Election 2020

[Hintergrund]

(11-20-2018, 09:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Let's keep aware of a significant checklist (Umberto Eco):

Thanks for mentioning, but didn't he also mention that fascism necessarily runs into contradictions?

[Eric the Green]

(09-14-2020, 12:26 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [quote='Eric the Green' pid='56810' dateline='1599539294']
Fivethirtyeight presidential election poll averages for Sept.14 about 1 PM.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +7.1

Arizona Biden +5.1
Colorado Biden +10.1
Florida Biden +2.6
Georgia Trump +1.7
Iowa Trump +1.8
Kansas Trump +9.5
Michigan Biden +7.5
Minnesota Biden +7.7
Missouri Trump +6.6
Montana Trump +8.5
Nevada Biden +5.7
New Hampshire Biden +6.7
North Carolina Biden +1.3
Ohio Trump +1.1
Pennsylvania Biden +4.9
South Carolina Trump +6.9
Texas Trump +1.0
Utah Trump +11.7
Virginia Biden +10.5
Wisconsin Biden +6.5

[pbrower2a]

(02-06-2019, 11:54 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(11-20-2018, 09:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Let's keep aware of a significant checklist (Umberto Eco):

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
   
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
   
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
   
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
   
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
   
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
   
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
   
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
   
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
   
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
    
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
    
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
    
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
    
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
    

The Trump cult fits well on most. Trump has yet to call for aggressive warfare, but we all know that he is but one hurt feeling away, and I doubt that he is inculcating heroism as a virtue in its own right. We have resistance to his worst.

Thanks for mentioning, but didn't he also mention that fascism necessarily runs into contradictions?

Contradictions? with objective reality, with human nature, or within itself? Either way fascism creates its own trouble. People who fail to think things out get into trouble when they try to reshape things on a grand scale. Fascism depends upon restoring some national glory perhaps long lost without contemplating whether the purported glory is so wondrous.  "Restore the glory of the Roman Empire" ignores that such people as the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanians have as much claim to Roman heritage through language alone, that the Greek people had much to do with the intellectual glory of Rome, and that the English (not to mention their American partial successors!) have absorbed much of the spark. Add to this, much territory that was Roman has a very different basis in culture. 

In any event a sordid regime that overreaches can bring forth consequences such as this:





... the last legions to enter Rome, most under the ultimate command of a cripple who could have never led an army into battle. 

Fascism is typically a disaster for a country in part due to its inner contradictions. 

1. Tradition ordinarily wins against the cultural avant-garde either by demonstrating more suitability or by (what usually happens) co-opting the innovation. Tradition may define how a society adapts to needful change. Ragtime and jazz illustrate how something daring could become an indelible part of American culture. Both were daring expressions when new... and they are now basically 'establishment' in contemporary America. Fascism in all forms is far more rigid... and brutal. 

The potential conflict in America under any fascist leadership is not so much a conflict between some single tradition and a cultural avant-garde; it is instead most likely between traditions.  

2. The conflict between one mainstream set of values and a modern challenge can manifest itself in a struggle in which people recently and currently treated badly in which pariahs show that their mistreatment contradicts key values in the national tradition. Americans have a traditional disdain for political violence; having to choose between non-violent people demanding the full right to participate in society and people using violent means such as assassinations and arson (including bombings) to keep people down, most Americans could choose between Martin Luther King and the KKK (the latter having much in common with and Nazism). More recently I had some ugly encounters with gay-bashers from which I cut and ran. I decided then that gay-bashing was incompatible with law-and-order essential to a civil society and that whatever was necessary to protect homosexuals from violent crime would make my life safer from people who might misconstrue me as a homosexual. The problem is not that I am inadequate in convincing a gay-basher  that I am straight; the problem is instead that people think it acceptable to attack gays and lesbians. If mainstream gays and lesbians can concur with me that sexual predation of children is intolerable, then I can I can accept gay rights. 

