The Treacherous Invisibility of Sociality

We are dealing with phantasms, which makes drawing a line among them difficult.

It is easy to take potshots at science for its blinkered focus on the measurable and the concrete. How many people have pulled out the famous Shakespeare line about the many more things, poor Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy? How many times does the newest research in social sciences tell us what anyone with common sense already knows? However, on the other side, the quest by softer sciences, like economics and ecology, to man up and drown themselves in math in order to satisfy their envy of the "hard" sciences. There are clearly conflicting emotions on the matter, which occasionally boil over into Trumpism and general anti-elitism.

But understanding by way of careful observation, useful simplification / reduction / schematization is what all scholarship and learning is about. One can't get around learning about something in detail if one wants to master it, either operationally or intellectually. The scientific method was revolutionary development, not only for science per se, but for philosophy and specifically for psychology. It expresses a skepticism of knowledge gained by theoretical, authoritarian, and armchair means, untethered from whatever the object purports to be, whether physics or biblical texts or history. Just as we suspect statements made by our current president when based on nothing, likewise we should suspect other claims lacking evidence of a rigorous, empirical kind.

But there is a deep problem, which is that our most important issues and forms of knowledge are social, not measurable and concrete. While science struggles to grasp social patterns and knowledge from its particular perspective- and not yet terribly successfully- those patterns are at the same time experienced richly in everyday life by everyone and portrayed with great variety and complexity in the arts. It is the core of drama- who knows what, who likes whom, and can I see through layers of deceit.  All of this is invisible in the conventional sense. It may be encoded somewhere in our brains, but the proper level of analysis is clearly not that of the neuron. As scientists, we are left with questionnaires, polls, and, generally, utter blindness when it comes to this most important apparatus of our lives.

Hard to read?

What hides, and what exposes, the social matrix? Language is the premier medium, of course, going far beyond the pheromones, grunts, dancing, and grooming of other animals. Blushing, facial expression, and eye direction, are a few more biological examples of other ways we externalize our social feelings. Yet there is great value in hiding feelings as well, whether out of politeness or deceit. Indirection, subtlety, puns, jokes, allegories, metaphors, a single look. The cues, even when present, are devilishly hard to read, which prompts theories about how sociality drove gains in human intelligence. So even on the social level, let alone the scientific level, it is hard to know what is going on beneath the surface, where sociality truly resides.

An inference of sociality, constructed in typical mid-20th century fashion.

The result of all this is that we are very enthusiastic inferrers and theorists. Conspiracy theories, truthers, birthers are some of the more extreme manifestations, but we all have to do a lot of reading between the lines just to survive as social beings. What is a soap opera but the carefully and gleefully managed reveal of social facts that are not, in timely fashion, apparent to the participants? Some people are more skilled at all this reading and inferring than others are. Extroverts enthusiastically wade into this murky unknown, while introverts regard it as hostile territory, and tend temperamentally to populate the scientific ranks, struggling to find certainty in an uncertain and largely invisible world.

What becomes treacherous about all this is the over-enthusiastic inference of things that are not there. On the social plane this can be over-sensitivity to slights and oversights. But it can also be religion- the natural inference of sociality to inanimate phenomena. Animism seems the most natural human condition, anthropomorphizing everything around us from insects to mountains, and putting ourselves into subtle social relations with it all. The rise of patriarchy seems to have prompted a massive shift from animistic patheism to father-centric monotheism. The theological object is no more real, however, for being consolidated and blown up out of all proportion. It is still an over-enthusiastic inference of sociality / personhood put on the void. Smarter theists have given up trying to explain particular aspects of reality via crackpot theology, such as electricity or evolution. Yet "everything" is still somehow fostered, created, or underpinned by this phantasm, much as prostate health is "supported" by the latest herbal supplement or hemeopathic nostrum.

