Last week, when I was watching a news story on the results of the election, a particular news item caught my attention – that a number of ballots cast by young people in Nevada were being scrutinized because the signatures on the ballot didn’t match the signatures on file.

Fraud, you might ask. Apparently not.

The signature on the mail-in ballot or in some states on the voting register has to match the signature on file, and that is noted on the ballot, and the signature on file has to match the name on whatever legal document was used to register.

That’s true here in Utah as well, so while my friends know me as Lee Modesitt, and I write under L.E. Modesitt, Jr., the signature on my mail-in ballot has to be my full legal name – Leland Exton Modesitt, Jr. Otherwise, the ballot will be questioned, and possibly thrown out, or I might have to prove to the County Clerk that I’m the one who cast the ballot.

This is spelled out clearly, but the ballots of more than a few ballots of young voters in Nevada were being scrutinized for inadequate signature matches, according to the news.

I’m hardly surprised. Too many of my wife’s college students don’t read the syllabus (and often don’t listen to the same information imparted orally), and then protest that they didn’t know an assignment was due or that a test was scheduled for a given date. So it’s not exactly shocking that some young voters didn’t read the ballot instructions, either.

The American people voted decisively to “restore” a past that never was and to again reject a qualified woman candidate in favor of a male misogynistic convicted felon and sex offender, in part because they desperately wanted certainty and put their hopes in a traditional (but highly flawed) male authority figure.

No matter who was elected, there will be no permanent certainty, possibly not even temporary certainty, given Trump’s past instability and narcissism and given the unstable world political climate, but the American electorate has always been susceptible to the appeal of charlatans, to a greater or lesser degree, especially those who appeal to the idols of nostalgia and prosperity.

One unspoken problem with the Democrat campaign was the excess baggage of the far left and its woke agenda. Most Americans still don’t like to be told which pronoun is “proper” or that they should support Palestinian people who firmly deny that Israel has a right to exist, and the Trump campaign capitalized on that, and on the fact that not all women want to be liberated from the patriarchy.

Not least of all was Trump’s appeal to less educated males, not just white less educated males, who see modern technology, globalization, and educated women as threats to their social and economic future, a threat, in a way, personified by Kamala Harris herself.

The supreme irony of it all is that many of the acts and laws pushed by the Biden Administration are just now beginning to bear fruit and likely will be recalled in the future nostalgically as the wonderful second Trump term (assuming Trump takes credit for those initiatives rather than torpedoing them).

The question ahead is whether Trump can be magnanimous, and merely revel in his success, or whether he’ll vigorously pursue his enemies, as he’s threatened, and whether the Congress can or will rein in his excesses.

These days, my wife the professor has observed that rigorous tests in education are fewer and less rigorous than ever before – and the majority of students are less prepared and more fragile when they don’t perform well on tests or in class, and too many administrators worry far more about feelings than facts or competence. Unfortunately, this trend isn’t limited to students.

Yet tests are a necessity in a technological society. We require people to pass tests to obtain drivers’ licenses, pilot licenses, medical licenses, legal licenses (even if it is called a bar exam), and the like.

The one area where native-born Americans don’t have to pass a test is to vote. All that’s needed is citizenship, registration (no test required these days, unlike for African Americans in the past, particularly in the South) and being a local resident of legal age.

Benjamin Franklin said that the Founding Fathers had created a “Republic, if you can keep it.” At that time, the United States was the first large, self-governing nation in the world. But the test Americans face is, as Franklin put it, whether we can maintain that heritage.

Unlike authoritarian regimes, democracy is messy, and it requires citizens to make choices that are often complex and far from ideal.

Most people, however, want simpler choices. They don’t want to look at an array of facts, or look deeply into much of anything, particularly the background of political candidates who strongly appeal to their beliefs and prejudices.

When a candidate lies, and admits that he created a false story to dramatize an issue, as J.D. Vance has with his tale of immigrants eating pets, doesn’t that suggest both oversimplification and a willingness to say anything in pursuit of power?

Americans have always been leery of politicians who change their mind about issues, calling them flip-floppers. The senior President Bush declared at one point, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then several years later, faced with a fiscal crisis, he changed his mind and increased taxes. He lost the next election because he changed his mind, but his judgement was correct, and his taxes balanced the federal budget for years. No president since then has shown that kind of courage.