3. Action for its own sake could be terrorism, vandalism, and robbery. No thanks! 

4. The absence of dissent indicates either perfection (which we have yet to achieve, and may even have its own cyclical characteristics) or that the political and economic leadership have found some absolute truth that defines all people responsible to people who owe the rest of us nothing other than bare survival. All economic elites, from shamans to feudal lords to capitalist tycoons to a Soviet-style nomenklatura  have all become egregious exploiters who take everything they want while ensuring that their own issue practically inherit soft lives while treating the fellahin, serfs, and proles badly. Exploiters invariably seek to squelch dissent by people seeking dignity. 

5. Difference allows creative and imaginative people to offer alternatives to mindless conformity that effectively preserve only one thing: rot under an impressive front. 

6. Wherever inequality other than that based upon different levels of competence, talent, toil, and investment lies exploitation. Fascism invariably intensifies whatever exploitation already exists., effectively making things worse for the common man. 

7. The classic example of a plot is the infamous Protocols of the (Learned) Elders (of Zion), which expresses the idea that all successes of Jews result from a conspiracy to dominate and exploit gentiles. It should be obvious that Jewish successes in culture, business, art, science, and law are consequences of dedication, talent, and work as individual achievement than as any plot to push Jews forward. Malcolm Gladwell (who is not Jewish) has a better explanation in his Outliers in that at the current level of performance and marketable excellence and professional competence, high-level achievement in just about any activity from law to painting to musical performance to writing to acting to medicine takes about ten thousand hours of dedicated effort. Ten thousand hours of dedication early in life may require that one have people around who tolerate such an activity as playing pieces of numbing boredom to family members and not doing something else. 

In truth, conspiracies and plots are usually efforts to achieve through ruthless cunning in methods that the overall society condemns. Criminal cliques operate that way, and those usually unravel because robbery schemes and insurance frauds usually result in behavior that exposes the criminality of the offenders. 

8. That the enemy is both strong (ruthless and cunning) and weak (decadent) is about as absurd a contradiction as is possible. 

9. Most people recognize war as mindless slaughter, and that heroic deaths in battle are themselves tragedy. This said, Humanity has about the same contradiction as its favorite pet, the dog. Dogs can go from extremely docile to extremely ferocious in a split second. This is no contradiction. Such is also true of people and nations. People who may have no desire to pick a fight have proved the ability to win the fight.

10. Contempt for the weak is a pretext for exploitation and subjection.  People seeking to defend their lives and dignity have shown the ability to defend themselves, perhaps because they best know the stakes.

11. If fascism pushes the idea of national heroism, then anti-fascist ideologies discover that they are able to resist fascistic cruelty with their own heroism. 

12. Machismo and weaponry. The opponents of fascist conflict find ways to get or develop weaponry, too. 

13. Selective populism ignores that a medium so much a frontier as the Internet can itself develop coherent alternatives. 

14. Newspeak ultimately degrades the ability of a society to innovate and even to develop any solidarity not based upon fear and loathing.

[Eric the Green]

Polling averages for Sept.27, 2:20 PM EDT
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +7.3

Arizona Biden +3.6
Colorado Biden +10.1
Florida Biden +1.8
Georgia Trump +1.1
Iowa Trump +0.7
Kansas Trump +8.9
Michigan Biden +6.9
Minnesota Biden +8.8
Missouri Trump +6.7
Montana Trump +8.0
Nevada Biden +6.5
New Hampshire Biden +6.9
North Carolina Biden +1.3
Ohio Biden +1.1
Pennsylvania Biden +4.9
South Carolina Trump +7.5
Texas Trump +1.7
Virginia Biden +10.1
Wisconsin Biden +6.9

270towin polling averages for Sept.27:
https://www.270towin.com/content/2020-pr...te-polling

Arizona Biden +4
Colorado Biden +10.6
Florida Biden +0.8
Georgia Trump +0.6
Iowa Trump +1.2
Michigan Biden +5.8
Minnesota Biden +8.4
Missouri Trump +8
Montana Trump +6
Nevada Biden +6.6
North Carolina Biden +0.8
Ohio Biden +1.2
Pennsylvania Biden +4.2
South Carolina Trump +7.3
Texas Trump +2.6
Virginia Biden +9.5
Wisconsin Biden +7.4

The map: based on fivethirtyeight.com using 270towin to create the map, and using my standards in 6% intervals: +-3%=tossup, 3-9% leaning, 9-15% likely, +15% solid.

