I’ve noticed a growing trend in public and private discourse over the past several decades, where people at all levels, but especially at the higher levels of politics, business, and, for lack of a better word, “celebrity,” offer their perspective as if it were factual. And they’re using the term “perspective,” as if to convey greater weight than mere opinion. Now, I know their “perspective” is factual to them, but the selective use of facts converts them from the realm of attempted accuracy to mere opinion. And, as a very old saying goes, “You’re entitled to your opinion, but not [just] your facts.” Or just the facts you find convenient.

We all have the tendency to ignore unpleasant facts, those at variance with what we wish to believe, or at the very least to give them less weight and credence, and to overweight those facts that support what we wish to believe. And none of us is truly objective, nor can we be, because, by nature, we’re subjective. But the mark of the truly thoughtful individual is to attempt to weigh all the facts, to fight against the immediate instant opinion that comes to mind, and to consider those things which he or she would rather not.

There is a practical problem with this, however.

Aristotle classified arguments by type, those rooted in facts and figures (logos), those that rely on the speaker’s expertise and credibility (ethos), and those playing on an audience’s emotions (pathos). Donald Trump clearly relies on his reputation, essentially saying he’s an expert, while playing almost entirely on the emotions of the audience. There are virtually no credible facts and figures, but that apparently makes no difference to the effectiveness of his arguments because his appeals are overwhelmingly gut-level emotional.

Hillary Clinton has also relied on her expertise, but she has attempted to present her case for being president far more on logical basis, and polls have consistently revealed that she is weaker than Trump in appealing to her audience, or any other audience. All too many of her supporters are merely “with Hillary,” and not with as strong an emotional connection as Trump supporters have for him.

The problem is that winning this “argument” and the presidency can clearly be accomplished without accurate facts.

I can certainly understand the concerns of disenfranchised former white male middle class industrial workers. The changes in industrial production methods, especially automation, and world trade patterns have effectively destroyed tens upon tens of thousands of U.S. semi-skilled jobs. But the facts suggest that no amount of political rhetoric is ever going to bring those kinds of jobs back. And anyone’s “perspective” that insists a politician will be able to overturn the impact of massive technological change is mere unfounded opinion. Yes, better skills training will equip workers for the new kinds of jobs, but the old ones are gone forever. The logical basis of this argument doesn’t appeal in the slightest to all too many of those displaced, and when it’s placed in an emotional context, facts lose out in the hearts and minds of all but the most thoughtful individuals.

Global temperatures are rising inexorably; glaciers all over the world are shrinking or vanishing; practically every month in the past year has been hotter than that same month in any previous year, something that as far back as we’ve been able to measure has never happened before. Summer northern polar ice caps are the smallest ever measured, and water temperatures around Antarctica are continuing to rise. Yet there are those whose “perspective” denies this. Do we know the precise reasons for this? Not to decimal point precision, but when global temperatures for centuries having been rising in concert with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and human activity is at present the major source of increased carbon dioxide, the facts strongly suggest that we’re responsible. Trump doesn’t bother with the facts; he makes an emotional argument that global warming is a hoax, suggesting it was perpetrated by China.

In comparison, Hillary comes off as a policy wonk, trying to persuade people, and one thing I’ve learned from twenty years in politics is that facts are never enough to convince anyone who doesn’t believe you in the first place. Lyndon Johnson once observed that you couldn’t change people’s hearts and minds until you “have ‘em by the balls.”

And those differences between Hillary and the Donald are why this election, barring some major surprise, will be very close, and why Donald Trump may well win.

As I noted a good year ago, Donald Trump has made a blatant and multifaceted appeal to the less than college educated white males who feel disenfranchised by industrial automation and by the offshoring of once high-paid semi-skilled jobs. Call that the disenfranchised white male card.

What has been part of this appeal, but largely overlooked, or thought to be merely a by-product of Trump’s boorishness and crudity, is a pervasive attack on and minimization of women, particularly intelligent professional women. I’ve seen too many “Trump the Bitch” bumper stickers to believe that his attack on women is merely macho boorishness, although it’s certainly that. Widespread bumper stickers aren’t the product of lone wolves.

