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Hot Chilis, Maggot Therapy, and Penis Transplants

by StephaiPapathan Posted on June 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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We can thank the armed forces for a lot more than just national security: Many advances in modern medicine we take for granted came from scientists’ work trying to keep soldiers safe. Everything from inventing certain mosquito repellents to treatments for dysentery and diarrhea have come from the military’s medical breakthroughs.

That’s just one of the insights Mary Roach shares on this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. The writer also tells host Indre Viskontas about advances in ear plugs, a method of cleaning battle wounds that involves maggots, and the latest innovations in penis transplants.

Most or Roach’s studies and anecdotes come from her latest book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, which keeps with her style of single-syllable-science-titles (Gulp, Stiff, Bonk) but has a completely new theme: the military. Roach got the idea for the project while she was reporting in India and learned that the world’s hottest chili pepper, the bhut jolokia (also known as the “ghost chili”), has been weaponized by the Indian Defense Ministry.

“Military science suddenly presented itself to me as something that was more esoteric and broader…and less focused on bullets and bombs,” she explains.

Roach talks about inventions as old as military toilet paper, and newer advances such as penis reconstruction and replacements. The procedure wasn’t an option in the past, Roach says, because injuries that left soldiers without lower limbs or genitals were often fatal. Advances in medical treatment mean soldiers often survive below-the-belt wounds and may need genital reconstruction. The surgery is still uncommon: There are only about 300 genital injuries for every 18,000 limb amputations, she says. On her visit to a cadaver lab at Johns Hopkins, Roach was able to learn about the arteries necessary to connect in order to perform a successful surgery.

“It’s like transplanting a tree,” Roach says. “You don’t just lop it off, you take the roots and the soil around it.”

Roach is known for her squirm-inducing but always fascinating subject matter, such as cadavers, fecal transplants, and pig sex. In Grunt, Roach even details the healing power of maggots. As medieval as it sounds, the creature is incredibly efficient at cleaning wounds. Although the knowledge had been around for centuries, it was World War I surgeon William S. Baer who noticed a soldier who had been lying in the fields for days returned to camp with large open wounds that were free of infection. When he saw that maggots had been eating the dead flesh, allowing the wounds to heal, Baer started using the insects. Today “maggot therapy” is used on diabetic patients; the insects are even approved by the FDA as a medical device. While military surgeons are open to the idea, Roach says, getting hospital staff on board is a challenge.

“It’s been an uphill struggle…they’re maggots, they’re gross!” Roach said. “The nursing staff has to be trained in how to change the maggot-dressing and they might not want that added to their duty list.”

Roach sees her exploration of military science as illuminating some of the grizzly realities of war.

“Even when things are going okay in the military, even when no one is shooting at you, it really sucks,” Roach says. “It’s not a political book, but it’s kind of an antiwar book in its own way.”

Mother Jones senior editor Dave Gilson also talked with Mary Roach about Grunt. Here’s a highlight from their interview:

W.W. Norton

MJ: Did hanging out with soldiers and researchers change any misconceptions you had about the US military?

MR: I didn’t have any conception of this world at all. I didn’t realize that almost any of this existed—the Naval Submarine Medical Research Lab, or NAMRU Three or the Walter Reed Entomology Branch. That was all a surprise to me. I had maybe a misconception that everyone in the military was sort of hawkish. But in fact, the people who deal with the aftermath of war, trying to repair people’s bodies and minds, they are understandably quite anti-war. They’re not big boosters of war, particularly the people I talked to at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. Pathologists, people who have a real, day-after-day, graphic presentation of what war does to the body. I wasn’t really expecting that.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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Hot Chilis, Maggot Therapy, and Penis Transplants

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Antarctica, most remote place on Earth, just hit a scary CO2 milestone

by PercySpangler Posted on June 17, 2016

Antarctica, most remote place on Earth, just hit a scary CO2 milestone

By on Jun 17, 2016 3:38 pm

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

We’re officially living in a new world.

Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year. There’s a notable new entry to the record books. The last station on Earth without a 400 parts per million (ppm) reading has reached it.

Carbon dioxide officially crossed the 400 ppm threshold on May 23 at the South Pole Observatory. NOAA

A little 400 ppm history. Three years ago, the world’s gold standard carbon dioxide observatory passed the symbolic threshold of 400 ppm. Other observing stations have steadily reached that threshold as carbon dioxide has spread across the planet’s atmosphere at various points since then. Collectively, the world passed the threshold for a month last year.

In the remote reaches of Antarctica, the South Pole Observatory carbon dioxide observing station cleared 400 ppm on May 23, according to an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday. That’s the first time it’s passed that level in 4 million years (no, that’s not a typo).