Arkansas still has had only one poll giving Trump a 2% lead, but it's likely Republican historically, so I show it here as leaning. red=Republican blue=Democratic grey=tossup.

[Eric the Green]

It looks like Biden is recovering his post-debacle position.

Polling averages for Oct.5, 3:30 PM EDT, edit 8:40 PM EDT
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +8.2

Alaska Trump +5.7
Arizona Biden +4.1
Colorado Biden +11.8
Florida Biden +3
Georgia Biden +0.6
Iowa Trump +1.4
Kansas Trump +7.7
Maine CD2 Biden +3.6
Michigan Biden +7
Minnesota Biden +9.2
Missouri Trump +6.4
Montana Trump +8.3
Nevada Biden +6.2
New Hampshire Biden +9.6
North Carolina Biden +1.8
Ohio Biden +0.2
Pennsylvania Biden +6.1
South Carolina Trump +5.6
Texas Trump +2.2
Virginia Biden +11.4
Wisconsin Biden +6.7



Polling map based on fivethirtyeight, using 270towin interactive map.
Tossup =gray +-3%, red=Republican, blue=Democratic, leaning 3-9%, likely 9-15%, solid 15+%

[Eric the Green]

Well, I certainly like following the polls when they go my way like this. I hope it continues today and beyond.

Polling averages for Oct.6, 9 PM EDT, updated
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +9

Alaska Trump +4.9
Arizona Biden +4.4
Colorado Biden +12.5
Florida Biden +3.5
Georgia Biden +0.9
Iowa Trump +1.1
Kansas Trump +7.3
Maine CD2 Biden +0.8
Michigan Biden +7.6
Minnesota Biden +9.3
Missouri Trump +6.1
Montana Trump +8.0
Nevada Biden +6.8
New Hampshire Biden +9.7
North Carolina Biden +2.2
Ohio Biden +0.5
Pennsylvania Biden +6.3
South Carolina Trump +5.4
Texas Trump +1.7
Virginia Biden +11.9
Wisconsin Biden +7

[David Horn]

(10-06-2020, 07:17 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, I certainly like following the polls when they go my way like this. I hope it continues today and beyond.

Polling averages for Oct.6, 8 AM EDT
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +8.8 ...

I've seen some preliminary polls based on Trump's horrid debate and worse COVID performance, that has the split at more than 15%.  Trump is pulling out all the stops, but the organ just won't play.

[pbrower2a]

(10-06-2020, 11:32 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 07:17 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, I certainly like following the polls when they go my way like this. I hope it continues today and beyond.

Polling averages for Oct.6, 8 AM EDT
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol.../national/

National Biden +8.8 ...

I've seen some preliminary polls based on Trump's horrid debate and worse COVID performance, that has the split at more than 15%.  Trump is pulling out all the stops, but the organ just won't play.

Better analogy: the organist is so awful that instead of the mellifluous Mozart score arranged for organ he is getting a raucous, incoherent twelve-tone mess due to all the wrong notes.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-06-2020, 02:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 11:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: I've seen some preliminary polls based on Trump's horrid debate and worse COVID performance, that has the split at more than 15%.  Trump is pulling out all the stops, but the organ just won't play.

Better analogy: the organist is so awful that instead of the mellifluous Mozart score arranged for organ he is getting a raucous, incoherent twelve-tone mess due to all the wrong notes.