Why else do I think that Trump’s use of the “misogyny card” is deliberate? Because of who happens to be replacing those “disenfranchised” white males. As jobs for semi-skilled white males have dwindled, the numbers of higher paid jobs for women, particularly educated women, have increased (if not enough in my opinion). And in many ways, Hillary Clinton is one of the first of those women to take on directly the last citadels of male privilege… and, sorry to say, all too many men, particularly white men with less than a college education, don’t like powerful women.

The attack on Hillary Clinton for her “lying” and “untrustworthiness” amounts to a proxy attack on women in general. After all, is Trump exactly the paragon of truthfulness and integrity? He’s lied time and time again, and he’s certainly not trustworthy in business deals. Yet there’s almost no furor about Trump’s lying and untrustworthiness.

Why not? Because it’s not newsworthy? Or for some other reason?

Men, again, like it or not, have created an image of women as more deceptive and secretive than men. Yet, for example, more men than women have extra-marital affairs. Interestingly enough, as more and more married women work and have come to earn more money and power, the percentage of married women who cheat has increased. Obviously, this is a form of “power” and is just another movement toward gender equality that grates on at least a certain percentage of men, and not just those who have less education.

Over a career that spans fifty years in the military, in business, and in government, I’ve seen, time after time, the good old boys and their attacks on competent women. For some reason, what men do in government and business is just fine for them, but not for women. Years ago, after I’d just promoted a woman over several male colleagues, one of them cautioned me that she was “ambitious and out for herself,” totally ignoring the fact that all the male candidates were every bit as blatantly ambitious. She did just fine, and in fact, far better than those who succeeded her when she finally moved on. When women are attacked for doing what men do in the same field, same time, and same way, and the “boys” aren’t, it’s misogyny.

And that’s what Trump’s doing, and what the media is doing is letting him get away with it. But then, after the Roger Ailes scandal, why should we expect anything else?

I’ve just had a taste of what happens when the faults of our wired/beamed world collide with [I suspect] with modern “cost-effective” [mis]management. After four days without internet service, I was forcibly reminded just how difficult it is to conduct normal business without such links. I couldn’t even tell most people with whom I exchange emails that I couldn’t reply.

More to the point, I was also reminded just how poorly managed a particular massive telecommunications system [CenturyLink] happens to be. Internet service vanished. When I called to find out what had happened, I was informed that there was a local outage and that service would be restored within four hours. That didn’t happen. Nor did it happen by the next morning, as promised. Nor by the next afternoon. Nor by the following morning. Nor by that night. I kept calling and getting updates…and promises… but no internet. But after almost three days I was reassured that most of the outages had been fixed – just not in my smaller area – but promised my area would be restored in another 24 hours.

That didn’t happen, either. What did happen was that CenturyLink’s automated system assured me that there were no network problems. When I persisted, the system informed me that there was a problem, but that no repair ticket had been processed. For twenty-four hours, that same message persisted.

After three days, after getting really angry and obnoxious, if politely so, because politeness wasn’t getting any results, or any information. I discovered that they’d sent a technician out, but he didn’t have the right parts, and there weren’t any in Cedar City. Now Cedar City isn’t Denver or Phoenix, but the area does have a university and over 50,000 people – and CenturyLink doesn’t have parts and haven’t been able to get them for three days? We have an airport where FedEx and UPS land and take off daily. So does Delta Airlines. It’s only a three hour drive to Las Vegas.

The actual humans whom I contacted could only say that repairs should have been completed in no more than 36 hours, and, outside of the one who had told me about the parts issue, the others could offer neither a reason nor an estimate of the time when internet service would be restored.

In the meantime, the automated problem response system continued to declare that there was no network problem, and that there was a local problem for which no repair ticket had been yet processed. Then, finally, after four days, I had internet service.

So because of their lack of parts, a number of us were shut down off the internet for four days. I wonder just how much of an annual bonus the logistics manager got last year. And if I can send packages overnight to almost anywhere, why can’t CenturyLink? Or is it that they don’t have enough parts in stock? Either way, it doesn’t speak all that well for the company management.

