Alternate Facts and Reality

There was a news story about how Mohammad Ali JR was detained at an airport and questioned about his name and religion.

Since he is travelling under a US Passport and was born in this country you might wonder why they wanted to know those things.

I would understand if he was selected for extra screening, this seems to happen somewhat randomly, but where he got his name or what religion he is seems bigoted.

Now today the TSA said they didn't inquire about his name, only asked if he was an Arab and how he got his name.  Now, his passport was clearly an American one and maybe they suspected that it was a false one.

However, saying he wasn't profiled when clearly those are profiling questions, is another example of these alternate facts.

We have a bigot in the white house and he is inspiring more bigotry.  Its getting to be open season.

Now preventing terrorism is of course something I and everybody I know supports.  However stopping American citizens who have Islamic names or who are Muslim is not combating terrorism.

Its simply bigotry.

Can you imagine them questioning an American citizen like this if he was buying a gun?

Those same bigots would be screaming about the 2nd Amendment.

Of course due process is also an important provision in the constitution and whether this meets that criteria will be determined in court.

Reality tells us that a persons country of origin is not an indicator of potential terrorist acts.  Being a member of a terrorist organization is.

The first does not serve as a proxy for the second.

I prefer we stay with reality.

Orange is the new President

Well we went from our first black president to our first orange one.  What strikes me as sad is that I don't think he ever actually expected to get elected but I could be wrong about that. 

In a month when we set aside a day to celebrate our prior presidents, many of whom were in charge during turbulent periods of our history, we see a stark contrast with the current one.

Now, its not even a full month and one expects that the administration might get over a rocky start, although that is by no means certain.

I want to point out that by no means were all previous presidents great.

Its also noteworthy that over time the power of the president has tended to increase but there's a reasonably good chance that we will see a bit of a reversal there based on overall disinterest with the business of running the Government.

It is possible that something will happen that will result in this president rising to the occasion and becoming one that is looked back on with high regard.

I myself don't see that, but predicting the future is uncertain.  I do think that many of his supporters will become disenchanted with him based on the fact that he is easily capable of changing his positions since they seem to be based on very weak foundations.

Not being a politician until recently he was free to come up with positions and espouse them.  Because he was rich enough and famous enough people listened to him and a certain number probably said they agreed with him, even if they really didn't.  Now of course he is going to get data and facts.  He may try to ignore them but they will keep popping up.

You see a certain development taking place in his foreign affairs.  Its easy to think the United States should just boss the other countries around, except when you find out you can't.  He needs to realize that our diplomatic positions were based on actual reality instead of late night fantasy.

Similarly in domestic situations, you can't make everything magically delicious.  Business is going to do what is profitable and if adopting technology is profitable (and it is) they will continue to do so.  Electricity generating plants that are using abundant, cheaper natural gas aren't going to go back to coal. 

Concerning defeating ISIS which is simply a short term thing since a new organization will simply spring up, the roots of terrorism are deep.  There is no better way to get attention for a cause then to commit an act of terrorism which despite some fantasy by the administration gets a ton of coverage.  Actually, it would be a great strategy to not cover them since they serve no purpose if they don't get coverage.  Of course our media is going to follow the "if it bleeds, it leads" rule.

Its clear even after a short time that we have an administration that has a steep learning curve.  Sometime the lack of knowledge is amazing.  Concerning refugees and immigrants he throws around the term extreme vetting, but the way he has vetted his cabinet appointments shows that he has no idea what that is.  We already have the most stringent vetting process in the world. 

Campaign motto's don't translate well into policy and the final measure of how we remember this administration in future February's remains to be seen.

Unfortunately the one thing that is almost definitely going to be associated with this administration is the fake news phenomena and the term alternative facts.  Not the best start.

Disregard for the Truth

Sometimes politicians are accused of being too cautious, careful about what they say and often not getting to the point.

They do this because what they said had consequences and could be used against them.

They also realized that they had some responsibility to not mislead people and get them to act based on incorrect information.

Of course that was the old way of doing things.

Now we have entered the age of the alternate facts, better know as lies.

This isn't the first time, the NAZIs and Communists engaged in Propaganda (also know as alternate facts and lies) to sway public opinion.  It actually goes further back than that, but that was sort of the golden age of the practice from my point of view.

After the war we seemed to become a bit more restrained and the fact that we had an independent press in most countries that hesitated to print blatant falsehoods (with some exceptions) kept politicians fairly honest.

Oh we accused them of lying, but the lies were at least circumspect.

Some places like North Korea and other dictatorships maintained the old lying culture but we, despite certain conspiracy theorists, were a little more truthful.

Of course we now have a donnybrook of lies since the advent of social media, the proliferation of alternate fact (news) sites and outside intervention.

The lying has gotten so prevalent the truth seems like just another lie.

Now people who accept anything they read or see on the Internet need to take some responsibility for being deceived, but we also see a president who lies consistently about almost everything.

Of course its not him, its everyone else who is lying.  His administration isn't any better and the taint of what they are doing isn't going away anytime soon.

See, the truth will eventually prevail.  Lies have a problem in that the real world contradicts them.

Its just a matter of time.