Dark Star

The Drake equation is a way of estimating the likelihood that we will ever contact life elsewhere in the universe. It may be that the most important and uncertain of its seven factors is the last, the average lifetime of advanced civilizations.  It could be short: a civilization, such as ours, can crash by nuclear warfare, by failing to control a pandemic, by becoming enslaved to automatons that it invents, or by turning its environment into a desert.

This is my opinion, as an American citizen with no fixed commitment to any party.  It is shocking that anyone would consider voting for Donald Trump.  It is shocking that the historic Republican party descended to letting him become its figurehead.  He is a con-man.  He dodged military service, and calls soldiers who were wounded, killed, or captured and tortured, “losers” and “suckers”.  He inherited his wealth from his father, an unscrupulous landlord.  He has cheated his own employees and dodged taxes and boasted of being “smart” for doing so.  He became known because he was picked, aptly, to act the role of a bullying employer in a TV “reality” show.  Whereas others work their way up through political experience, he had none, had run for no elective office, when he decided to run for president, probably to gain immunity and more celebrity.  His campaign was helped by fake news disseminated from Russia (whose motive is to weaken the West), he dismisses all media critical of himself as fake news, called the term “one of my better inventions” (it dates from 1890).  His admiration for himself is boundless.  His over-riding motive is self-aggrandisement.  His favorite mode of expression is a slew of Tweets, and the loose repetitive crudity of their language lays bare his low intelligence.  He repeatedly makes statements without foundation in fact.  He is a self-confessed sex offender, boasting of being able to get away with grabbing women’s genitals.  He freely insults foreign statesmen or whole nations, or those he appointed to positions and then fell out with.  He grumbled that immigrants from “shithole countries” are not wanted and should go “back to their huts”.  He incites violence: refuses to condemn White supremacism; blamed both sides for the Charlottesville event in which a racist drove a car into anti-racist protesters; commented “I love Texas!” when a mob of “our people” with guns surrounded his opponent’s campaign bus; has implicitly encouraged his supporters to behave intimidatingly outside polling stations.  Terrified of going down as a one-term president, he has done all he can to prevent millions of votes from being counted, using accusations of fraud without evidence, and threatens rebellion against the result.  He has inflicted massive harm on the health of Americans, especially the poor and disadvantaged, by depriving millions from access to health care, undermining regulations,  and scorning action against the coronavirus pandemic.  As this pandemic struck the world, he ended US support for the World Health Organization.  As the number of American deaths rose toward a quarter million, he advised people to inject disinfctant into themselves, encouraged close-packed crowds without face-masks, made a display of ignoring precautions, became infected himself and started a burst of infection inside his own government.  His tax cuts have enabled billionaires to pay less than their lowly employees.  He destroyed an international agreement that would have stopped Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb.  Most far-reaching, by withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, and giving away vast areas of public land for dirty-energy extraction, he has made it terribly less likely that the world will be able to save itself from climate catastrophe.  It will take long careful work by a Biden administration to undo some of the damage caused by this aberration of a president.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-ways-the-election-will-shape-the-future-of-science-health-and-the-environment/

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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.

23 thoughts on “Dark Star”

  1. Most of the people following Guy’s blog are, I am sure, peace-loving supporters of human rights who are truly moved by the plight of populations caught up in war, many of whom are made refugees as a result. If you prefer our recent presidents to Trump, how you square those views with support for war criminals such as the first Bush, the Clintons, the second Bush, Obama, and most of the candidates who ran in between (e.g., the “hero” McCain, or people such as Dole, Gore/Lieberman, Kerry, or Romney) is beyond me. Trump, for all his boorishness, crudeness, business misdealings, and other objectionable behavior, is one of the very few presidents in the country’s history to not start a new war, whether small or large. Iraq, Serbia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Yemen, Libya, and Syria were attacked by all of these “responsible” presidents based on lies and virtually destroyed, with staggering misery and destruction visited upon those populations. That is the legacy of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama/Clinton and Obama/Kerry. Trump has attempted to wind down every one of the wars his predecessors started, often having to battle the deep state and pentagon holdovers who refuse to accept a world without unending warfare. So if you loved permanent war under the presidents from GHW Bush to Obama, you’ll love the Biden/Harris administration! Interestingly, I believe the last president before Trump to not start a war was the eminently decent Jimmy Carter.