And, oh yes, this is the same company that advertises how much safer and more secure their service is compared to wireless communications.

If dogs like you, they wag their tail and trot up and say hello. Shy dogs may only wag their tails. If dogs don’t like you, or your dog, or believe you are threatening them or those they protect, they growl or whine and give off other indications. If they’re “omega” dogs, they may retreat or cower. If they’re well-trained and they don’t like you, they tend to make it obvious that you are surviving only by the will of their mistress or master.

Friendly cats are similar, if more restrained, to friendly dogs. But cats that don’t like someone either vanish or are never seen… and in some cases conduct sneak attacks, often on personal items. Cats are also rather good at walking the tightrope, so to speak. We have a cat named after a queen in English history, and she makes a practice of walking along a two-inch wide balcony railing over a twenty-foot drop. I just wish I were that sure-footed, both physically and socially.

People can behave like “dogs” or “cats,” or even approximate other animals, such as the individual one woman calls, “Sir Hiss.” Unhappily, the people I have the most trouble with are those who outwardly behave like big friendly dogs, while planning ambushes and sneak attacks like cats. I’m especially wary of men who have wide expansive smiles with eyes that smile as well and who radiate warmth when they’re focused on someone. In more cases than not in my life, such individuals have been considerably less than perfectly trustworthy, but I have yet to find a dog showing such friendliness who attacked when someone wasn’t looking. Needless to say, this particular ability/mannerism turns up more than a few times in my books.

One politician I knew seemed to light up whenever a camera was focused in his direction, and his sense of cameras was uncanny. He never lost an election, either. Talk about adaptation. I haven’t the faintest idea if any other animal besides homo sapiens can do that, but he certainly excelled at it.

I’ve also encountered more than a few individuals of the sneaky slimy type usually called snakes, but that’s a problem because few snakes are actually slimy, and that description does a disservice to most snakes. In fact, most descriptions of people as one animal or another usually do a disservice to the animal whose supposedly unfavorable characteristics are being applied to the individual in question, because, in fact, human beings have the capability for greater deceptiveness, murder, and pure evil than any poor animal.

Recently, I’ve seen a number of public service spots pointing out how texting or cell phone use while driving is twice as deadly as driving drunk. Not only do I believe it; I’ve seen it, up close and personal. The strangest time was last Sunday morning while I was doing my morning walk with the sweet-crazy Aussie-Saluki. We were halfway across the street that had a four-way stop when a driver comes up the street…and keeps going, without even stopping. Fortunately, I’m slightly paranoid, and look around when crossing streets, even at stop signs and in crosswalks, and when I suspected what might happen, we sprinted. Even so, the driver barely missed us, but he passed so close that I could see he wasn’t even looking – except at the cell-phone he held in one hand. And he was dressed in coat and tie, apparently heading for church.

Not a day goes by that I don’t see text-impaired driving and walking, and at least where we live it’s getting worse. I see mothers with small children in their cars glued more to their cellphones than either their driving or their children. I even occasionally see parents walking with children – wearing earbuds and ignoring those offspring. I see scores of college students driving one-handed with the other hand holding a cellphone to their ear or texting on it.

What has struck me about all this is that it’s an extreme form of narcissism. All of these individuals are so wrapped up in themselves and whatever pleasure or need the texting or phoning fulfills that they don’t and possibly can’t think of the potential consequences of overuse and careless use of instant communications.

Young people, particularly, seem glued to their devices, as if they are prosthetics that they cannot do without. Increasingly, college students are spending more time on social media and less on their studies, but paradoxically, in general, they’re less socially adept because they interact less with others in direct personal contact and restrict themselves to electronic contacts. It even appears that the majority of college students move across campus, earbuds firmly in place, ignoring the other students around them.

It’s as if all these users are electronic/communications druggies, with all the narcissistic faults of alcohol or drug dependency. And no one seems to recognize this… or the increasingly lethal side-effects.