Trump is America's Lysenko

Our future?

Trump's fascination with Russia may have its roots in Soviet agriculture policies. The Soviet Union had a problem with recurring famines.  Its Marxist revolution had an alliance with behaviorist psychological theory developed by Ivan Pavlov, the guy who rang a bell when he fed dogs and then made them salivate by ringing the bell.  Although the behaviorists and the Marxist had some differences, the Soviet political operatives were fond of the idea that humans could be conditioned to behave on command like Pavlov's dog.  The idea fit into the Marxist belief that life is a process of being conditioned by our environment.  Therefore, in the Marxist view, whoever controls the environment controls the people.  If some people were slow learners, they were put into the environment of a prison camp for re-education.

For many decades Soviet agriculture policy was invested in a man who rejected genetics and scientific farming and imposed his own "science" on the raising of food.  His name was Trofim Lysenko.  He, for example, believed that exposing wheat to severe conditions of cold and moisture would cause it to adapt to those conditions and eventually thrive.  And then, as Marxist doctrine contended, it would pass those adaptations on to succeeding generations of wheat, which would produce bumper crops.  Meanwhile in America, colleges of agriculture were applying genetic knowledge to the breeding of plants and were producing strains of wheat that could thrive and make surpluses that could be sold to the Soviets. 

Lysenko formulated a cult of pseudoscience that became known as Lysenkoism.  Lysenko attacked the validity of science itself, subordinating it to politics.  He instituted a campaign against those who engaged in the true scientific method, which included imprisoning them when science contradicted Soviet doctrine.

I was a farm editor at the time Lysenkoism was coming to an end.  At the time many delegations of Soviet scientists were coming to the United States to visit colleges of agriculture, American farms. and farm equipment manufacturers.  The Eisenhower administration under Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson also arranged visits to the Soviet Union by farmers, professors of agriculture, and farm journalists to make a comparative study of agriculture in the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  American visitors came away from those trips understanding why collective farms in the communist system struggled to produce while U.S. farmers were coping with overproduction.  They warned about the dangers of consolidating farms into huge industrial units that operated as factories rather than as agricultural enterprises.  They said there was no appreciable difference between a system of agriculture run by the Kremlin and one run by a corporate headquarters.  Both impose the culture of a bureaucracy onto agriculture and reduce farmers to the status of serfs.

A key concept in the development of American agriculture was self-sufficiency.  Each farm supplied the food and the shelter for the family that operated it.  The early family farms contained a full inventory of the livestock, crops, and gardens that supplied their food throughout the year.  Farm life was self-sufficient but arduous, sometimes exhaustingly so. As rural America was electrified, farmers were conflicted.  Electricity could vastly improve life for them.  They realized the convenience and safety of simply turning on a switch during the dark winter mornings to do their milking rather than fueling, lighting, and moving kerosene lamps around to light the work.  But the power line coming into the farm represented a tie to a corporate bureaucracy, the acquisition of a dependence, and the loss of some self-reliance which was the basis of their independence.  There are stories told of farmers who electrified only the barn and skipped the house in order to limit the dependence, as well as keep the electric bill in check. 

When American farmers visited the collective farms in the Soviet Union, they were struck by the fact that the farmers working the land were literally serfs whose every action was monitored and supervised and whose work produced no benefits of equity for them.  The collective farms were not self-sufficient, but were  knots of dependencies that imposed limited possibilities on their residents and denied them the freedoms of choice and the aspirations to satisfying lives.  The American farmers witnessed people living lives of desperation in which self-fulfillment was not even a consideration.  The Americans recognized that while their lives required endless toil, their work with the land produced opportunities for a way of life free from want and undue interference in making their own choices.  They saw a parallel with the collective farms and the American farms that were relinquishing an agriculture for an agribusiness.

