Dan Erwin

Should Trump Go to Jail?

A few weeks ago, when my houseman was cleaning for me, we engaged in a conversation about whether Trump should go to jail. Now I should say that my guy has worked for me for years and I have a terrific amount of respect for his insights. He graduated from St John’s prep school, an institution for which I have a lot of respect. Which means he knows how to analyze and think.

He asked whether I thought Trump should go to jail. I was very thoughtful about my response, responding rather slowly—out of verbal character--and saying, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” An obviously unexpected response, he jumped in and said that he thought Trump should be made accountable for his crimes. I responded, “I agree, but I’m not certain that he should go to jail.” He stopped vacuuming, raised his eyebrows, rather surprised, and asked, “why not.” My answer was again slow, but direct: “I don’t know what the consequences might be. I’m fearful of the consequences of jailing him.”

It's always political
Given my background in history and political science, I’m well aware that political actions, like jailing an ex-president, always have multiple consequences. But lots of ordinary behaviors also have multiple consequences. And there will always be political considerations. Remember, whenever any decision will impact two or more people, then the decision is political. Even in your family. So, here’s a simple family narrative that, hopefully, explains unintended consequences and my concerns about political process..

Revisiting Sorkin's "The Newsroom"

The “Newsroom” Is Still Cutting-Edge and Contemporary. Written by Aaron Sorkin and streamed on Amazon Prime more than ten years ago, it’s still contemporary. The first scene in the first episode remains exceptionally astute and an act of wisdom.

The Newsroom, like the West Wing,  deals as much with themes of honor, ethics, loyalty, idealism and love, as it does with the news.

McEvoy’s analysis of the Tea Party toward the end of the last episode in season one is frighteningly relevant. It’s unbelievable how his brief analysis of the “American Taliban” is completely relevant today, without a single change of analysis over the years.

An Age of Unreason?

Inauguration Day

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, It expects what never was and never will be.
  --Thomas Jefferson

"In current culture, where is wisdom to be found? If wisdom is a hunger in the soul, as Plato said, and if we are transfixed with true figures of wisdom--the man who has had time to think enough, the woman who has the chance truly to reflect, how do we now slake the need? It turns out that the problem of wisdom is an easy problem to solve. For acquiring wisdom is dangerous.  The individual who pursues true insight. . . is untimely. That is, he strives to be ahead of his own time in his perceptions, albeist basing his thoughts in the intellectual achievement of the past.

How the Republicans Won the Election

Actually, the real issue is how the Democrats lost the election. That’s where it all happened. So, let me explain.

I’ve read at least 8 to 10 analyses of the Republican victory, none of which made much sense to me. In thinking the process over, I noticed that to an unusual degree the analyses were based on the psychological model and its theories. A model, which because of my business experience, always gives me pause. Or a stomach ache.

So, is there a better understanding of the election? Well, whatever . . . the understanding needs to be based on the various commitments of major tribes—not on the individual psyche.

Trump got that interpretation—or at least the Republican leadership understood it.

So once more. What was the election all about? Why the monstrous Democratic losses? An outsider seems to have gotten it right. A Brit: Janan Ganesh, the international editor of London’s Financial Times, one of my favorite papers for a different tribal approach to news. And a writer who lived long enough some years ago in Los Angeles to get our American culture.

His article, How the Democrats can win in 2028, provides his analysis of the democratic loss as backdrop for his conclusions for 2028.

Politics Is Like Sex

With the national election coming up in just a few days, now is a good time to think briefly about the stuff of politics. Electing someone is one of the basic actions of politics—an activity all of us can get involved in. It’s one of the few times in which anyone over 18 years can “do something” that will eventually impact all of us, one way or another.

So, whenever I get uptight about politics, I think about that little book by Bernard Crick, “In defense of politics,” first published in 1962, but now in its fourth edition. It’s a book on politics, that’s also a lot of fun. Thoughtful--and unforgettable. And it’s more useful this season than many other political seasons of the past. Occasionally, the Brit way of talking gets in the way—especially if you’ve never read a Brit novel, like Pride and Prejudice or Oliver Twist. But it’s still fun right from the first chapter.

Just to get started, Crick emphasizes that politics is not a “set of fixed principles” for the near future, nor even some traditional habits to be preserved. It’s just an activity for a community that’s grown too complicated for its traditions or fixed principles.

Politics, he concludes is just an activity. Simple, eh??

But before he gets to the stuff, he wants you to know that politics is not a thing. Not a granite monument, or a painting—things that could exist if people didn’t have to continue working on them. Instead, he wants you to understand clearly that politics is an activity. A condition in which things are being done. It’s a pursuit—it’s always ongoing. You never get to the end of the journey. And it’s right at this point where the writer draws a brilliant comparison, an unforgettable comparison, a comparison that goes to the heart of the matter of politics.

Politics is like sex.
Both politics and sex are activities in which our personal understandings and experience make “formal principles” unnecessary. The experience is a lot better than the principles or truths you learn from books. Yeah, sex is a more widespread activity than politics.

Israel vs. Hamas Is Best Understood as a “Waiting Game”

Understanding social reality is especially important for managing long time career success. Though the term is not regularly used in business, reality structures are nothing more than a mental framework that helps people understand and interpret the world around them.  Over the years I’ve found that reality structures can differ between one corporation and another. The 3M reality differs significantly, for example, from the Ralston Purina reality. 3M is strongly oriented to research, while Ralston is strongly oriented to marketing. The consequence is that research behaviors get a lot of attention at 3M, and little at Ralston. You get my gist.
In this post, I want to introduce you to a major social reality that operates in many different contexts.