Trump has remained steadfast in wanting lower taxes, especially for billionaires. He’s also been steadfast on other issues, including stricter abortion laws and punishing tariffs, and in denigrating any woman in a position of power who opposes him, while praising dictators, and promising to be one. He’s been steadfast in declaring he won an election he lost, one declared fair even by the vast majority of local Republican election officials.

Kamala Harris has moderated her positions on a number of issues, mainly in the environmental area and immigration, and she’s been attacked for changing her stance on those issues, while remaining steadfast in terms of personal rights and freedoms.

But is changing positions to reflect reality bad? Is remaining steadfast or lying about bad policies and election results good?

This coming election is in fact a test, like it or not.

The test of democracy is whether voters will look beyond the obvious, beyond their confirmation biases, to pick the better candidate based on the facts or to stick blindly to what they find comfortable.

And, always, the certainty of autocracy can seem so much more comfortable than allowing people greater personal freedom.

What we choose is a test, and we’ll have to live with the results for at least four more years, possibly far longer if too many voters choose unwisely.

American males in the 18-29 age group favor Donald Trump disproportionately. In today’s United States, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

In a way, Trump represents everything that most young males want – money, the ability to have their way with women, the apparent ability to tell the government to stuff it, the ability to avoid adult supervision, and the ability to put down women, especially strong women, at will, all without repercussions – not to mention the ability to complain endlessly about how everyone is against him.

I’m certainly not the only one who’s made that connection. There was a New York Post story earlier this week about Trump’s “unabashed machismo vibe,” and its effective appeal to 18-29 year-old American males.

But the appeal goes beyond that. Too many men are still boys. As they get older, their toys just get bigger, and more expensive. I see it all the time – small houses with powerboats almost the size of the house, families with multiple ATVs and multiple trail bikes, but who plead poverty and can’t or won’t provide health insurance or help their children with college expenses. Male students driving late model cars or pick-up trucks who claim they can’t afford textbooks.

When men complain that their wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and that housing is too expensive, I have to wonder. The mortgage rates they complain about are lower than any mortgage I was able to get for more than forty years. The only time they were lower was after we’d slaved to pay off the house, but as an adult, you have to realize that matters don’t always go your way, no matter how long and hard you work (the odds are just far better if you do)…and that most women get tired of boys who never grow up (which might help explain why more women oppose Trump).

Back in 2016, Donald Trump said, “I love the poorly educated.” That was after polling showed that less educated voters contributed to his winning the Nevada caucus during his 2016 presidential primary campaign. Voters who are poorly educated about the facts of key issues — including inflation, immigration, and violent crime – are much more likely to vote for Trump than Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to new research released last Thursday by Ipsos’ political tracking team.

Analysis shows that voters’ primary media sources strongly determine their voting preferences. The primary news sources for less educated Americans are the Fox News Channel and other conservative media outlets – and/or conservative social media. Followers of such media sources were and are markedly more likely to incorrectly answer fact-based questions about inflation, the stock market, FEMA’s hurricane aid, violent crime, and illegal immigration.

The irony of this is that the primary purveyor of false (factually incorrect) news in the United States is Fox News and the greatest beneficiary of that false news is Donald Trump, who is trying, and often succeeding, in convincing Americans that the more accurate news sources are peddling false news.

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump and Fox News are a marriage of convenience and misinformation, because neither Trump nor his supporters are in the slightest interested in factual news that conflicts with their views.

As I cited earlier, a recent Gallup poll found that while 85% of respondents reported that they were doing well, only 17% of those same respondents thought the United States was doing well. This apparent irrationality permeates the entire electorate, but especially the Trump supporters.

Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy something like six times, been found guilty of 34 counts of business fraud, been found guilty of tax fraud, increased the national debt by $8.4 trillion (compared to $4.3 trillion for Biden), stiffed contractors who worked for him, and fired people who worked for him on a whim, yet almost half of the United States thinks he’ll do better with the economy than a woman who has risen from nothing to Vice President… and never declared bankruptcy.

Trump has called the 1,800 Marines killed at Belleau Woods in WWI “suckers,” stated that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was better than the Congressional Medal of Honor because most of the Medal of Honor winners got killed, declared that Senator John McCain, after 5 ½ years of being tortured, “was not a war hero” because “I like people who weren’t captured,” and avoided military service during the Vietnam era through deferments and “bone spurs.” He later stated that “Only suckers went to Vietnam.” He impugned many of the high-ranking officers who served under him when he was president and declared that “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had, people who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” He even said that if the election didn’t turn out the way he wanted, he’d use the military to set things right (apparently forgetting that on election day, he wouldn’t be in charge of the U.S. military forces).