It is incongruous that rural America has embraced Donald Trump, who is the antithesis of the values that once occupied the American farmland.  As a real estate developer, Trump has been a spoiler of the land.  His plague of lies and defamations has infected the land and has emaciated the soul of rural America, as its members have chosen serfdom under him.  His policies, like Lysenko's, deny the science on which American agriculture thrived, and have replaced it with ethnic and political hatred and systematic dishonesty.  Rural America believes Trump fights for it, but there is no evidence that Trump has ever fought for anything but his greed and lust for power.  His business record is one of fraud and ruin for those he has cheated.  In a word, Trump is a criminal, and he does little but prey on the gullible. But rural America believes he fights for them.  

Rural Americans turned to Trump because they felt the country was neglecting them.  Part of that neglect was because of the federal farm programs that were once designed to support and sustain family farms were now pouring most of the money into corporate, industrial agribusiness.  Urban and suburban people, who are living paycheck to paycheck and facing infrastructure and environmental problems saw programs for rural America of a kind that is not available to them.  Rural Americans thought they were neglected.   Their alliance with Trump is making them despised.  The political and social divide becomes irreconcilable.

The failure of collective farms run on Lysenko's policies was a big factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Trump has introduced the same kind of policies into American agriculture, and as farms become industrial agribusinesses, they are under the rule of a bureaucracy that will dutifully adhere to Trump, just as the collective farm managers adhered to Lysenko.

The transformation of agriculture to agribusiness proceeds apace, as farms consolidate.  South Dakota, for example, lost 2,000 farms between 2012 and 2017. The question is if the transformation portends for America what it did for the Soviet Union.  As Trump likes to say, we'll see.

Many of us have already seen it.

Would you want to work with this guy?

He brags in lying ways about himself.  He insults those who rebuke or otherwise displease him.  His verbal discourse is below the level of elementary school kids.  He lies so much that no word coming from him can be believed or trusted. He openly commits acts of corruption in the name of deal making.  He is Donald Trump.

In a word, he is mendacious.  Here is the dictionary definition:
                        mendacious | menˈdāSHəs |                                 adjective                                  not telling the truth; lying: mendacious          propaganda.
I cite the term because in every job I have held, it is listed as a reason people can be fired.  And in many professions, if it is the reason someone is fired, that person will never find another job in that profession.  That is not to say liars are not present among us.  However, they are branded, avoided, and condemned.  I worked under a college president who was a habitual liar.  He used lies to manipulate people.  He lied to make himself look good.  He lied to make other people look bad.  But he sort of admitted he was a liar, because he operated under the motto "you are what you appear to be,"  In promoting the college, he made claims about it that weren't true.  During a faculty meeting, he was called out for making exaggerated claims about the status of the college.  He gave his usual explanation, "you are what you appear to be."  A senior history professor replied, "And we appear to be liars."
The man held on to his job.  The large majority of the faculty disapproved of him, but the regents didn't.  After he was gone, it took much work on the part of the faculty and his successors to repair the damage he did to the college--the working relationships of the college and its overall credibility.  The college president was not quite as bad as Trump because many of the people who worked under him counteracted him.  They made clear that they may have had to work for him, but not with him.  They refused to be enablers. They saved the college from potential disaster.Trump has no people around him who have the intellectual wherewithal or courage to counter him. Sometimes they judiciously choose not to follow his orders.  Polls show that  more people disapprove of him than approve, but he has loyal grovelers, such as the Republican senators, who shield him and curry his favor, because they think it will help to get them re-elected.  Those who support Trump are those who cling to the notion that their destiny is in the hands of those who have wealth and power.  They invest their lives in the hope that the master's schemes will take care of them.  But, as The New York Times reports, Trump lost more money than any other person listed by the IRS.  His idolizers put their trust in a fraud, but that's the delusion they prefer to live in.  What money he has made came from fraudulent schemes, stiffing contractors, and refusing to pay workers. The latest display was an attack on Nancy Pelosi after she and Sen. Schumer said he threw a temper tantrum.  After calling the Speaker some insulting names, he termed himself a "stable genius," and then ordered some of his White House employees to testify about how calm he had been.   The complaints looked sheepish and embarrassed, but made clear that they would endure the humiliation in appreciation for being a part of Trump's power elite.  That's what loyal lackeys do.If Trump were working for an ethical, proficient organization, those who worked with him and for him would react against the demeaning and hostile workplace he creates.  And the competent would protest his incompetence.No one of my acquaintance would tolerate him as a boss or a co-worker.  That so many people do approve of him and submit to his behavior is an indicator of a culture slipping into nefariousness.  We have witnessed it happening to Germany in the 1930s.  We have literature explaining how it can happen here.  It is happening here.I would not work for or with a person like Trump.  I do not wish such a fate on my grandchildren.  Even if Trump is voted out of office, that leaves my grandchildren to deal with his supporters and enablers.  They are participants in a philosophy of criminality, in a culture of mendacity.  The future for my grandchildren is emigration.  Or revolt.
 

