Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Let’s face it, Donald Trump is no Sir Samuel Vimes.

Donald Trump is President of the United States – like it or not.

Sir Samuel Vimes is Commander of the City Watch in Terry Pratchett’s fictional Ankh-Morpork.

Only one of these men has ever pondered the question: Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves? And when Sam Vimes answers “I do,” in Pratchett’s “Thud!” you believe him, even if he’s got the Summoning Dark driving him, he still knows the difference between good and bad.

Trump, well, Trump knows what Trump knows.

But it still begs the question: Who is watching Trump?

Jennifer Grygiel, writing at Slate.com, suggests that in the case of the president’s Twitter account, it ought to be Twitter “prevent[ing] the world from stumbling into nuclear annihilation.”

Her suggestion is several shades of dumb. Here it is in full:

A premoderation system would be strongly biased in favor of publishing tweets—in fact, if it worked right, Twitter would rarely, if ever, actually get involved. This wouldn’t be like a commenting system in which every utterance needs to be approved before being published. It would be much more passive. There would be, say, a 30-second delay on every tweet (so a bit longer than a live TV delay), during which time someone from Twitter’s team would have to look at it. This would not be a task for algorithms—we would need actual, smart humans on the job. (Twitter would have to pay these people awfully well and rotate them out frequently, of course—spending all day staring at a screen waiting for a handful of Trump’s tweets would be terrible.)

If nothing is clearly dangerous, the tweet would go live as normal. But if there were a major issue—like a threat of military action, or something suggesting that the account had been compromised—then the Twitter representative would make sure that the tweet doesn’t go live. Twitter would need a detailed social media triage and crisis communications plan, one that outlined how things should be escalated and managed.

I reiterate: Grygiel suggests Twitter be the last stand between a Trump tweet and a panicked military reaction.

This, from the company that admitted in 2015 that it “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years.”

"It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day” the leaked memo says. “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”

These are the geniuses Grygiel wants between Trump and Armageddon.

Here’s a better suggestion: Stop assuming anything President Trump – or any bombastic figure, for that matter – says on Twitter is official policy.

I know that’s a tall order, specifically with the current President who enjoys spouting off on Twitter. And in this day and age where we have more than one reactionary president (eating steak, not grazing) in charge of countries around the world, it’s easy to imagine the scrambling of fighter jets right after a tweet from one of them. Ronald Reagan’s joke about “we begin bombing in five minutes” didn’t result in Armageddon. It did result in the Soviet Far East Army going on alert for 30 minutes, but nothing more. Because there were no follow-up actions that could be verified through standard diplomatic or military detection.

The Pentagon’s “what the what” reaction to Trump’s tweet on reinstating the ban on transgendered people joining the military should demonstrate in our government at least there are already functioning checks that disregard Trump’s tweets as policy. I expect the ban will not be reinstated, no matter the bombast displayed in tweeting it before consulting the military. Those who fear Trump seem to have forgotten that we do have checks and balances in this government.

But what about the others, you ask?

Well, they, too, should look at Trump’s past behavior on Twitter and realize it’s just his method of spreading horseshit, nothing more. Just because he’s mouthing off on Twitter doesn’t mean the chain of command in government has suddenly changed and assigned Trump dictatorial, tweet-fueled power. Twitter simply amps up the noise factor while the signal remains constant.

And if Twitter wants to do this kind of vetting, you can bet there would be strong interest in seeing Twitter become, shall we say, a tad bit more regulated by the government than it is now. Does Twitter really want to shoulder the responsibility of putting a non-governmental entity in charge of vetting government tweets? (I know this goes contrary to my argument that the tweets are nothing but bombast, but you have to consider this argument would come up forcefully if Twitter did get into the vetting business.)

With Twitter watching the guards, who would we watching Twitter? Sam Vimes can say he is the one guarding the guards, and at the same time guarding himself. Because he’s a fictional character. Twitter may publish President Trump’s fiction, but it is in no place whatsoever to guard the guards.

Ugly Tips

The good news is if you’re ugly, you might be making more money than those who are less unsightly than you are, you freak.

The bad news is since Hillary Clinton is “less conventionally attractive” and regarded as “a threat” by other women something something something Donald Trump is in the White House. As opposed to Sarah Palin(!) who is prettier and thus easier for men to control. Or something.

At least that’s what I garner from Peggy Drexler’s confusing column – “Ugly People Earn More, but at What Cost?” – on CNN this morning.

I should announce right now I am a self-declared ugly person, and have applauded Unsightly Rights on this blog before. So Drexler’s reportage on a study by the Journal of Business and Psychology’s reportage revealing the least attractive 3% of the population out-earned the 50% who are “only sort of ugly or just average looking” should please me.

