According to scientists, human beings are genetically programmed to home in on the worst possible news in the present, but to primarily recall the best aspects of our past, barring of course massive trauma or PTSD-causing events.

The reasons for this are obvious, if one thinks about it. In most of human history, failing to pick up on even the smallest hints of danger could be injurious, if not fatal. Likewise, remembering everything negative in the past would likely drive one to self-destruction over time.

Unfortunately, at present, those primordial traits have some distinctly negative implications, particularly when dealing with the media and elections. Right now, a huge number of Americans are recalling, quite favorably, the Trump years, and comparing them to the present, which they regard less favorably.

But the figures show that since 2019 until now, while prices are up 19%, wages are up 21%. If one looks at the yearly figures, the greatest increase in prices started in the years when Trump was President, yet Biden is blamed for the inflation?

Currently, according to Gallup polls, 85% of Americans feel that they’re doing well financially, but only 17% of Americans believe the economy as a whole is doing well. Rationally, that makes no sense.

So why do Americans believe the economy is doing so poorly? Might it be because the media algorithms are directing the media to emphasize the negative to get better ratings, by appealing to our genetic predilections?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly wage of employees was $26.00 when Trump took office in January 2017, and $29.90 when he left office. Currently, that figure is $35.00. While that increase hasn’t yet covered the price spike of 2022-23, inflation is moderating, and wages are continuing to increase.

What’s also forgotten is that, from April to September 2023, corporate profits drove 53% of inflation. Historically, for the 40 years prior to the pandemic, profits drove just 11% of inflation. While prices for consumers have risen by 3.4% over the past year, material/input costs for producers have risen by just 1%. Corporate profits as a share of national income have skyrocketed by almost 30% since the start of the pandemic.

Yet, somehow, these figures get buried, and instead of reporting a more accurate and balanced view, the media emphasizes the negative to boost ratings, and the Republicans emphasize the negatives to gain votes, while ignoring the sizable impact of corporate greed and capitalizing on all too human nostalgia.

The other day, Donald Trump falsely charged Kamala Harris with transferring funds from FEMA to fund aid to illegal immigrants.

Not only was this false, but as president, in 2017,Trump delayed disaster aid for hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico and diverted money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to finance an effort to return undocumented migrants to Mexico. Then just weeks before the 2020 election, the Trump administration released $13 billion in aid to Puerto Rico, which triggered an investigation about why the funds had been delayed for years.

In essence, Trump falsely charged Harris with (1) doing something that she did not do and could not have done even if she’d wanted to (since the vice-president doesn’t have that authority) and (2) doing exactly what he did when he was President.

Last week Trump also charged the White House with not giving aid to North Carolina because the state voted Republican didn’t support the Democrats.

That was also false, so false that the governors of the impacted states, including senators and congressmen, have stated publicly that they are getting aid and that any delays are because roads have to be cleared to reach some areas.

But again, the past reflects Trump’s charges. Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings. Trump only changed his mind when his staff pulled voting results to show Trump that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa. So… once again Trump charged his opponents – falsely – with what he tried to do for real.

So… not only is Trump spewing more blatant falsehoods, but he’s also revealing how he thinks and falsely projecting his own vindictive behavior on others.

We have an acquaintance whom everyone would call a good person, and he is. He and his wife are retired, and they live comfortably, but not extravagantly. They’re churchgoers, and are very supportive of the community initiatives, not only those religious and charitable, but also those involving education and other fields.

But what I couldn’t understand was how someone like him could support all the lies, misinformation, and corruption coming from Trump and his campaign. That is, until I recalled that our acquaintance had been a very effective and successful salesman and sales executive… and then the pieces fell into place.

Good salespeople believe in the product, and to be good, they have to believe in the product. Therefore, almost anything that sells the product is useful, and if they believe in the end product, the end justifies the means.

The problem that “good” salespeople tend to forget is that, especially in the political field, lies, misinformation, and corruption have side effects, often disastrous ones. J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, resulted in bomb threats and more unrest that continues to unsettle every facet of civic life there. Trump’s latest lie, about Kamala Harris’s purported misuse of FEMA funds (to which NO vice president has access to, directly or indirectly) vilifies FEMA and makes its mission even harder at the time of one of the greatest natural disasters in the south, particularly when FEMA is already short of funds (thanks to Trump’s Republican supporters in the House). Trump’s lies and misinformation on January 6th resulted in not only a riot, but police deaths and injuries to hundreds of people. Trump’s encouragement of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville led to more unrest and death.