Beyond impeachment, an indictment

The stickler of the problem with Trump is that the framers of the Constitution and its implementation never thought that a total  crook would ever be elected president.  Nixon was a crook, but the system worked so that as a case was being built against him, he saw the ultimate end and resigned.  When tapes recorded in his office were subpoenaed, he relinquished them when the court ordered him to do so, and they contained evidence against him.  He acknowledged the primacy of the democratic processes and that his presidency had to end.   Trump, however, holds democracy and its systems in disdain.  He is not capable of apprehending any value other than serving his greed and misusing power to subvert the democratic system.

The Department of Justice holds the beneficent attitude--and policy-- that a sitting president should not be impeded in doing the work of the country by being indicted.  That is a policy that ignores the possibility that the criminal acts of a sitting president could put the country in its greatest peril.  

The Mueller report detailed some acts by Trump that were clearly criminal.  Mueller did not issue an indictment because of that DOJ policy.  Many Democrats, and a few Republicans, think the Mueller report is a call for impeachment.  The report, even in its redacted form, lays out the articles of impeachment.  Speaker Pelosi has cautioned against stampeding into impeachment.  She has said that the impeachment process, however, could be used to gather more information.

If Trump were successfully impeached, he would merely be removed from office.  It is not likely that his GOP lackeys in the Senate would vote to impeach.  But if Trump were indicted, he would be brought to trial.  He would have to face and respond to the charges against him.  And if he were indicted, the case against him would be irrefutable.

Trump's crimes are a cancer on the presidency.  He is a malicious perpetrator.  If an indictment were constructed against him, it could be served and he could be tried whenever he left the presidency.  The rule against indicting a sitting president is not a matter of law.  It is a matter of executive policy that could be changed by law.  And should be.

But if an indisputable indictment were constructed for him, he would have to answer at some point and held responsible for  his criminal acts.

Justice cannot be subverted by corruption.  Let the indictment be made.

What is a real journalist?

The public's perception of how a news reporter works has been warped by television journalism.  Television news stories use video clips of people making statements as the bulk of their news presentations.  A TV reporter, as well as a radio reporter, has the primary objective of getting a statement about some matter on tape for broadcast.  Then, in the name of "balance," they will look for someone with an opposing or alternative viewpoint to make a statement.  In the electronic news business, it is considered great television if they can get a public argument going.  People like to witness conflict.

However, escalating conflict is a television producer's task, not a real journalist's.  The primary job of a reporter is to define and verify facts, not merely repeat what people may speculate or opine about the facts.  The actual news reporter will take care in presenting the facts, distinguishing them from the opinions or speculations they may inspire.  However, in the world of electronic news which thrives on agitating and titillating a public that craves conflict, few facts survive intact the mauling they go through or the jabber they accrue.  The facts often get overshadowed by the chatter.

As news media made increasing use of the internet, news organizations were enamored of the idea of increasing readership by allowing readers to interact with the media with their comments.  Comments affect the readers' responses in many ways, and many studies have examined how that works.  But some very basic facts that newspaper editors  know and work with every day came into play.  A rule of thumb is that the reputation of a newspaper is determined by its lowest common denominator.  What people retain in their memories are the typographical errors, the grammar and spelling errors, and the poorly written stories.  In an edition that might be composed of skillfully written stories, people will regard it on the basis of one story that contains an error or unclear writing.  And people will let a stupid, false, and malicious comment displace the facts in a news story.