The “waiting game”
“Waiting game” is a social reality in which one or more participants withhold action temporarily in the hope of having a favorable opportunity for more effective action later.

Why Does “Weird” Work So Well?

When Tim Walz called Donald Trump and his worldview “weird,” it got terrific, immediate attention. It also launched a thousand memes. I suspect it may have also got him the job of Kamala Harris’ running mate. As a rhetorical specialist, a guy who’s always asking why some words and ideas work and other’s don’t, I was extremely curious about why “weird” worked so very well.

To no surprise, that brilliant Columbia linguist, John McWhorter, weighed in on the answer in a NYTimes article. He pointed out that, historically, the term has been around for several centuries and over time it has changed its meaning. In Shakespeare’s use of the term it meant “ghoulish” and “frighteningly odd.” Today it just means “peculiar.”

“Weird” is a part of the language that isn’t taught in our schools, but should be. The novel is usually omitted in grade school. That’s one of the reasons it stands out. It wasn’t in your grade school vocabulary lists. It’s like one of my favorite terms that new Americans don’t understand—“duh.” A word that’s used when something is said or written that’s disgustingly obvious—and often a take-down. Any fourth-grader would know that, but a new immigrant wouldn’t get it.

McWhorter points out what I suspect is the real power of the term “weird.” There’s no workable comeback, other than “no, I’m not weird.” And as you peobably know, some denials just don’t work.

Surprising Research on Racial Voting

As a general rule, most people think that race and anti-race determine voting patterns. Many voters on the left thinnk that supporters of Trump are motivated by racism. One Psychologist recently said that "as a nation, we must face the possibility that a large segment of the white population harbors strong racist and bigoted beliefs."

But is that really true?

A meta-analytic study out of the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) disputes that claim. Meta-analytical studies are the analysis of many different studies on a question. And the question is very important for today's presidential race. With Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for president, are voters motivated by race?

The Amsterdam study included results from 43 experiments, based largely on US participants and including 305,632 participants. 

The authors concluded, "On average the political underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minorities citizens is unlikely to be caused by voters." Overall, race doesn't play a substantial role in voter decision about candidates. The study also indicated that it fits with other evidence that voters show a slight preference for women candidates.

I can hear a lot of people disagreeing with those conclusions. But that's what 43 different experiments reveal. It becomes more obvious that Western democracies are working toward "historically unprecedented levels of egalitarianism." It fits with the fact that about three years ago my 60 year-old daughter married a Liberian--a former student of hers. And absolutely no one gives a damn--other than the marriage is meaningful and happy. I, for example, think he's just a delightful guy! It's no different what-so-ever than the easy comment of my thirty-plus year-old coach  made, when asked about his family, that one of his brothers is gay. It's just ho-hum.

Swearing Is Actually a Verbal Shortcut

In my previous posts on swearing, I took the easy route in talking about the left and right hemispheres, saying that the right hemisphere is the emotional side and the left is the reasoning side. To a significant degree, that’s just pop psychology. It’s very clear that the two hemispheres work in tandem. They’re closely connected—they’re interconnected and they collaborate. Both hemispheres automatically talk to each other.

If you’ve had some science courses in college, you know that you have an amygdala on both sides of the brain and that they’re connected and that they talk to each other. The two are a major processing center for the entire brain, including both hemispheres.

It’s been hypothesized that one of my grandsons has thinner connections between the two amygdala and that’s why he’s had some difficulty with abstractions and interacting with people. However, with a lot of support, counseling and coaching, he’s gone on to graduate from college and interact fairly easily with people.

A Call for Community: UCBerkeley

In an intriguing and very human response, two Berkeley profs--an Israeli and a Palestinian--got together to write a call for community. Though brief, I want publish the note from the Chancellor, Carol Christ and the two faculty.

October 12, 2023
Chancellor Carol Christ sent the following message to the Berkeley campus community Thursday afternoon.

We are increasingly concerned by the growing prevalence of online threats, doxxing and harassment connected to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. We decry any calls for violence in any form or support for terrorism as we continue to mourn the loss of innocent life. We understand this rhetoric is creating deep fear and concern among many members of our campus community. With that in mind, we want to share an extraordinary message, written by two of our faculty, one who is Palestinian and one who is Israeli:

To our students,

We are two professors on this campus who disagree, vehemently. But we have always treated one another with respect and dignity. We love this campus with its diverse communities and all of our students and are heartbroken to hear of incidents of near violence between students in recent days. We will not...

Best Political Quote of the Year. . . Gretchen Whitmer

In an extensive article, perhaps thinking about a future presidential run, the New Yorker had a long and enlightening article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Whitmer. The current governor of Michigan, Whitmer is one tough, very smart lady. But she's not the only Democrat in the State. Both houses are also Democratically run--creating a very thick Blue Wall and knocking the DeVos family out of much of their power games for extreme Republicans.

She understood well that the low turnout of 2016, which gave Trump the state, was not about a radical turn to the right, but about "low voter turnout."

Whitmer's wins suggest a different story about the Midwestern heartland.