What's the harm? On the social plane, over-inference leads to a lot of drama, but is quite finely tuned and bounded by actual, empirical, interactions (though our politically partisan echo chambers breake this model). It is how we evolved to deal with each other. On the philosophical plane, it has been disastrous, giving us centuries of bad ideas, intolerant theologies, and mis-directed energies. Think of all the monks and nuns praying away in their cloisters to non-existent deities for undeserving patrons. And today we are still living in a world at war over religious differences, all based on imaginary inferences created out of the template of our social assumptions and desires.

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Round and Round We Go, Making ATP

The mechanism of the proton energy pump that lies deep within, and gives us ATP.

One of the more elegant and dynamic structures in biology is that of the ATP synthase, which lies at the heart of the mitochondrion's conversion of its proton / electromotive gradient into ATP. This large enzyme is not static, but functions like a carousel, whirling around as it lets in groups of H+ ions. Naturally, it has been heavily studied to learn the secrets of why such motion is necessary, and how it works, in detail.

Basic view of ATP synthetase components. The lower complex (a,b,c, epsilon,) is  often called Fo, and is embedded in the membrane bilayer, which otherwise keeps H+ protons out. Top is the internal side (of the bacterium or mitochondrion) and bottom is the outside, where H+ has been pumped by the processes of oxidative phosphorylation. The c subunits comprise the spinning rotor, causing the gamma subunit, which reaches up into the F1 (alpha, beta), to crank the non-spinning F1 proteins through a series of shape changes that prompt them to synthesize ATP.

The primary product of mitochondiral respiration, which burns our food in a controlled way using oxygen, is a transmembrane proton gradient, which is a mechanism that mitochondria inherited from their free-living bacterial ancestors. While it may seem odd that pumping protons out of the cell into the vast outside is a way to efficiently store energy, it was the original battery technology, a charged state that can later be used by many other processes, like transporters that couple the energy-releasing import of H+ with the energy-using import of K+, (a symporter), or with the energy-using export of Na+ (and antiporter). Yes, life is all about chemistry!

ATP quickly became an important chemical currency for life, but only small amounts can be made directly from breaking up food molecules like glucose by glycolysis. Much more can be made by carefully tuning the respiratory chain to export protons (or import electrons) during the stepwise transformations of glucose to smaller molecules, and then later using that electrical / proton gradient for other needs such as making ATP.

Thus the ATP synthetase was born, but it was not born in a vacuum. Rather it seems to have been derived from prior structures that used protons to drive flagellar rotation. The tails of bacteria do not wave side to side, but rather rotate, which, given their particular semi-rigid structure, can drive bacteria forward. At the flagellar base is a rotating motor which lets in H+ ions as its energy source. This structure was evidently married with what seems to have originally been a DNA helicase- a donut-shaped ATP-using enzyme that travels along DNA, prying open the double-helix. Such enzymes are necessary during DNA replication and meiosis, of which at least replication was an ancient process. The ATP-using character of this helicase was reversed to be ATP-generating in its new setting, which is biochemically easier than it seems. Indeed, the whole ATP synthetase can still today run in reverse to use up ATP when needed.

More detailed representation of the ATP synthetase. The plasma membrane is in yellow, inside the cell (or mitochondrion) is above, and outside is below. The outside has a higher concentration of tiny water triads, which represent H3O+, or H2O plus a proton. They dock to the blue transmembrane portion (Fo) of the enzyme, as shown in green and red at the key interface. The protons are handed off to coordinate with portions of the protein in highly regulated fasion. Above, ADP comes into the synthetase part of the enzyme (F1), gets a phosphate group added (yellow and red) to become ATP. 

Two videos of this process are linked above. #2 is accompanied by a great submersible soundtrack, and shows greater detail for the ATP synthesis mechanism. And a video from the paper discussed has even higher detail, showing particularly the extensive structural reshaping that goes on within the F1 subunits that are making ATP. That mechanism could be the subject of another post.

The mechanical details are that H+ is let in only at the interface of the rotating (blue) and stationary (red) parts of the Fo membrane portion of the enzyme. It is allowed in to bind only at one site per segment (green dots), which then rotate around and eventually come back to another part of the stationary part where the H+ is finally let out via a different channel, into the cell. This specific directionality of binding and release is a sort of ratchet which lets the chemical energy in the H+ gradient drive rotational motion.