Yet far too many people are willing to elect Trump as Commander-in-Chief, conveniently ignoring his long history of belittling the military, from the lowest-ranking soldiers and sailors to the most senior officers, and his total lack of understanding of military capability and culture.

SO WHY DO SO MANY AMERICANS SUPPORT THIS IRRATIONALITY?

Because technology and globalization have destroyed the comparatively higher-paying semi-skilled jobs of the 1950s and 1960s, and American industry can’t afford those pay rates for semi-skilled work in a global economy, and nothing will change that.

Because, for every bright and capable woman who gets a high-paying job, too many Americans believe there’s a man who doesn’t (ignoring the fact that he’s less capable).

Because, for every minority who struggles and succeeds, they believe there’s some white male who likely doesn’t.

For every woman who wants control of her body, there’s a man who doesn’t want her to have that control.

For these reasons, and quite a few others, a significant segment of U.S. society wants to destroy or drastically cut back the current system, and they see (consciously or unconsciously) Trump as the way to do it. But Project 2025 is effectively a blueprint for restoring white wealthy corporate dominance, not for restoring a past that never was.

Trump won’t totally destroy the system; he’ll only make it less fair, less fiscally sound, more fragile, and far more accommodating to the rich and powerful… and, in the process, increase the hate, anger, and polarization while blaming everyone else for doing so.

But his supporters don’t care… and won’t or can’t listen to facts or logic. In the spirit of the old movie Network, they’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, even as they try to burn down the nation around them.

A significant number of Donald Trump’s supporters cite the state of the economy and the need for fiscal sanity. I understand the concern about fiscal sanity. But for the last twenty years or so, regardless of which political party has controlled the Legislative Branch, Congress has continued to spend more than it receives in tax and tariff revenues.

However, in recent years, the Republicans have actually spent more than the Democrats, astounding as that sounds. Both Harris and Trump have promised more “tax relief,” but Harris has actually promised far less than Trump and her promises are targeted more at the middle and working classes, while Trump offers far more “tax relief” for the wealthy.

Prior to this past week, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated that the costs of Vice President Harris’s plan could range from having no significant fiscal impact to a debt increase debt of $8.10 trillion through 2035, while Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. In other words, Trump’s plan is far worse than that of Harris.

The Washington Post just ran an analysis of Trump’s plans for Social Security, which shows that under Trump’s plan, in six years Social Security would be unable to pay full benefits.

And those costs don’t include Trump’s newest proposed tax cuts — to make car loan interest fully tax-deductible and an additional tax cut for Americans who live abroad.

Now… some will say, “That’s just Trump’s rhetoric. He won’t or can’t do all of that.” And they’re probably right. But if that’s the case, attacking Harris’s spending plans is not only hypocritical, but also deceptive and lying, because Trump again won’t keep his word while attacking someone whose plans are more fiscally sound than his are… and yet almost half of the United States feels (I can’t say “think” here, for obvious reasons) Trump is more financially sound, despite all the calculations to the contrary.

The latest tactic by the Republicans is, whenever Kamala Harris proposes something, especially something that makes obvious sense, to say, “You had four years. Why didn’t you do this already?”

Unfortunately, this simplistic question resounds well with simplistic minds, who don’t seem to understand either the Constitution or the structural limitations of the office of the vice-president.

The simple and accurate answer is: Because the Vice President has NO power to do anything like that. The President is in charge, not the vice-president.

Harris is in the difficult position of wanting to change things, but if she says that she in any way disagrees with the Biden Administration, then she’ll be attacked as ungrateful and a traitor of sorts.

All she can do is to present her plans and let people see what they are and decide on them.

She can present an immigration reform plan, as she has, but the Republicans immediately shout, “Why didn’t you do that already? You had four years.” Of course, that ignores the fact that Donald Trump scuttled immigration reform, by persuading Republicans in the House and Senate to kill the reform plan so that Trump could run on that issue. Trump already had four years and couldn’t get an immigration law passed when he was in charge, but that’s conveniently overlooked.

Blaming Harris for problems in the Biden administration is like blaming Mike Pence for Trump’s flaws and failures or pinning on Dick Cheney the blame for the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis that occurred in the second Bush administration.

Not that the far right has much acquaintance with either logic or facts.