This is where you get to hear about my big but.

Drexler argues – without offering any support – that ugly people earn more because of the “human tendency to favor the underdog,” and that this is “not a noble act,” but rather a form of “intra-gender sexism, or clear and troubling evidence of female misogyny.”

Rewarding the ugly (and here she implies ugly women rewarding ugly women) “is one way to keep those more threatening women down.”

Now I’m no expert in any of this malarkey. But I can spot a person using a study to support their pet notions from miles away.

Note: I’m not saying Drexler isn’t right – I am going to say she does a poor job proving her point.

The BSA Issues an Apologih-gee.

So here’s the thing:

The Boy Scouts of America *shouldn’t* have to apologize for the speech President Donald Trump offered at the National Scout Jamboree Monday.

But, I suppose as President Trump himself likely won’t apologize for the speech which brought politics to the BSA in a venue where politics should not have come, *somebody* had to apologize.

“These character-building experiences have not diminished in recent days at the jamboree,” writes Michael Surbaugh, national chief scout executive in the apology. “Scouts have continued to trade patches, climb rock walls, and share stories about the day’s adventures. But for our Scouting family at home not able to see these real moments of Scouting, we know the past few days have been overshadowed by the remarks offered by the President of the United States.”

For my part as Scoutmaster, while I’ve encouraged my Scouts to talk about service and civic engagement, particularly when we’re working on the Citizenship merit badges, I’ve always tried to steer the discussion clear of partisan politics. Such talk does little to enlighten and serves mainly as a soapbox where one side simply shouts down the other. 

We place emphasis on the maxim that we can disagree without being disagreeable.

Unless, of course, you’re Popeye. When you reach that point, well, you reach that point.

That Ol' Empty Chair

From the “Just In Case You Didn’t Know” Department . . .

Remember this?

He wasn’t the first . . . 

From “The Teapot Dome Scandal,” by Laton McCartney, page 247:

In the national campaign, the Democrats as well as the newly formed Progressive Party, which put forth La Follette and Walsh’s protégé Burton Wheeler as its presidential and vice-presidential candidates, respectively, hammered away at Teapot and the Republicans without much effect. Davis, Al Smith, Walsh, and others (the showman Wheeler debated an empty chair on which he asked his audience to imagine President Coolidge was seated) tried to get Coolidge to respond to charges about the scandal, but “Silent Cal” remained entirely mum, refusing to take the bait.

The Republicans won the election, just so ya’know. Coolidge took 382 electoral votes and the popular vote, of 15.7 million. Democrat John Davis of West Virginia got 136 electoral votes on a popular vote of 8.3 million, while Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, who ran on the Progressive Party (Teddy Roosevelt Progressives of the Republican variety) earned 13 electoral votes on a popular vote of 4.8 million.

This stunt alone inspires me to read more about America’s “Progressive Era,” where the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson (presidents all) were joined by authors like Upton Sinclair, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie (!) and Thomas Alva Edison, members of the Womens’ Suffrage movement (Susan B. Anthony) to combat problems stemming from industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government. Sound like familiar troubles, eh?

I’m already a fan of Sinclair Lewis, who wrote of these times.

Solitude

One of my favorite stories of solitude starts in this way:

“Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart.”

Another includes this passage:

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

Both the story of the prophet Enos from the Book of Mormon and the story of Henry David Thoreau’s thoughts from Walden echo the ideals of self-communion and isolation; Enos in the company of his thoughts and God, Thoreau in the company of his thoughts and Nature.

Maybe I’m lucky, but I’ve never had a problem with being alone. I’ve written two books in which the central character, even surrounded by others, is essentially alone in his quest to find peace. When they are in the company of others, they often find confusion and hatred and despair. Alone with their thoughts, or with a choice friend (antagonistic at worst, imaginary at best) they find . . . something. One finds a small pocket of peace at the end of a long road of pain. The other finds himself back at the same place he started, with nothing really to show for the long isolation he put himself in. One finds peace as thoughts of guilt flee. The other finds only the insanity that lies in the space between his ears.

Both escape the cave allegorized so well by Plato, even if one only does so briefly.

I spend my summers alone – have done so for the past six years. The best summers were where I was not teaching English online through BYU-Idaho, where I spent my summers in isolation, writing books or tiling floors. Now I have a seven-week stretch in which I will not teach, and three of those will be while my family is still at Scout Camp for the summer. I will have to see what I can do to make these weeks worthwhile.

Last Saturday I saw a glimpse of that contemplation, as I recorded a near-Enos experience. Maybe more like that will come.