The unforgettable sin for a real news medium is to get a fact wrong.  The unpardonable sin is to deliberately misstate a fact.  And when someone is quoted or recorded mistating a fact, the medium has a responsibility to state the fact correctly so that readers, listeners, and viewers know what the verifiable fact is.  That is an essential responsibility of a real news reporter.  The application of that principle is what distinguishes phony news media, such as Fox News, from authentic news media, such as The Wall Street Journal.   A fact is like a granite boulder.  Wind storms may obscure it at times with rain or dust or debris of human-making, but the fact remains to be discerned when the trash storm is over.  The real journalist is like an archaeologist who carefully digs for the facts and brushes away the debris that obscures and distorts them.  And that gets to the real journalist's use of journalism's absolutely essential tool.  That tool is precise but vivid language, language that accurately and sharply portrays the facts. The language used in comments on news stories is seldom precise or vivid.  That's because it does not refer to facts, but is spillage from the minds of the writers. 

Journalism has in the past been regarded as a literary endeavor.  It was rooted in the skillful use of language. The study of language delved into how language is used in trustworthy ways and how language can be used to deceive and manipulate.  The study of advertising revealed how powerfully language could be used to manipulate what people think and what choices they make.  This resulted in some universities moving their mass communications and journalism programs away from the colleges of arts and sciences into the business colleges.  They regarded mass communications more in terms of language as a  profit making device than as the human tool for examining facts and thought.  During my time as a member of the working press and later teaching writing and journalism, there was considerable discussion about whether students were better prepared for journalism by a rigorous liberal arts degree or a journalism school degree.  Editors pointed out that whatever programs the most accomplished journalists graduated from, they were all well read with a strong command of the liberal arts, but the distinguishing factor was their scholarship.  The process of gathering and analyzing information, interviewing people and searching the written record, provides the journalist with the skills needed for the job.  They know how and where to find the facts.

When a news story presentation allows for comments, the chain of responses produces a verbal smoke screen in which the facts are obscured, sometimes totally lost.  Most of the comments do not refer to the facts.  As linguistic scholars explain it, the language of comments gives us  maps of the minds of the commenters.  It deals with the prejudices, obsessions, and deviations of the commenters, seldom with the facts at issue.  For many, those products of cognitive failure are the impression that is retained in their minds.  More often than not, comment threads produce expressions of malice, which reduce the exchange into a malicious exercise.  Students of how mass communication works explain that these exchanges are in large part a cause of the hateful political divide in our nation.

Savvy editors recognize that the good work of industrious, competent reporters is defaced by horribly written and specious commentary.  Major news media edit the comments for intelligible writing and relevance to the topic.  Even so, the quality of news stories is compromised by their association with inferior comments.  Consequently, News editors are often withholding the option to comment on stories they deem of great importance, and invite would-be commenters to write letters-to-the-editor that cite facts and show their reasoning. Those editors  place the integrity of the information and the language above the marketing of their media.  They apply the standards of journalistic integrity to letters submitted to them, and reserve the right to fact-check and edit them to conform to journalistic standards of literacy.

News media and blogs which relax the standards of thought and language for comments help undercut the function they perform in informing the public.  While there is some discussion about whether bloggers or employees of the legacy media are the real journalists, what defines a true journalist is someone who presents the actual, full facts without the compromise of spin and distortion.  Regrettably, there aren't  many readers, listeners, or viewers of the news who discern the facts from the fabrications. So, a true journalist takes care that their own work is not compromised by ignorant or malicious comments.  The ignorant whine that such care is censorship, but the right to free speech also endows the right to maintain honesty and quality.  In a culture in which 60 million people voted for Donald Trump, integrity and quality are not honored.

No collusion? How about betrayal?