This energy is then coupled to the second element, the top (F1) complex, where the six red/pink ATP synthase subunits surround the blue shaft which comes up from the rotating Fo component. While those subunits are held stably by the orange stator element at the outside, the blue shaft is like a washing machine rotor that wrenches around, distorting each of the ATP synthase subunits in turn in ways that induce them to carry out the reaction of adding a phosphate group to ADP to form ATP.

A recent paper describes new structural and mutational studies on this enzyme complex, to look for some further mechanistic details. It used primarily cryo-electron micoscopy, which is sufficient to resolve shapes of helices in proteins, though not detailed atomic locations. Yet one can combine this with mutations, prior X-ray structural studies, selective inhibitors, and other modeling to make some interesting inferences. The key one which these authors make is that there is a critical arginine (R) amino acid in the (a) subunit, or the static red part of Fo above (orange in the diagram below), which seems to be the key to H+ conveyance. This amino acid tends to be positively charged, so it would readily bind with an aspartic acids coming along as part of the (c) subunits, popping off their bound hydrogens. It is also genetically essential, as mutations are lethal.

The proposal is that this arginine is specially exposed to the internal side of the membrane, via a channel, (curved arrow leading upward to the cytoplasm in the diagram below), and also positioned such that it can latch onto aspartic acids the blue (c) subunits after rotation. These aspartic acids (D) are carrying the protons that came in via the complementary channel from below (outside) before they started their trip around the carousel. All that time, the membrane has protected those protons from displacement by other chemicals, such as water, other proteins and amino acids, etc.

Image of the proton-conducting interface within the Fo subunit of the ATP synthase. The static (a) subunit is portrayed in orange at rear, while the passing set of c subunits (there are ten of them) are going by in front as a pink band, though dimmed for clarity. The c subunits are progressing from right to left, with hydrogens coordinated on the key aspartate (D) residue #61 on each (c) subunit of the rotating set. As they pass, they are captured by the arginine (R) residue on the static A subunit and released in the only direction possible, up the chute into the cell. Immediately thereafter, the c subunit band passes to another channel where protons can load up again from the external solution.

Those protons are portrayed above by the band containing "c D61", indicating an aspartic acid (D) on a (c) subunit's 61st coded position, whose proton could be displaced by the arginine on the other (a) subunit as it is going by. The gray band of (c) subunits is travelling towards the left, so the idea is that aspartic acid-coordinated protons coming in from the right hit the blue arginine first, where the aspartate and arginine, with their different and complementary charges, bind directly and immediately, releasing the coordinated H+ which then shoots right up the channel to the cytoplasm. At the very next position, protons come in from the outside (periplasm) to bind to the just-vacated D61 spot on the (c) subunit. It is an elegant and very spare, atomic and electrochemical ratchet.

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• Religion and war- the deep connection.
• We have lost a decade of normal economic growth.
• Born in the USA.
• A trade policy that works.
• Corporations are exiting the public sphere. Why not regulate private companies as well?

Welcome to the New Class System

Yes, there is a class system in America, and it organizes our politics.

Communists have spent 150 years trying to convince us that economic status determines class in modern societies. But most people wouldn't have it- neither the diagnosis, nor the prescription of a dictatorship of the proletariat. We are far more complicated than this reduction to the most basic dimension of existence. We have other identities and values that confer status. Who is classier- Barack Obama, or Donald Trump, who is worth many times more?

This seems to inform our recent election, explaining the attraction Trump held on such a large section of the electorate. A section that has felt scorned by the meritocratic elite that has sprung up over the last couple of generations. The bicoastal, college-educated, Whole Foods shoppers who have taken over the Democratic party, the levers of government, and the media. They are the politically correct libtards who have climbed up the class ladder via its new mechanism of ivy league education, rather than old money or blue blood.

