypocritical notion of political correctness as a left-only kind of indulgence was a brilliant way to discredit progressive attempts to make various marginalized groups feel more included in our society, the discrediting accomplished handily by equating the thinking behind this progressive effort with the Communist Party's insistence on rigid adherence to a party line. The Orwellian aspect of this is that rigid adherence to a party line and the concomitant obsession with discrediting those that don't go along with it is not left wing or right wing. Both sides do this every day. The lazy discrediting of "the media" and the gleeful act of dismissing an endless list of liberal ideas as "politically correct" are a living tribute to Soviet style information control, and as examples of intellectual life they are roughly equivalent to the musical merits of a Rush cover band.)

  Wandering back to my point-- smart people are masterful at the confirmation bias game. NASA badly wanted the Challenger to fly its mission on schedule. The people in charge of safety saw some troubling data that argued for delay. The people in charge of them really wanted to believe it was safe to fly. It wasn't.
  If you need another example of smart people believing a bunch of idiocy because it felt really good to believe it, I give you the Vietnam War. (Important to always recall that Democratic smart people set this particular domino of idiocy in place, and knocked it over. I'm not sure if the NASA smart people were Democrats. Perhaps a reader eager to bolster some anti-science polemic can scare up data indicating scientists are liberally biased, which will then be held aloft as evidence for not trusting science, rather than evidence for trusting liberalism.)

  I've argued with musician friends about my disdain for presentation in musical performance, which amounts to this-- it is often used to distract listeners from the mediocrity of the music. (This argument is always a loser for me. Various examples are always given that fail to refute my point, and I always settle, Trumplike, humbly aware that my attentions are required for more important statesman duties.) Here I'm about to risk the ire of a Trump believers, or Trump fellow travelers. (The Trump fellow traveller is an American who says he's no fan of Trump, but is quick to point out flaws in criticisms or accusations about the man. It's reasonable and even desirable for them to bring these out if they are informed criticisms, as they often are.) But I interpret the recent Carrier deal to be a bit too much like the PR Of The Deal, rather than the Art of it.
  Now, I'm none too swift in the area of economics. Nor is trade a topic where I have expertise. Financial matters I wave away as if they were undesired giant pepper mills, and I'm thoroughly unqualified to discuss jobs, manufacturing, investment, factories, or anything in that vein.
  So when I say that this deal raises questions, it's more accurate to say that some people have raised questions about it, and I have skimmed articles about these questions, and to the extent that I agreed with them, I understood them.
  It appears that Trump just made a deal that looks better than it is. He essentially used taxpayer money to buy something really good- jobs for a bunch of deserving workers. Which is exactly the kind of thing he promised, when he wasn't blaming some minority for all of it. And this is good-- but since Trump is merging the one thing he was always most committed to (the legend of his dealmaking ability) with the most defensible and understandable thing his voters wanted (jobs), it's reasonable to ask if the deal was the best deal he could have made.
  I've felt for years that corporations should be discouraged by our government from going where they can hire brown people to work for shitty wages rather than hiring Americans for slightly less shitty wages. So when I heard Trump talking about this kind of thing during the campaign, I felt it would have been hypocritical for me to not mention it in passing months later.
  So, I want to believe that what Trump is doing is both good and sensible. But I can't help but suspect it may be just a hugely expensive photo op, reminiscent of the Rockefeller technique of handing out dimes when cameras were present. (An intriguing difference is that Rockefeller was handing out his own dimes, while history suggests that Donald Trump prefers to get someone else to pony up the dimes, when possible. It seems that it is possible, much of the time. And this is my smarmy way of saying that making a lot of money and being good at business are only literally always the same thing if Ponzi schemes count.)
  Others professing some knowledge about economics have suggested that we just paid way too much for something that was way less than we wanted, and beyond that we opened the door for future deals with other corporations who may be just smart enough to threaten to move overseas so they can get a bunch of taxpayer money too. It could be the financial equivalent of stoners claiming glaucoma and back problems that require medical marijuana today, but not mentioning the imminent Phish reunion show.