    1. I don’t think it is quite right to say these wars were all started by the US. Surely the Iraq war of 1990 was started by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (Iraq had previously started the Iraq-Iran war), the Somali and Syrian wars were started by rebellions against dictators, the chain of Afghan wars was started by a communist overthrow of the monarchy, then supported by Soviet invasion, the Libyan war was started between factions, the Yemen war is between factions supported by Saudi Arabia and Iran. The US may have been wrong to intervene or escalate; especially, under Obama, to increase the use of drones with risk to civilians.
      I try to be a pacifist, but I haven’t quite got there yet. Some years ago when I read of a drug warlord having a rival sawn slowly in half, I reflected that if I knew of a Saddam-like dictator doing that at this moment, and if I had an army, I would be sorely tempted to send it in for regime change.

      1. Saddam Hussein was emboldened to invade Kuwait by our support to him throughout their war with Iran in the 1980’s and by our ambassador (I think April Glaspie) strongly insinuating that we would look the other way if he did invade. From my reading of the Afghanistan situation, Zbigniew Brezinski persuaded President Carter that we needed to “give the Soviets their Vietnam” by aiding the Islamic rebels against that communist government in 1978, so I think we played a significant role in starting that war. Brezinski famously later declared in an interview in the late 1990’s that it was a great move even if it resulted in “a few enraged Moslems.” Libya and Syria and Iraq and even Afghanistan are “benefited” from our intervention because of oil or other global “great game” power plays, not from any of the lies our government told us about them (weapons of mass destruction, chemical attacks, etc.). I don’t know his motivation in saying so, but Trump is one of the only politicians in the U.S. who dared to say that the Bush administration *lied* us into the second Iraq war. More honesty in one statement than you get in an entire 4 years of most of our presidents. Caitlin Johnstone has a nice summary of Biden’s likely foreign policy team: https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/biden-will-have-the-most-diverse-intersectional-cabinet-of-mass-murderers-ever-assembled-5eaf86dad6e1

        1. Thank you Eric for raising this complicated question. My impression is that Trump’s withdrawal of US forces from Syria and his efforts to withdraw forces from Afghanistan have been orchestrated by the Kremlin to give Russian forces a freer hand in what they consider their own sphere of influence. I can’t prove this, so if you disagree I won’t argue the point.

          It is perfectly clear, however, that Trump and his administration have been enthusiast arms merchants. 2020 has seen the second highest total US arms sales of any year in history, and the year ain’t over yet. Arms sales to the murderous repressive regimes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are committing war crimes in Yemen, and Trump’s veto of a rare congressional resolution barring the sale, are especially despicable.

          https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-11/news/process-changes-offered-arms-sales-rise

          Trump’s support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and refusal to hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses is another black mark.

          I’m not defending the long bipartisan history of US support for our arms manufacturers enthusiastically selling weapons around the world. 2010, during the Obama administration, was the number one year for US arms sales. But claiming pacifism as a reason to support Trump is misinformed at best and seems disingenuous to me.

  2. The Drake equation is an interesting thought experiment, more philosophy than physical science, because we can’t yet generate testable hypotheses for most of its terms. We do have a reliable number for the rate of star formation in our galaxy, and in the past few decades astronomers have made remarkable progress quantifying the proportion of stars that have planets. And now they’re even starting to generate some quantitative guesses about the average number of potentially habitable planets per star:

    https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/kepler-retrospective-earth-like-planets-common/

    Regarding Trump, I am relieved that Biden and Harris won the election, and that there hasn’t been any violence from Trump’s supporters, at least not yet, and that even Fox News called the election for Trump. Anybody who believes that the election was stolen needs to put on a tinfoil hat while they explain how the same ballots that were fraudulently cast for Trump also elected a lot of Republican senators and representatives. I know it’s too much to hope for, but if Trump had any real patriotism he would stop whining and prevaricating and direct his administration to work with Biden’s transition team to effect an orderly transfer of power.

    And thank you, Guy, for the catalogue of Trump’s offenses. We’ve been living with Trump for more than four years now, and I’m afraid we’ve been bludgeoned into taking for granted just how abusive he is. This nation needs to reflect seriously on how we could possibly have elected somebody so totally immoral and incompetent to our highest office, and how we’re going to avoid making the same mistake again.

    1. Whoops. Fox News called the election for Biden. And ballots that were cast for Biden also voted for Republican senators and representatives. I can’t understand why I said Trump when I meant Biden.