Or Trump needs a decent MIDI setup.  I occasionally take a MIDI file of a classic piece like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and route the resultant notes to a bunch of synthesized trombones.  Why be boring and always use an organ voice?

[pbrower2a]

(10-06-2020, 02:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 02:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 11:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: I've seen some preliminary polls based on Trump's horrid debate and worse COVID performance, that has the split at more than 15%.  Trump is pulling out all the stops, but the organ just won't play.

Better analogy: the organist is so awful that instead of the mellifluous Mozart score arranged for organ he is getting a raucous, incoherent twelve-tone mess due to all the wrong notes.

Or Trump needs a decent MIDI setup.  I occasionally take a MIDI file of a classic piece like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and route the resultant notes to a bunch of synthesized trombones.  Why be boring and always use an organ voice?

I would simulate a wind ensemble.

[Eric the Green]

The organ voice is the best!

[pbrower2a]

(10-06-2020, 06:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The organ voice is the best!

... and best on a genuine organ. It may be ironic that the Toccata and Fugue in D-minor was originally written for solo violin.

[Eric the Green]

(10-06-2020, 07:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 06:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The organ voice is the best!

... and best on a genuine organ. It may be ironic that the Toccata and Fugue in D-minor was originally written for solo violin.

Indeed. Well, I've heard that idea before about S.565, but although a few of his pieces for other instruments may have been originally written for violin, I don't think that applies to Toccata and Fugue in D-minor (S.565). It was written early in Bach's career when he was primarily an organist. There have been a number of false tales circulating about this-- the most famous and one of the greatest pieces for organ or for any instrument. 

One piece of evidence that S.565 was originally an organ piece, evidence which I discovered from a you tube video (and didn't want to believe it at first) was that the first half of the fugue theme (on which the opening Toccata theme is also based) actually comes from a Fantasia in D Minor for organ written by Johann Pachelbel, author of the famous Canon in D which was likely composed for the wedding of Bach's older brother, a pupil of Pachelbel, who was in turn J.S. Bach's teacher. The great Canon in D is now often used as a wedding processional. The original Pachelbel Fantasia theme is an F-major passage that is transported exactly note-for-note into a quiet manual section of Bach's Fugue in D-Minor S.565.




@1:28

Pachelbel was a Bach family friend, and there are other organ pieces (notably the Prelude and Fugue in D Major S.532, based on Pachelbel's Fugue in D) that were closely based on organ themes by Pachelbel. Pachebel's organ works were strong influences on the young J.S.Bach, and Pachelbel's themes can be traced in a number of Bach works. Bach created much-more elaborate and coherent organ works out of the scant raw material provided by the more-simple organ works of Pachelbel. Several of his works are also precursors of the two canons over held pedal note in Bach's great Toccata in F, S.540. Being so familiar with all these works and learning to play some of them allows me to understand the interesting connection between these two great composers. 

Off topic indeed! But a nice diversion from the debacle to a totally different time.

This is a rather hypnotic and powerful Pachelbel Toccata in D Minor, which is a foundation for both the Bach Toccata and Fugues in D minor (BWV 565) and in F (BWV 540). The youtube poster mis-spells the composer's name.

[David Horn]

When you pull out all the stops, you play everything at once. Isn't that Trump in the last debate? Did it take ... at all?

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-08-2020, 09:56 AM)David Horn Wrote: When you pull out all the stops, you play everything at once.  Isn't that Trump in the last debate?  Did it take ... at all?

Meaningless rambling...

Back in my organ days, I used to occasionally pull all the stops on a Hammond just for fun.  The result was not the best of all possible voices, but each stop was on key or a harmonic and still required you to hit a note key.  Given the right notes, what came out was OK.

Some of the stops are effectively harmony voices.  They play a rational fraction of an active high or low.  Someone with malice could pull only harmony voices on one hand, only melody voices on the other, and you would get a fairly convoluted multi key mess.