The question is raised by the Constitution.  It is raised by a phrase in one sentence:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. 

The words "adhering" to our enemies and "giving them aid and comfort" define an act that comprises treason.  To "adhere" to an enemy is to  ""believe in and follow the practices of" that enemy.  "Aid and comfort" includes approving what another country does by encouraging its actions and becoming passively complicit with them.  

The Constitutional article is implemented in the U.S. Code:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

The Mueller report specifically stated that "the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities."   But it did note that the Campaign responded with an accepting and cooperative attitude by being receptive in some instances of Russian offers to help.  At times, the campaign was complicit with the Russian efforts. The report stresses that it is not the final word on the Trump Campaign's involvement with the Russian government and that there might be more to find with further investigation:

 A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps [instances where information could not be obtained], the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

Those statements in effect lay out a plan for further investigation of the Trump Campaign and Administration by Congress and makes a recommendation that it do so.  Although the report does not formally make a charge of obstruction against Trump, it details 14 instances, any one of which could be a case against him, if Congress wishes to make it.


However, as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have pointed out, Congress should not go hell bent for impeachment,  Rather, it should focus on the fact that Russia has committed an extremely serious hostile act against the United States that transcends politics and threatens to throw the nation into hopeless dysfunction.  Congress' job is to investigate all the factors that are pushing the nation into dysfunction and deal with them accordingly.  Rather than rush into an effort for impeachment of Trump, Congress must use the facts established by the Mueller report as the guideposts for further investigation, analysis, and legislative action.  If the facts lead to impeachment, so be it.  But the objective is to save the nation.  Donald Trump and what is done about him is merely incidental to restoring the standards of liberty, equality, and justice for which the United States strives.

Trump has betrayed the nation with his fraud, his malice, and his ceaseless lying. His personal history shows that he has always behaved this way. Trump is not the essential problem.  The 40 or so percent who support him and the malignant cancer he brings to the presidency are, along with Putin's Russia,  the sickness that has made the United States a democratic invalid.  Trump is a growing malignant tumor on the body politic.  If the nation is to survive as a democracy, he must be removed.  But his removal will not necessarily put the nation into remission or restore it to health.  To many, the election of Trump is a symptom that the country has relapsed into the racism, sexism, and inequality that it has tried to overcome.  The kind of support Trump has is a symptom that democracy in the nation has a potentially fatal illness.

Although the Trump campaign did not have any formal agreement of coordination and conspiracy with Russia to meddle in the 2016, it was openly blatant about shouting approval and encouragement of Russia's efforts.  It applauded Russian activities at obtaining Democratic emails and and offered comfort if not specific assistance.  Approving so overtly of Russia's efforts was a betrayal of the nation.  It offered no discouragement of Russia's intrusions and provided the comfort of giving approval.  And that is part of the definition of treason.  What the Mueller report documents is overt attempts to exploit the products of Russia's work:

After candidate Trump stated on July 27, 2016, that he hoped Russia would "find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump asked individuals affiliated with his Campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails.264 Michael Flynn-who would later serve as National Security Advisor in the Trump Administration- recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly, and Flynn subsequently contacted multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails.

... 

In sum, the investigation established that the GRU hacked into email accounts of persons affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, as well as the computers of the DNC and DCCC. The GRU then exfiltrated data related to the 2016 election from these accounts and computers, and disseminated that data through fictitious online personas (DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0) and later through WikiLeaks. The investigation also established that the Trump Campaign displayed interest in the WikiLeaks releases, and that the evidence was sufficient to support computer­ intrusion and other charges against GRU officers for their role in election-related hacking.

While the Mueller report concludes that the Trump Campaign did not have a formal arrangement of coordination and conspiracy with the Russians, it details complicity through encouragement and anticipation of using the results of Russian intrusion.  The Campaign's approval of Russian hacking is an act of betrayal.