    2. Trump doesn’t seem to be a good loser…. I’d never have guessed that he’d be like that!

  3. You’ll be singing a different tune in a year’s time once the dementia-riddled Biden has been removed from office as unfit, and the totalitarian Marxist Harris has taken over. Free speech will disappear and rigid far-left orthodoxy will be rigorously enforced, with the help of Democrat-financed BLM/Antifa hate mobs. They’ll burn down your house or business without batting an eyelid.

    1. Here, here! While the GOP still has real power–the President, the Senate, state legislatures–I propose a constitutional amendment I call the “End Socialism in America” amendment: “No State, nor its people, shall receive more in appropriations from the United States than it and its people pay in taxes to the United States.” No more

      *Farm subsidies. To which, in addition to legislated appropriations, trump has been giving the farmers billlions.
      *Water subsidies. My water comes out of the Delaware River and I pay the full cost of it. In the arid West, the federal government subsidizes water.
      *Railroad subsidies. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service is profitable. Last I heard, the service is pretty poor. Why? Northeast Corridor profits go to subsidize unprofitable routes in less densely populated areas. So the Omaha to East Bumblefuzz route continues, because their Senators and Representatives protect the subsidy.
      *Mail subsidies. Of course, you can mail a letter from Midtown Manhattan to Honolulu, or from one address in Arctic Village, Alaska down the street to another address in Arctic Village, Alaska, but, on average, letters mailed in less densely populated areas travel farther and at greater cost than letters mailed in more densely populated areas. There’s a way to partially rectify this *without* determining and charging for the cost of delivery of each piece of mail: I believe the USPS records the “from” and “to” zip codes of every letter mailed. At the end of each fiscal year, the USPS could determine the total cost, state-by-state, and either charge or credit each state appropriately.

      Of course, the main beneficiaries of what socialism we have in the USA are the Republican states. Why do you think they’re called the red states?

      1. Um, I should’ve written “Hear, Hear!” Instead of “Here, Here!” My bad.

  4. It is surely gratifying that a majority of voters have rejected this thug, but distressing that a large minority continue to adore him! Adolf Hitler took power with no more.

  5. Thank you for setting this out so clearly. Congratulations for living through it. I’ve been ranting since Hillary’s second debate, and maybe I can just take a deep breath and stop now.

  6. Excellent comment. One tends to block from memory some of the awfulness of the man. Hopefully he will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history. Trump and his ideas would condemn the USA to being a failed state, the 21st Century analog of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a once great nation brought low by a dysfunctional constitution that allows a minority to block reform.

    1. Trump Derangement Syndrome? Let’s hear from trump’s SUPPORTERS about his fundamental honesty: Michael Wolff quotes trump supporter Steve Bannon extensively, with Bannon’s permission, in “Siege”: E.g., “Bannon often recounted, with continuing astonishment, the many times the president ‘looked me in the eye and lied,'” followed by examples, such as WRT Stormy Daniels. trump supporter Chris Christie: “what he’s done at times, which has been unfortunate, is in my view, lie about things, that he has no need to lie about.” (Search Google for /”Chris christie” trump lying/ to find videos.) Rudy Giuliani didn’t want trump to testify to Mueller or his staff for fear that trump would be “trapped into perjury”. (Search Google for /rudy giuliani trump “perjury trap” “meet the press”/ to find videos.) How do you avoid being trapped into perjury? Just tell the truth! It’s widely known that telling the truth is easy; lying is hard, because you need to keep track of which lies you’ve told to whom. And these men are his supporters! Who’s being deranged, Glint?

  7. You certainly couldn’t be accused of being a fan of Donald Trump’s!he seems to see nature as something to be exploited and used for profit having no value in it’s own right so he sort of reminds me of Dune’s Baron Harkonen who’s home world of Gedi Prime had become a vast factory.Trump is certainly unusual in having no tact or diplomacy and you’d expect him to have a big booming voice but it’s sort of quiet and squeeky.

  8. Well said. Of course, as Ben Franklin wrote*, “Well done is better than well said”, and it was done by trump being voted out of office, though I wish it was done more thoroughly.
    *Yes, he really wrote this, Poor Richard, 1737, which you can find by searching franklinpapers.org.

    1. Just so there’s no misunderstanding, my “well said” comment was in reply to Guy’s original post, not to the comment directly above my “well said” comment.

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