On a modern keyboard, if you routed a keyboard to a bunch of synthesized voices, you could press one note key and hear a trumpet, a violin, a chorus, a kazoo, a steel drum, etc, all respond with the same note at the same time.  Most of my synthesizers can imitate more instruments than they can play notes.  You might ask so many voices to play that the poor computer couldn't generate the result.

Trump in the last debate?  It was more like he didn't want anybody playing an organ piece and was disruptive enough to only allow something else.  Hitting a bunch of note keys with no attempt to organize it into a song might be a better analogue to what he did.  Picture a three year old at a cathedral organ being thrilled to make noise, except he thought to up the volume pedal before moving up to the keys.  If the moderator silences the candidates during the other guy's turn to speak the problem could be eliminated.  

I don't know if that would suit Trump though.  It would allow Biden to put out his message.  I would be hard to not respond, problematic if he did.  While it will be hard for Trump to avoid an offered stage, it wouldn't surprise me if his plan to avoid a rational debate and hold one of his super spreader rallies sticks.

[David Horn]

(10-08-2020, 10:57 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-08-2020, 09:56 AM)David Horn Wrote: When you pull out all the stops, you play everything at once.  Isn't that Trump in the last debate?  Did it take ... at all?

Meaningless rambling...

Back in my organ days, I used to occasionally pull all the stops on a Hammond just for fun.  The result was not the best of all possible voices, but each stop was on key or a harmonic and still required you to hit a note key.  Given the right notes, what came out was OK.

Some of the stops are effectively harmony voices.  They play a rational fraction of an active high or low.  Someone with malice could pull only harmony voices on one hand, only melody voices on the other, and you would get a fairly convoluted multi key mess.

On a modern keyboard, if you routed a keyboard to a bunch of synthesized voices, you could press one note key and hear a trumpet, a violin, a chorus, a kazoo, a steel drum, etc, all respond with the same note at the same time.  Most of my synthesizers can imitate more instruments than they can play notes.  You might ask so many voices to play that the poor computer couldn't generate the result.

Trump in the last debate?  It was more like he didn't want anybody playing an organ piece and was disruptive enough to only allow something else.  Hitting a bunch of note keys with no attempt to organize it into a song might be a better analogue to what he did.  Picture a three year old at a cathedral organ being thrilled to make noise, except he thought to up the volume pedal before moving up to the keys.  If the moderator silences the candidates during the other guy's turn to speak the problem could be eliminated.  

I don't know if that would suit Trump though.  It would allow Biden to put out his message.  I would be hard to not respond, problematic if he did.  While it will be hard for Trump to avoid an offered stage, it wouldn't surprise me if his plan to avoid a rational debate and hold one of his super spreader rallies sticks.

It's just a metaphor for a really bad idea on steroids.  Don't over think it.

[Eric the Green]

Trump was at his worst and most characteristic; simply a bully. He represents those in society who want to resist the changes needed today, and how desperate they are. He is himself the stone wall he wanted to build.

The fivethirtyeight polling average spread today was Biden +9.8. Some polls of course show a wider gap. The gap is widening quickly right now. We'll see.....

The gap in the key states is widening too, though more slowly in many. But Iowa, Ohio and Georgia tilted to Biden this week, and Florida went back up to leaning Biden status. North Carolina was getting close to that.

[pbrower2a]

(10-06-2020, 03:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 02:57 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 02:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-06-2020, 11:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: I've seen some preliminary polls based on Trump's horrid debate and worse COVID performance, that has the split at more than 15%.  Trump is pulling out all the stops, but the organ just won't play.

Better analogy: the organist is so awful that instead of the mellifluous Mozart score arranged for organ he is getting a raucous, incoherent twelve-tone mess due to all the wrong notes.

Or Trump needs a decent MIDI setup.  I occasionally take a MIDI file of a classic piece like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and route the resultant notes to a bunch of synthesized trombones.  Why be boring and always use an organ voice?

I would simulate a wind ensemble.

Addendum: does Donald Trump seem like the sort of person who has any musical talent or even interest?