People of the heartland have dutifully sent their children off to college, only to see them indoctrinated into the liberal cosmopolitan ethos and turn their backs as they headed off to the coasts. And what has happened? Working class people have been oppressed by the economic system run by this new elite, which is itself under the thumb of the modern corporation, when it is not a unionized cog of a sclerotic public sector.

The resentment, while fueled by economics, is experienced far more viscerally as cultural, as condescension towards "fly-over" country, the South, Texas, religion, State's rights, and any place not "progressive". Obama's gaffe about people clinging to guns and religion was far more damaging than any policy statement. Was it condescending? Yes. Was it true? Of course. Well, the clingers saw their revenge in Donald Trump, a man clearly of their own class, despite his totally different background (New York!). His very classlessness was a marker of a certain class, and his rude comments about the non-whites, his mafioso bling, his religion as thin as a KKK sheet, were all signs of the right class, one that would take power in a new Jacksonian revolution.

Andrew Jackson- true populist, not fake populist.

But a funny thing happened on the way to this supposed populist revolution. It turns out that the Republican coalition, which Trump exemplifies so well, is made up of two classes, not just one. The resentful social clingers are just one part of it. The populous part, but hardly the most powerful. The other part is money. Pure, unadulterated greed. The 1%, and the 0.001% particularly, are the true soul of the conservative movement and Republican party, buying its elections and ordering up its policies. The new administration now has a plutocrat in every henhouse, whose clear goals are to destroy the walls that the government, in its liberal incarnation, has put up against their greed and predation.

These, finally, are the people who exemplify the communist maxim about class being determined by the ownership of the means of production. Despite having all they could wish for, they are defined by their desire to have more. Trump himself lives for the competitive zeal of destroying others, via deals, insults, and bullying. He is also dynastically inclined, grooming his offspring to inherit the empire. Being insecure in their wealth, they also feed endless propaganda about how great they are, how appropriate it is to put the most "successful" people in charge of all affairs, how success in business, or inheritance, betokens public virtue rather than its opposite.

So the test of the new regime, telling us whom it really serves, is coming when they let their money speak, via the budget and tax policies. Will inheritance taxes be eliminated? Who gets the most from the tax cuts? Why destroy the consumer financial protection agency? We know the answers already, and it does not accord in the least with a populist program. Trump has been meeting assiduously with CEOs to ask them what policies they would like, how workers should be treated, and taxes reduced. What can possibly be populist about the outcome? How thoroughly can they entrench a new system, where democracy is fully neutered, in favor of plutocracy?

So, once again, the clingers, true to their social concept of class, are being sold down the river by their comrades in the GOP, whose interests lie precisely in keeping them downtrodden, while throwing an occasional bit of social red meat in their direction, plus plenty of propaganda via the house organs.

In the end, we have three classes in the US, pulling in quite different directions. The downtrodden middle and lower classes, the cosmopolitan liberal middle, and the plutocratic top end. As Hillary Clinton found out, democracy alone isn't enough in the face of an antiquated constitution, shameless opponents, and buckets of money. How the Republican coalition continues to hold in the face of its stark contradictions has long been, and remains, a mystery, especially from the vantage point of California, where that contradiction has doomed it to obscurity. But clearly the social class consciousness of the Republican base is far stronger elsewhere, and can be traded on with what seems like impunity.

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• Other precedents for Trump.
• Making America great, with BS.
• And lies.
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• Someone must and will lead on climate change.
• Stiglitz on Trump.
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• Win for inequality- let's repeal fuel efficiency standards!
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• China rising.
• Everyone deserves a union.
• Wealth distribution is a policy issue, not a technology issue.

Memories ... In the Corners of My Mind

Where Do Memories Go? Where Do They Stay? How do we get them back?