There’s a lag in how carbon dioxide moves around the atmosphere. Most carbon pollution originates in the northern hemisphere because that’s where most of the world’s population lives. That’s in part why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit the 400 ppm milestone earlier in the northern reaches of the world.

But the most remote continent on earth has caught up with its more populated counterparts.

“The increase of carbon dioxide is everywhere, even as far away as you can get from civilization,” Pieter Tans, a carbon-monitoring scientist at the Environmental Science Research Laboratory, said. “If you emit carbon dioxide in New York, some fraction of it will be in the South Pole next year.”

An animation showing how carbon dioxide moves around the planet. NASA/Youtube

Tans said it’s “practically impossible” for the South Pole Observatory to see readings dip below 400 ppm because the Antarctic lacks a strong carbon dioxide up and down seasonal cycle compared to locations in the mid-latitudes. Even factoring in that seasonal cycle, new research published earlier this week shows that the planet as a whole has likely crossed the 400 ppm threshold permanently (at least in our lifetimes).

Passing the 400 ppm milestone in is a symbolic but nonetheless important reminder that human activities continue to reshape our planet in profound ways. We’ve seen sea levels rise about a foot in the past 120 years and temperatures go up about 1.8 degrees F (1 degrees C) globally. Arctic sea ice has dwindled 13.4 percent per decade since the 1970s, extreme heat has become more common and oceans are headed for their most acidic levels in millions of years. Recently, heat has cooked corals and global warming has contributed in various ways to extreme events around the world.

The Paris Agreement is a good starting point to slow carbon dioxide emissions, but the world will have to have a full about-face to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change. Even slowing down emissions still means we’re dumping record-high amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

That’s why monitoring carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa, the South Pole, and other locations around the world continues to be an important activity. It can gauge how successful the efforts under the Paris Agreement (and other agreements) have been and if the world is meeting its goals.

“Just because we have an agreement doesn’t mean the problem [of climate change] is solved,” Tans said.

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Antarctica, most remote place on Earth, just hit a scary CO2 milestone

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

by JanetNewcombe Posted on June 1, 2016

Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:33 pmShare

This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Charles Darwin made the Galápagos Islands synonymous with the idea of change as a means of survival. In the 19th century, the scientist marveled at how similar endemic finches, mockingbirds, and giant tortoises across the 19-island archipelago were uniquely adapted to individual islands and later theorized that this ability to adapt determines whether a species will survive long term. Today, one of the world’s largest wind-diesel hybrid systems, built on San Cristóbal Island, suggests the human population in the region is capable of the bold adaptive strategies it will need to survive in a post-climate-change world.

Electricity demand on San Cristóbal and the three other inhabited Galápagos islands is on the rise, driven by the growth of population (currently at 30,000 residents) and supported by thriving tourism. A plan to replace diesel electricity generation with renewable energy was already set in motion when, in January 2001, an oil tanker struck a reef and spilled more than 150,000 gallons of diesel near San Cristóbal, threatening the irreplaceable plants, birds, and marine life that had evolved there.

Workers clean the blades on a wind turbine on San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos. The turbine provides 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.Eolisca

Ecuador, with the help of the United Nations, quickly enlisted the help of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership, made up of 11 of the world’s largest electricity companies, to reduce the risk of another oil spill at this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between 2007 and 2015, three 157-foot wind turbines have supplied, on average, 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

San Cristóbal’s energy is now in the hands of Elecgalapagos S.A., the local utility tasked with expanding the project to convert the Galápagos to zero-fossil-fuels territory. They think they can get to 70 percent renewable-energy use in the not-so-distant future. “You have to remember that none of our personnel on the Galápagos had ever seen a wind turbine before we started,” says Luis Vintimilla, an Ecuadorian who has been the project’s local general manager since its inception.

One unexpected problem: Wind turbine blades require regular cleaning, and Vintimilla couldn’t find any locals comfortable in high-altitude conditions. So he hired mountain climbers from the mainland to scrub down the blades. Also new was the job of making sure the turbines had not killed or injured any of the critically endangered endemic Galápagos petrels: large, long-winged seabirds.

The monitoring program’s results have been surprisingly good, considering the common criticism of wind farms as bird killers: Not a single petrel has been identified as hurt or killed. The wind turbines, it seems, are not only keeping the Galápagos green — they’re also making sure the archipelago’s most precarious creatures have a chance to keep on evolving.

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

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Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

by GeraldineLandor Posted on May 27, 2016

Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

By on May 27, 2016Share

He’s baaaack!

Just a few weeks after Ted Cruz tucked his three-pronged tail between his legs and headed back to D.C., the Texas senator and one-time presidential hopeful has gone right back to advocating for his real constituents in Congress: Big Oil.