As Congress pursues the factual guideposts furnished by the Mueller Report, it should not limit itself to acts of obstruction of justice.  Despite the Report's declaration that no evidence was found that the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in its sweeping and systematic effort, the Report provides specific instances of betrayal.  It is Congress's job to determine if the actions of the Campaign in adhering to Russian efforts offered enough aid and comfort to comprise acts of treason.  

If there were a draft, would you serve this country?

I was drafted and served two years of military active duty and four in the reserves.  It never occurred to me at the time to refuse.  Nor did it to most of my contemporaries who were also drafted.

When the draft was ended and all military service became voluntary at the end of the Vietnam War, part of the reason for ending it was that a significant number of men were refusing to serve.  Many fled to Canada and later returned to the U.S. when President Carter gave them amnesty.  Others found ways to avoid the draft, such as acquiring bone spurs by bribing doctors.  However, men who were in the service were showing dangerous signs of mutiny.  The incidents of "fragging"--the killing of officers and noncommissioned officers with hand grenades by American troops-- alarmed military commanders and government officials.  The prospect of an insurrection within the military sent shock waves through the nation.  When the military is undisciplined, the nation as a whole is threatened.

The avoidance of service and the rebellions within the military were motivated by the realization that the 
Vietnam  War was a vicious and lethal absurdity.  It wasted 50,000 American lives, killed about a million Vietnamese, and caused turmoil in the streets of the United States.  People also came to realize that the draft was unfair, with the wealthy finding ways to avoid it, leaving the poor to bear the brunt of it.  Some leaders were in a panic that a class war would devastate the nation.  They sought to remove the causes of discontent that were moving the nation toward violence, so they ended the war and the draft.

One of my contemporaries, who was drafted about the same time I was, recently raised the question about how he would feel about military service during the Vietnam War or our current time.  Like me, he was given an honorable discharge from the service.  He had been active in the anti-war movement but also in supporting veterans of the Vietnam era.  He said veterans had to deal with PTSD and the disturbing irony of receiving honorable discharges from a war that was a dishonorable atrocity.  They felt that they were complicit with the dishonor.

American citizens today are faced with a comparable dilemma.  How can one be proud of citizenship in a nation which elects the epitome of depravity as its leader?  How can any person with respect for decency support a man who brazenly flaunts corruption as a badge of success, whose words cannot be believed or trusted, whose behavior constantly displays a puerile malice?

The dislike of Trump is not a political issue.  It is a moral matter.  When the nation is compared with the moral collapse of Germany as it embraced the Nazi regime, some glibly cite Godwin's Law, which says that as soon as some makes a comparison to Hitler and his deeds in a discussion thread, the discussion is ended.  It is true that mere name-calling using Nazi associations is unproductive and pointless.  But the Holocaust is the moral touchstone of modern history in which an entire continent submitted to and often participated in the commission of atrocities in the name of attaining a superior society.  Nazi Germany defined the intellectual and moral degradation to which humans can fall.  Since World War II, the factors which contributed to humanity's  greatest organized atrocity have been studied and analyzed so that we have an understanding of the motives and moral circumstances that made it happen.  When people who have worked to understand those circumstances compare the age of Trump to the age of Hitler, they are not dealing in cheap political invective.  They are defining malignant social trends that run counter to what this country was designed to be and fought for in World War II.  They are warning that America is adopting the very trends against which members of the Greatest Generation once defended it.

It is not merely a political matter that Americans chose a person of the values of Donald Trump, although politics is the social vehicle that made Trump possible.  But the politics reflect a  shift in American values away from an affirmation of human decency to an embrace of fraud, greed, mendacity, and malice toward many.  Forty-six percent of the voters chose Trump.  They knew precisely what they were voting for because Trump stridently announced and displayed his values during the primary and general election campaigns.  Forty-six percent of the voters chose to make the U.S. a nation of discrimination against and oppression of minorities, a nation that desires and supports malicious lies, a nation that encourages and celebrates corruption.