What all the “good” salespeople who believe in what Trump promises, and more often than not fails to deliver, do not seem to understand is that, especially in politics, you cannot separate the ends from the means, and inciting violence through ever more blatant falsehoods foreshadows exactly how Trump will govern. Equally important, he’s made no secret of it – he’s said that he’ll govern like a dictator and seek revenge on his political opponents by all possible means as President.

I just wish those with the “sales” mindset would take a closer look at the “product,” the real product and not all the deceptive promises and “sales brochures.”

As I’ve written before, technology effectively multiplies everything where it’s applied. The first automobiles were painstakingly hand-assembled, and only the wealthy could afford them. That was also true for a vast array of consumer goods and machines, so that a middleclass American lives in greater personal luxury (except for vast grounds and huge cold or too hot palaces and being able to order people around) than did Louis XIV of France (the Sun King).

We take much of this for granted, and many seek even more in the way of comforts, goods, and conveniences. That, after all, is a supremely human trait.

But there’s one application of technology that human beings handle supremely well, alas, and that’s the development and application of weapons. There are more than a hundred commercial small arms manufacturers in the world, and more than fifty of them are located in the U.S. According to the 2017 Small Arms Survey, there are more than one billion firearms in the world, with almost four hundred million held by civilians in the United States. Most “standard” AR-15 type rifles can take magazines holding up to 100 rounds.

As mass shootings in the U.S. have demonstrated, weapons light enough for 14-year-olds and those even younger can wreak havoc in seconds. And on the military level, the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation can, at least theoretically, each launch up to 5,000 nuclear warheads within a matter of minutes, which in practical terms would effectively destroy civilization on the planet, along with the vast majority of human beings.

Not content with creating these weapons, “creative” geniuses are working on ways to weaponize our communications systems, improve autonomous weapons systems through AI, and investigate biological weapons of various sorts.

Is the culmination of human evolution and creativity to come up with weapons effective enough that a single individual can destroy the entire human race (or most of it) with one push of a button, one release of software, or the creation of one killer virus? Possibly without even a human being directly involved?

And if we survive that, will the next step be to invent a way to pulverize the planet?

These questions aren’t quite facetious; human beings are awfully good at weaponization of almost anything, and we’re getting better by the year.

There have been more than a few articles about how rigid anti-abortion laws have increased the medical and health problems or pregnant women. For instance, the maternal death rate in Texas surged 60% as a result of the Texas anti-abortion legislation. And we’re seeing horror story after horror story about women dying or losing the ability to have children when a normal pregnancy goes wrong, and doctors won’t give them treatment because they fear losing their licenses and/or going to jail.

Bad as that is, there’s another negative aspect of those laws that’s only mentioned occasionally in national media, and that’s the adverse economic impact on women and their families. Denying access to abortion and reproductive health care places the greatest economic burden and significant health risks on low-income, often minority women, increasing both poverty and inequality. Interesting enough, allowing freedom of reproductive care decreases poverty… and also lowers the tax burden on both states and the federal government.

But the economic impact goes beyond poor women. It affects all women and their spouses and children, in ways that often aren’t recognized. If a working woman wants to live and work in a state where she has control of her own body, that can limit her economic opportunities, because there are at least eight states where she cannot work without putting her own health at risk. Men don’t have to choose between giving up bodily autonomy and economic opportunity; why should women?

This also has a familial impact, because two thirds of all children live in households where all available parents work.

In states like Idaho, obstetricians are leaving the state because they fear that giving necessary care to pregnant woman could land them in jail. Those leaving Idaho, Texas, or elsewhere aren’t being replaced. In addition, fewer medical school students are choosing the obstetrics field. This not only has a negative impact on individual doctors, but on communities and states as a whole, particularly in economically depressed areas, at a time when we already have a national shortage of physicians.

Yet all the downsides of thoughtless anti-abortion legislation, including the negative economics, are ignored or brushed aside by banner-waving pro-lifers who only consider the “unborn,” who, for them, are sacred and inviolate, while ignoring women who will die without proper medical care, girls raped incestuously, and women forced to bear children, often as a result of spousal abuse, children they do not want and cannot properly care for (and whom the right-to-lifers won’t care for, either).