There has been some debate about where memories end up in our brains, whether in the hippocampus exclusively or distributed through much of the neocortex. The spectacular case of HM, who could not form new memories after his entire hippocampus was removed, (plus some other nearby structures), indicated that older memories were still accessible from elsewhere, while all new memories are formed and reside at least temporarily in the hippocampus. However some types of memories do not appear to get re-distributed from the hippocampus. HM was missing quite a bit of explicit (also called declarative) memory from prior to his surgery, for instance, including everything in the prior year, and decreasing amounts going backwards for eleven more years. Other types of memory, such a short-term, working, implicit, motor, and procedural memories remained functional, however, for new formation as well as retrieval.

It is known that sleep plays an important role in the "consolidation" and redistribution of explicit memories within the hippocampus and from there to the cortex. During sleep, significant memories are replayed, which strengthens their encoding and allows their replication to more stable storage in the cortex. Ironically, sleep prevents forgetting. The redistribution process can take months to years, accounting for the deficits experienced by HM. On the other hand, sleep impairs, while new novel experiences enhance, the consolidation of some memories within the hippocampus, probably by enhancing the salience of the entire sequence of experiences. Current work indicates that memories get to the cortex quite quickly, with a "parallel process" between both areas strengthening them over time.

A recent study looked at this memory consolidation process, and asked what happens to conflicting memories- which might prompt over-writing of an initial memory with a later, corrected one. Yes, this was another study done with rats and mazes, testing their ability to retain memories of locations over various time periods, and over intervening activities, such as sleep, after the target location was changed. The rats learned the locations of both targets quite quickly, and returned to those locations preferentially in future trials, a week later, no matter where the actual target was.

If the rats where allowed to sleep between the switched training sessions, they lost the first memory more than if they had been deprived of sleep and exposed to further novel events between training sessions. This led to a conclusion that the hippocampal encoding (but not the cortical) is enhanced by activity and novelty, rather than sleep. The next step in the experiment was to alter the memory type by allowing the rats to explore the training area extensively for a few days prior to the training. This allowed them to gain a fuller context for the experiences to come, context that is believed to be stored not only in the hippocampus, but also in the cortex, being part of the consolidated and distributed memory system. After this protocol, rats allowed to sleep significantly out-remembered the sleep deprived rats when tested, and performed particularly well if the experimenters threw in a cruel trial a day after training, where no target was present in the maze at all.

An example of one test of a rat trained the week before. The training runs were, first target top left, followed by sleep, and second, target at bottom right, followed by distraction and sleep deprivation. The rat clearly remembered the second training much better. This was true even if the training regimens were reversed, and the one followed by sleep occurred second.

Lastly, the researchers studied molecular markers in their subject's brains, to see where cell and synapse growth was taking place in response to all these exciting events. For all conditions, the brains showed a great deal of neural activity and synaptic consolidation, i.e. expression of genes like cFos and Zif-268, right after training. However five hours later, things were a little different. Expression in the hippocampus was significantly down among animals who had gotten some sleep, but up if they were sleep deprived.

Conversely, marker expression in the cortex was the reverse- up in rats who had slept, down in those continually kept awake with more play and other novelties. This was particularly interesting since sleep alone drove a significant decline in cortical expression of these genes in control animals. That such brief training events can have effects on such gross brain areas through subsequent sleep, for hours and days, may argue more for the traumatic nature of the training, (done in water mazes, where the rats are desperately searching for a hidden platform), than normal learning in, say, a school environment.

Nevertheless, this kind of work shows what is going on in the field of memory research, as we try to figure out why, where, and how memories are distributed in the brain, which ones are kept, which ones erased, how they are schematized and compressed, and how they are retrieved again and altered during that retrieval. In this case, the researchers make the claim that their procedures have dissected a difference between cortical memory formation, which is enhanced by sleep and inhibited by intervening learning and activity, versus hippocampal memory formation, which experiences the reverse.

They did not have much to say in the end about conflicting memory formation, since the rats seemed to deal with this aspect just fine, (though less well after sleep). They remembered both maze solutions, even if one had been superceded by another for a few training runs. But the relational nature of cortical memory, which seems to grasp memories better if they are situated in a known matrix of prior experience, is interesting. And the speed of this cortical memory consolidation is also interesting- a matter of days, not the weeks or months that has been the model in the wake of HM.

