Calculus in Politics
Differential calculus is the study of the rates at which quantities change. For instance, if you’re standing on your roof and you throw a baseball at 10 meters per second upward so that it lands in your swimming pool 8 meters below, how high does it get before it starts to come down? How long will it take to land?
Most of the time we use the word “calculus,” we mean it in a metaphorical sense, as in “the calculus surrounding a certain decision,” yet this isn’t too distant from the mathematical meaning.
Suppose you’re one of the six Republican senators who voted with the Democrats and denied Trump his wall. Given that your only real goal is re-election (that goes without saying), what are the factors that guide your decision-making, since Trump gets alienated easily and has a very long memory re: personal slights. Well, the main one is how Trump and the wall are going to be regarded by your constituents in November, 2020.
The longer you try to support the president, the worse you’re going to look when the noose tightens around his neck. Yet your telling him to take a hike could hurt you badly if his star begins to rise.
Guessing this right is quite an undertaking. I would look at it this way: even if your state is the reddest in the nation, you still need to consider that 22 months is a long time into the future, and that very few good things can happen to Trump’s approval ratings, even among the people in the Midwest and the Deep South. Further, literally hundreds of bad things can happen vis-a-vis his legal exposures, not to mention political defeats, acts of mental instability, and other forms of weakening.
Shown at the right is a little piece of a larger map, showing the 100+ meetings that Trump and his people had with Russian operatives before his inauguration. Here’s the larger map.
Where’s that ball going to land in your swimming pool? Are you going to be in deep water?
Of course, if your decision-making were based on your integrity as a human being, all this would be so much easier. Unfortunately, in American politics, that very rarely happens.
Craig,
“Of course, if your decision-making were based on your “integrity” as a human being, all this would be so much easier. Unfortunately,” ….Unfortunately you seem to have fallen into your own trap !
You don’t need any knowledge of calculus if you simply invent your own facts and reality, which is exactly the basis of your logic.
Your “Integrity” isn’t really “Integrity” if you can twist it to suit any occasion to fit your prejudices.
For 30 months, like many others, you have been ranting abuse at the President and his supporters, without any discernible logic. Each month the President shrugs off a torrent of media abuse and persists with his program of reform.
None of the dire predictions of disaster and mayhem have come true, on the contrary the President has been astonishingly faithful in keeping his election promises and mandate.
Contrary to all predictions. the President has actively defused nuclear situations, and withdrawn from US military adventures.
Contrary to all prediction not only is the economy robust and improving, especially for minorities and blue collar workers, but the President is wining his trade negotiations benefiting all Americans.
Even the Mueller Inquiry once the atmosphere and hysterical ” Get Trump” element has been removed, proves to be a an absurd fantasy, a storm in a tea cup.
By your logic the President is (for no known reason) a puppet of Russia’s Putin, but in the same breath you also claim he’s simultaneously dangerous because he frustrates and actively opposes Russia’s ambitions !
Your champion Nancy Pelosi, accuses Trump of wishing to “destroy” NATO, at the behest of Putin, yet the NATO Secretary General, and the NATO general Staff, state President Trump is the first since Reagan to strengthen NATO and make it more relevant in a post Warsaw Pact century.
Nancy Pelosi is determined to deny the President fulfilling his election promises, and GOP Senators decided a government shut down isn’t the answer. The President obeyed the spirit of the Constitution and conceded.
As the border chaos and agony continues, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will watch their already all time low popularity sink even further. (it’s about half that of the President, as the American people say a pox on both your houses). But, it remains obvious to the American people, if not to a noisy media, uncontrolled migration and open borders are unacceptable.
The mood will swing, Pelosi and Schumer will find their victory Pyrrhic. In time they will be asked to provide a real solution to the crises, and since it’s obvious they don’t have anything to offer except hatred of Trump, the electorate feel justifiably deceived and will again place their faith back in the hands of the “Man with a Plan”.
President Trump could be ruthless, he could simply walk away from the problem, watching as hundreds of thousands pour across the borders. He could let the American people take their wrath out on those democrats responsible.
The scale of human misery caused by uncontrolled illegal immigration is immeasurable. Most democrats are simply hypocrites, (like Nancy Pelosi with high walls and security Guards around her mansion) who will allow even the worst excesses if it means fighting this President.
It’s clear from the truculence shown by Pelosi’s democrats(like yourself), they would rather see America lose, than the President win.
Nancy Pelosi can crow in the leftist US media, “we won” We beat the president” ! But what happens when all the shouting and politicking is over, when all the furor dies down, it will be they who are left explaining their own solution to the American people. Since they have no viable solution, all those who cheered so loudly will find that thanks to Pelosi and her rabid congressional comrades, everyone lost.
America lost.
The President has suffered a set back, but not one he can’t bounce back from, in fact he’s now in an even better position to attack his detractors, as the spotlight shifts to the Democrats.
Certainly, the Dreamers lost. They could have have won, but for the selfishness of the house democrats. The people who voted for a wall lost. The illegal immigrants lost. Those embarking the dangerous journey lost. US medical workers and the US people lost. Humanity lost.
So who won ? Well, drug smugglers, human traffickers, child rapists and murders, criminal cartels, and corrupt officials, Cartel predators of all kinds. Oh, and a handful of “never Trumpers”.
Not much of a victory eh ?
Never mind, you’ve always got Robert Mueller and CNN to put on a well timed show to detract from the consequences.
Now Craig, I challenge you as a person of integrity, do you really believe that it was necessary to arrest 66 year old Robert Stone, a man with a loud mouth but no history of violence, in such a manner ? Would he have turned up if just sent a summons ? Would he have complied if he were simply approached by two FBI agents and asked to accompany them to a bail hearing.
Don’t you find the timing and organized publicity a little disturbing ? Well, we’ll never know, because in your definition of “integrity” you ignore and refuse to comment on situations adverse to your chosen political scenario.
That’s the problem with “integrity”. Integrity requires standards of conduct to be applied independent and regardless of whose actions are being judged.
But the question must be asked, can you still examine your own conscience? Are you still open minded enough to entertain doubts, or have you become so fixated that you’ve slipped into fanaticism where all your old moral values are abandoned in favour of a single obsession ?