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).

There have been more than a few articles about how rigid anti-abortion laws have increased the medical and health problems for 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.

Donald Trump is apparently now saying that the attempted assassinations directed at him occurred because Democrats have labeled him a threat to democracy, and that Democrats should tone down their rhetoric.

Given what Trump has done and said already, his own words and actions demonstrate that he is a threat to democracy. The Democrats didn’t incite the January 6th attempted coup. Trump’s lies and acts did. Then he compounded those acts by failing to call off his supporters for hours, and when he did, he said he loved those who created the uprising.

In the meantime, just in the last week, Trump and Vance’s bald-faced and totally refuted lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, have spurred bomb threats, as well as forced the closure of two colleges and several schools, and created wide-spread and still on-going disruption for the entire town. Yet Vance went on to say that he’d continue to lie if those lies brought issues to public attention

Trump doesn’t give a damn about what happens to others so long as he gets his way. He incited the January 6th insurgency, but walked away from the situation and the ensuing carnage that not only injured 140 police, but hundreds of his own followers. That kind of single-minded narcissism is more like Hamas than traditional U.S. Republican behavior.

And that behavior identifies Vance and Trump as threats to democracy.

One of the great weaknesses of democracies is that they too often fail to restrict the unchecked flow of falsehoods from demagogues and would-be dictators, largely because restricting speech on any grounds is the beginning of a slippery slope that can lead to tyranny. The problem, unfortunately, is that not restricting blatantly false assertions can also bring down democratic government – and has done so time and time again, because those who lie blatantly and repeatedly to gain power won’t stop there.

And people who will willingly accept lie after lie because those lies reinforce their beliefs deserve the hell that will ensue if those fallacy-followers become the majority. Unhappily, the rest of us will suffer the same fate, if not worse, given what “true believers” usually do to non-believers.

Recent comments (and I won’t say “the latest,” because there’s always something else) from Donald Trump include the discredited statements that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio, a comment later changed to eating geese from the parks, and that Kamala Harris had tiny receivers in her earrings at the debate. Both claims are preposterous, for differing reasons, but they illustrate Trump’s mentality.

In his mind, he’s the greatest, no one greater, and what he says is the “gospel truth,” even if actual facts refute his words. If he doesn’t come out on top, whether in crowd size, funds raised, poll results, or actual ballots cast, that’s because someone else played unfair or cheated. And of course, when he wins, it’s a legitimate result.

Corporations and corporate types have spent millions on his behalf, perfectly legally, as a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, but now that Harris has raised more money, her fundraising is “dirty money,” obviously because Trump believes that no one else could honestly raise that kind of funding, and that must be because his opponents are somehow cheating.

He’s been found guilty of business fraud in a state court, one that has no legal ties to the federal judiciary, yet he claims that the present Administration in Washington, D.C., “weaponized” the state legal system against him, despite the total lack of evidence, because he couldn’t possibly be guilty, and the fact that he was found guilty proves the state was doing something illegal.

He been found guilty of sexual assault and defamation – twice – again by a state court, and he claims that he never knew the woman. And then he has the nerve to say that the women he assaulted weren’t his type, that they couldn’t be the “chosen one” (his words, not mine), as if being chosen to be sexually assaulted by Donald Trump was some great honor, like Zeus defiling Leda. Not that honor has ever been reliably associated with Trump.

Donald Trump has touted his tariffs as making foreign nations and manufacturers pay billions. The fact is that tariffs are and were paid by the importer of the goods, the eventual U.S. consumer.

According to the Tax Foundation, “his proposed tariff increases would hike taxes by another $524 billion annually and shrink GDP by at least 0.8 percent, the capital stock by 0.7 percent, and employment by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs.”

“A worldwide 10 percent tariff and a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods proposed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would lower average after-tax incomes of US households in 2025 by about $1,800, or 1.8 percent, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center.”

The Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that Trump’s “tariff proposals would cost the typical American household over $2,600 a year.”

Trump claims that his income tax cuts benefitted the average family, and they did slightly, but not so much as the very well-off. While the top 1% of households received on average a $61,000 tax cut, the top 0.1% each got $252,000, the bottom 60% of families benefitted by less than $1.25 per day.

And his new proposals will repeat the same pattern, where households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.

So, if you put the figures together, Trump’s proposals will give average families a tax reduction of $500-600 and cost them between $1,800 and $2,600 in the higher price of goods, and, of course, the well-off will pay a lot less in taxes, $60,000 to $250,000 less.