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Truth is the First Casualty of Fascism

Is he a clown, or a fascist? Depends on who believes him, and who follows him.

We are in new territory, in American politics. Never before has such a vile know-nothing bully been elected as president. George Washington is surely spinning in his grave. But other countries have been here before- Italy perhaps foremost, with its experiences of Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. Each was thought to be a clown, at least originally. The dark side of political clown-ishness, however, is fascism.

The signs are everywhere, from the campaign, to the inaugural address, to the flurry of hate unleashed in the first weeks in office. The pillars of fascism are an authoritarian mind-set, use of hate as the most powerful political emotion, scapegoats to focus hate on, lying, systematic hatred and denigration of the press, dedication to business interests, militarism, and use of extra-legal means and general destruction of institutions and due process in favor of direct use of, and displays of, power. And then more lying.

The President's inaugural address and festivities exemplified all these trends. There was national renewal and rebuilding the country, as though it was not already built. There was "American carnage". Really? Crime hardly our biggest problem. It was a play for power, to justify extreme measures and authoritarian approaches. God was invoked constantly, not only by the blessers and benedicters, but by the President himself, as though he had a theological leg to stand on. "We will be protected by God", "... the same almighty creator". There was the cheap nationalism. "America first, America first!", and "a total allegiance to the United States of America".

There were fawning claims of putting power back in the hands of the people in several places in the speech. Which makes the ensuing flurry of executive orders seem rather odd, since they exemplify the power of one, not of the many. Even in representative terms, he represents a minority of those who voted. But no matter. The narcissistic identification of the leader with the whole is another facet of authoritarianism. And of narcissism.

The order banning Muslim and refugee immigration was further evidence, among many other orders and tantrums. The claim was that this would make us safer, evidently in light of the carnage that such immigrants were causing on US streets. Scapegoating and the lying are, as usual, inextricably linked. The authoritarian has to have enemies and can not have enough of them in reality, at least ones who are easy to hate. Thus Hitler and the Jews, or Mussolini and the pacifists and communists. We will have to watch the ratchet of hate and scapegoating very carefully. Now it is Muslims and Mexicans. Next is the press, whom the President calls garbage, and the worst people on earth- when he isn't sucking up to them, that is. Who will be next? The civil servants? The Democratic states unwilling to join immigrant roundups? The lawyers of the ACLU? The scientists? The logic of bullying is that anyone who is not clearly cowed is a threat and must be hounded into submission, or else the bully does not feel secure.

Bulldozing through institutions was another part of the immigration order, now being so thoroughly picked apart in the courts. Fascism is impatient with process and legal forms. The scapegoats must be eliminated immediately, and the leader must show his virile power to crush all opposition, with scathing tweets, if not with his armed followers or suborned organs of the law. It is ironic, though not surprising, that he has landed in the wrong end of federal court mere days after pledging so faithlessly to protect and defend the constitution.

But truth is the most serious casualty of this process, and ingredient in the many facets of fascism. All politics involves lying and coloring the facts to some degree. But most politics takes place in a zone of acceptable shadings of the truth, through a normal discourse of free media filtration and critique. This President has been notoriously immune to fact-checking through his campaign, and keeps tweeting lies. His enablers and advisors seem to be selected for their pusillanimity in accepting such alternative facts. The internet has brought us an unmediated liar as president, whose voters loved that he was not a normal politician. Little did they realize that this means he lies more rather than less!

The danger of Muslims in the US- lies. The carnage in the "inner city"- much less than a decade ago. The bad deals with Mexico, China, Iran- lies. The crowd size at the inauguration- lies. Voter fraud, and the idea that the actual popular vote favored the President- lies. Each lie is engineered to set up an false enemy or normalize an appalling view or policy. Each lie is engineered to augment the President's power, needing immediate executive action to fix. Who buys it? Well, the poll numbers have been dropping by the day, so this round of lying does not seem very effective.