Supporters and defenders of Trump answer the questioning of his demented tweets and oval office pronouncements by saying he will never be criticized without fighting back, and when he fights back, he fights for all those beleaguered people who have also been criticized.  What informed analysts of Trump's speech acts note is that Trump fights for no one but himself.  He serves only his own depraved purposes.  His tweets and comments are almost always intended to accomplish harm or to encourage others to do harm.  His speech acts comprise a constant stream of malice.  Those who claim that Trump represents them are those who choose to participate in malicious purpose.  And that purpose is based upon racial, ethnic, religious, and social enmity they hold toward other people.  If they feel criticized and demeaned, they might wish to consider how contrary they are to the American premise of decency.

The divide in America is not merely a clash between the self-righteous and ordinary citizens.  It is a moral abyss of the same kind that divided believers of humane values and Hitler's collaborators.  The current collaborators are not generally engaged in a holocaust at this point, but they fully endorse the fraud, the corporate dictatorship, the pervasive dishonesty, and the malice.  And those who do want a holocaust have shown they feel encouraged by the trend Trump is leading.

Those who are advocating for conciliation between Americans just are not paying attention to the moral and intellectual opposites at issue.  The fight is between the benign and the malicious.  

The divide became an issue when the first black president was elected.  Dormant racism was agitated into a political force.  The civil rights movement had advanced the cause of equality to the point where a strained coexistence was possible.  But when a person who many thought should be  a house boy was elected to be master of the White House, resentment exploded into open hostility.  And when Trump began his racist tirades against Latino immigrants, the seething racial bigots found a leader to their liking--someone who would wage a pogrom of hate and oppression against minorities and "libbies," and make manifest the gospel of Rush Limbaugh.  There is no possible way that an American liberal can give in to the hatred, the dishonesty, the malice of Trump without realizing that they would be abandoning the essential purpose of the nation's creation.

The problem for Americans is that defending the country would be defending fraud, hatred, and malicious aggression. The resurgence of social democrats is a response to the realization that capitalism has assumed the aspect of plantation politics, led by a totally corrupt master.  Trump has abolished the efforts at nuclear disarmament, diplomatic restraint of Iran, agreements to address the destruction of climate change, and efforts to promote fair and effective health care.  How can one take up arms against outside aggressors when the most lethal efforts against the American people are coming from inside the country?  And when our allies view America as a danger to them?

The 48 percent who voted against Trump (46 percent of the voters voted for him) are in a dilemma.  If they were asked to defend the country, would they be defending the quest for liberty, equality, and justice?  Or would they be defending the descent into corruption, mendacity, and oppression?  Or would they choose to join the military in an insurrection?

It really is not something I would have to think about.  I'd fight for the country I once served, not the country Trump has made of it.

Colleges once conferred degrees, not status

Two events in higher education led the nation to being the most advanced in the world.  During the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College (Morill) Act which led to the establishment of public universities in every state.  As the U.S. was making the transition from a rural and agricultural nation to an industrial and technological one, the public universities supplied the research and knowledge and the opportunities for young people to acquire the knowledge.  It meant a huge leap of growth in all areas of knowledge as it provided students with the critical thinking skills of the liberal arts, as well as  scientific and technical knowledge.

The second event was the passage of the post World War II G.I. Bill.  As veterans returned to civilian life there was a shortage of jobs.   The G.I. Bill enabled them to attend college so that they could plan and pursue careers which allowed them to not only assimilate back into society but to greatly increase the human skill and talent for the nation's development.  In 1947, 49 percent of the college students were veterans attending on the G.I. Bill.   Rather than facing a difficult readjustment into a peacetime economy, the Bill sparked an unprecedented growth in the economy and advances in all aspects of American life.

Higher education also received huge benefits as it geared up to receive the influx of students who were determined to study hard and apply the knowledge and skills they acquired.  The influx of serious and determined students helped colleges and universities to strengthen and expand their curricula, and to upgrade their teaching and research activities.  America's public higher education system became the most respected in the world, and it set the standard for the advancement of knowledge.  The public universities rivaled the elite Ivy League schools in terms of the knowledge and talent they produced.  While the exclusive Ivy League institutions and other private universities claim an elite status and "star" professors, the public colleges and the private ones which participate in the mission to make education available to anyone who wants it are the force that raises America's education level and creates the vast pool of educated workers which have elevated the nation into world leadership.  