All that doesn’t take into account that, since the government is already running massive deficits, those millionaire tax cuts will also lead to increased inflationary pressures, which will erode the purchasing power of all Americans, except the top one percent, whose tax cut savings will outweigh the inflationary costs.

Although most observers believe that Kamala Harris “won” the debate with Donald Trump, she never answered one of the key questions: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago.”

One of the reasons she likely didn’t is because the question is, underneath the simple words, a variation on the old trope question, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?”

Another reason is that no matter what the nostalgia buffs think, we can’t go back to the situation of four years ago, when what worked economically then would have different impacts now.

But Harris missed a great opportunity to defuse the whole “better off then” conceit, because most people regard the past as somehow better, except for the few times of world-changing disasters.

The answer Harris should have given is:

That’s the wrong question. What matters is what policies will make your life better from here on out, not what happened four years ago. The United States needs a leader and policies that address today’s challenges, not selective memories of the past. Here are my policies to improve life for all Americans, not just the wealthiest Americans, but all Americans.

From there she could have launched into her listing of policy proposals.

The state of the economy is one of the great worries for most Americans, and until she addresses it head-on, she’s going to have trouble beating Trump, and the fact that she’s only slightly ahead illustrates the lack of faith in her ability to handle the economy, despite the fact that Trump is a lying, misogynistic, bigoted, hate-mongering, and often incompetent bully.

And like Harris, we all need to ask the right questions for today and tomorrow.

Donald Trump has nasty nicknames for almost everyone. Why hasn’t anyone come up with one that sticks to him? After all, he’s lied about everything, and his supporters not only don’t care, but many of them revel in his various “capers,” from stiffing workers and contractors, to conviction of sexual assault and character defamation (twice, no less), and conviction on thirty-four counts of business fraud.

Donald, aka Boy Orange and pseudo-billionaire, already has multiple crime convictions, and that doesn’t count all the other charges, including an attempted coup, and continuous out-and-out lies (not exaggerations or misstatements, but bald-faced lies), not to mention even implying that his vice-president ought to have been hung by the mob that Trump unleashed on the U.S. Capitol, a mob he left to its own devices and violence for hours while gloating in the White House. But none of these seem to stick in the public memory, which means people don’t even seem to understand the extent of his cons and crimes.

So little sticks to him that he almost seems to be made of Teflon, but calling him that would be so unfair to Teflon, because it has honest uses and practical purposes… and yet he needs a suitable nickname that sticks to him.

The best I can do is MultiCon Don.

What about you?

Now that Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, both the Republicans and the media are hounding her to provide specific detailed policy proposals. My advice to Harris and her campaign is simple.

DON’T DO IT!!!

First, despite all their claims to the contrary, neither Trump nor his campaign have come up with much in detail. Saying that you’ll Make America Great Again, deport illegal immigrants, stand up to Putin, and stop taxing income from tips are hardly a policy framework. They’re campaign slogans, and that’s about all anyone will get from Trump. More slogans, if that.

Now, there was a detailed Republican plan – Project 2025 – and, once leaked, Trump immediately claimed he never heard of it, and that should tell anyone that you shouldn’t believe any policy suggestion from Trump. As for deporting all illegal immigrants… anyone who does will destroy the American economy, because those illegal immigrants comprise an estimated 20% of the U.S. construction industry, doing dirty jobs that most Americans won’t or can’t do, at a time when we’re already short of housing that costs too much.

Second, the media only wants those detailed policy plans so that they can nitpick and criticize them to death, finding fault in every phrase. Such plans are just red meat to the media wolverines, no matter how much they claim they’re only seeking the truth. The truth is in fourth place behind audience support, advertising revenue, and newscasters’ egos.

Third, no detailed campaign policy proposal ever survives intact after contact with reality and economics. No economist can predict accurately what the economy—or the world political situation – will be five months plus from now. It’s fine to say that the U.S. needs to restructure homebuilding and home-buying to deal with high prices and inadequate supplies of shelter, or to restore bodily legal rights removed by state laws, but leave the details to the time when the new president actually has the power to do something. Because, if you don’t, the media – and the other side – will trash all too many good proposals in their attack to gain a few more percentage points of audience approval.

Being detailed in a campaign is one of those ideas that sounds wonderful… and can only lead to disaster, in all too many ways.