The destruction of truth in our political discourse owes relatively little to the President and his appalling acolytes, however, but much more to the larger ecosystem of the right, particularly FOX news. They have been building startingly false and destructive narratives for decades, which curiously support the corporations and the rich while denigrating the government- the one entity that can stand in the way of the rich gathering the rest of our economy into its greedy fingers.

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Thankfully, the President does not have the full toolchest of fascism at his command. And this goes beyond brains! He does not have enough popular support to alter the basic rules of the system. The Women's march was a very important warning shot in that respect. He does not have his own armed forces. He has only a modest grip on his own Republican party. That party is more dedicated to neutering the state than to building it up, at least in most respects. A crisis may change all these equations, but at the moment, a descent into fascism seems unlikely, despite his best efforts.

Starting with brains, it has become painfully apparent that the President's ravings are not the calculated distraction of a clever fox. Rather, they are his utmost effort at clarity and strength. There is no there there. He does not seem to have enough of a grasp of reality to manage it. Nor is the power behind the throne much more fearsome. Steven Bannon has a long history of right-wing agitation, and I studied one of his more recent films to gather an impression of his thought process: Occupy unmasked. It is an incoherent salad of clips and snark. But little sustained argument to be worried about. His actual speeches are more insidious, but they are very standard Republican pablum- the deficit is too big, the country is drowning in debt, the government needs to be cut. Nothing very novel there, just a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, an anti-worker agenda, and perhaps a note of warning to those Republicans who want to blow up the debt for tax cuts.

And the milita- the blackshirts or brownshirts, beholden to the fasicst leader- where is it? Thankfully, we have not stooped to that depth quite yet. But the way the customs and immigration service jumped to do the President's bidding, almost before the ink was dry, was highly disturbing. The order was half-baked at best, something that should have met with a bureaucratic friction and pushback for clarification, if not resistance. Likewise, the support the President has gotten from the border patrol union, to the point of incapacitating their leader, is also troubling. No one seems to be minding the values of common decency in those departments. Otherwise, the President and his acolytes are militaristic, but the military for its part sees how fake their values and rhetoric are, and will doubtless keep the crazy at arm's length. They may have disliked Obama, but that doesn't mean they want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

How does the media environment look? Not that great, surely, but compared to something like Putin's Russia and Berlusconi's Italy, it is quite free. No amount of vitriol from the President is going to alter that, and the other institutions of government, principally the Congress, are unlikely to alter that, other than perhaps cutting public funding for the public media. Indeed the humor that has been unleashed is most cathartic and positive. The danger is mostly indirect, from a further unleashing of corporations on the public sphere, which will further pollute and damage our very notion of free speech and truth.

There have been many authoritarians, but few fascists. We can take comfort in the incompetence, small-mindedness, and stupidity of the current President to save us. But mostly, in our fellow Americans, who must draw a line. How the President was voted into office remains a conundrum, but his followership looks unlikely to grow. Quite the opposite- the poll numbers are going down; support is dwindling. The incompetence and meanness on display is offending everyone near and far. Other than base Republicans, of course. What will they do who are closer to power? Will the President's aides and advisors draw a line anywhere for decency and our long-term interests? Will the bureaucracy offer some resistance? That will only happen in concert with, and as an expression of, a general revulsion in the political system.

• The signs are clear.
• The establishment is appalled and uneasy.
• Fake olds: re-writing history. Religions have been doing it forever, of course.
• Lies as an excuse for oppression.
• Who will follow? Who will not? Especially when the crisis comes.
• Workers? Savers? Who cares?
• Cringely on H1B and L1B visas.
• Science and truth- another humdrum Democratic constituency.
• Enemies are accumulating on all sides.
• 60,000 to 100,000 visas flushed down the drain- it is shameful and culpable.
• First Things- high-end religion for Trump. And yes, racism is the left's fault.
• Trump crumples like a wet bathrobe on Taiwan.
• Afghanistan, still a quagmire.
• This what resistance looks like.