The current college admissions cheating scandal is not an education issue, but a skirmish in class warfare.  When people spend millions of dollars to get their kids into a prestigious university, they do severe damage to higher education.  Their objective is to make their children members of an exclusive club, not to provide them with a real higher education.  Cheating is the bane of academe.  It kills the scholarly enterprise because it destroys the trusted reliability on which knowledge depends.  Most people with education have learned the penalties of plagiarism, the passing off of someone else's work as their own.  People are not as aware of other violations of academic principle for which professors are summarily fired and banned from their profession:  falsifying data, bribery, malicious and sexual misconduct, mendacity.  All of those are behaviors that our current president practices constantly.

Those are the kind of acts that are involved in the college admissions cheating scandal.  They were committed to gain young students entrance into prestigious institutions, but they undermined the most essential qualities that give the colleges their prestige: meticulous honesty and striving competence.  Genuine knowledge is generated, refined, verified, and imparted only in places that apply the rigorous principles of scholarship.  One lie or deception can invalidate an institution as a source of information and as a participant in the making and delivery of knowledge.  For this reason, reputable institutions will rid themselves of personnel who indulge in graft and reject students who gained acceptance as a result of it.  Dishonest practices destroy a college's very reason for being.

Those young adults whose parents tried to buy them admission to prestigious institutions could get real educations at almost any of the  3,275 nonprofit public and private colleges in the U.S.  Many of the universities that do research along with their teaching rank academically as high--in some cases higher--as those that parents tried to bribe for admissions of their children.  Of the universities named in the indictment, six are private: Georgetown University, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, Yale University, Wake Forest University, and the University of San Diego.  Two are public:  the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Texas, Austin.  These universities have earned reputations because of the significant scholarship they have produced--at least at some point in their histories.  It may be the case that some students whose parents bribe their admission are interested in performing a high level of scholarship.  But their parents are paying for prestige and conniving ways to scam admission requirements.  They give little credence to the intellectual work and its products that are the basis for earned reputations.

A popular scam involving colleges is the rankings of "best" colleges" put out by  organizations such as U.S News, Princeton Review, and Niche.  These rankings are more marketing ploys than indicators of academic excellence.  Many colleges refuse to participate because the rankings have no scientific basis.  A critique in The New Yorker makes the point: "There’s no direct way to measure the quality of an institution—how well a college manages to inform, inspire, and challenge its students."  The reason is:

"Sound judgments of educational quality have to be based on specific, hard-to-observe features. But reputational ratings are simply inferences from broad, readily observable features of an institution’s identity, such as its history, its prominence in the media, or the elegance of its architecture. They are prejudices."

A few schools may be diploma mills that confer degrees as something that is purchased with tuition and fees--and may include some "prestigious" institutions.  And the degree of rigor required to earn a degree does vary.  But most colleges maintain standards for scholarship so that a degree is a statement that the student who has one has earned it. Students who hold degrees from community colleges and have then graduated from a state four-year school have generally have degrees comparable to those granted by more prestigious institutions, and they graduate with much lower debts.  But the clamor to get into prestige institutions has cut enrollments at many reputable and substantial state colleges, causing the to cut programs and faculty.  The focus on prestige institutions has had the effect of eliminating some affordable but competitive opportunities for students.  The preferences for the prestige schools is not based upon the facts, but on false information--on silly prejudices.

The hard fact is that paying millions of dollars to get children into prestige institutions is not necessarily going to provide a better degree than one earned by a student who worked his/her way through a community college and then a modest state university.  In terms of educational substance and quality, that working student may have the better degree.  

Real college degrees are about actually improving life.  They are not pretentious ornaments to be brandished like jewelry and luxury cars.  Real degrees mean something.  They mean that the people who earn them know something.