The Guardian reports that Cruz, along with four other senators, has demanded that the Department of Justice cease any investigation into whether oil companies lied to the public about climate change. Exxon, which wasn’t specifically mentioned in the senators’ letter, is at the heart of a probe by the DOJ and over a dozen states looking into the company’s attempts to cover up evidence linking fossil fuels and climate change.

“We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DoJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time,” wrote Cruz and his compatriots, who apparently need a refresher on the word “controversial.” The only thing controversial about climate change — an issue that 97 percent of scientists agree on — is why Ted Cruz and his pals refuse to accept it.

Cruz, who received more donations from fossil fuel companies than any other presidential hopeful, has a history of advocating for the industry in Congress. At a Senate hearing earlier this year, Cruz called on a bevy of climate change deniers to testify that it isn’t happening, including a retired doctor who thinks the planet could use a little more carbon dioxide, a scientist convicted of corruption, and a Canadian singer who recorded an album about cats, as the Guardian noted.

Welcome back, Ted! We wish we could say we missed you.

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Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

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Flint Mayor Ordered Staffer to Divert Charitable Donations to Her Campaign Fund, Lawsuit Claims

by DaveMaxfield Posted on May 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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In November, Flint residents elected a new mayor, Karen Weaver, who promised to help solve the city’s lead crisis and hold local authorities accountable. Now, she’s mired in a controversy of her own.

On Monday, former City Administrator Natasha Henderson filed a lawsuit in US District Court against Weaver and the city of Flint, claiming she was wrongfully fired after raising concerns that Weaver was steering donations for Flint families into a campaign fund. According to the complaint, Henderson was approached in February by a tearful city employee, Maxine Murray, who told Henderson “she feared going to jail.” The mayor, the suit claims, had instructed Murray and a volunteer to direct donations from Safe Water Safe Homes, a fund created to repair antiquated plumbing in Flint homes, to a campaign account called Karenabout Flint, and give them “step-by-step” instructions on how to make a donation.

As CNN notes, “Karenabout Flint” is not a state-registered PAC, though “Karen About Flint” was the mayor’s campaign slogan, Twitter handle, and campaign website. According to the lawsuit, Henderson, the city’s top unelected official, reported the matter to Flint’s chief legal council in February and requested an investigation. Three days later, she was terminated on the account that there was no room in the city budget to fund her position—though Henderson noted that her position was funded by the state. The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the full complaint below.

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Henderson vs Flint and Weaver (PDF)

Henderson vs Flint and Weaver (Text)

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Flint Mayor Ordered Staffer to Divert Charitable Donations to Her Campaign Fund, Lawsuit Claims

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Chart of the Day: Hillary and Bernie Duke It Out on Soda Taxes

by LJZGregory Posted on April 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Finally we have a real difference between Hillary and Bernie. Hillary supports Philadelphia’s proposed tax on sugary drinks of 3 cents per ounce. Bernie doesn’t. “A tax on soda and juice drinks would disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families in Philadelphia,” he said on Thursday.

Clearly this requires data. First off: how much of this tax would be passed on to consumers? The conventional wisdom is that most of it would, but a recent study out of Cornell suggests the real pass-through is much lower. The authors looked at prices of sugary drinks in Berkeley, which passed a 1-cent soda tax in 2014, both before and after the tax was implemented. Then they compared this to the before-and-after price of the same drinks in San Francisco, which voted in favor of a soda tax but not by the supermajority it required. The net difference is shown in the chart below:

The Snapple outlier is unexplained. Apparently 100 percent of the tax got passed through to Snapple addicts. But for most sugary drinks, only a fraction of the tax was passed through. Overall, after doing a bit of fancy math, the authors conclude that an average of 22 percent of the tax was passed through for Coke and Pepsi products.

So how would this affect Philadelphia? A Gallup poll confirms Bernie’s general concern: low-income consumers are more partial to sugary drinks than high-income consumers, who prefer diet drinks. A recent NIS study concluded the same, and put some numbers to it. Using their data, I figure that a low-income family of three buys about 3,000 ounces more sugary soda per year than a higher income family. If 22 percent of the 3-cent tax is passed through, that’s 0.66 cents per ounce, or about $20 per year for the entire family.

So yes, this is a regressive tax. On the other hand, it’s also a pretty small tax, and the potential benefits are large if it cuts down on consumption of sugary soda and thus reduces the incidence of diabetes—a disease that’s especially widespread among low-income families. But does it? Since we have virtually no real-world experience with this, nobody knows for sure.

So make up your own mind. It’s possible to calculate a ballpark estimate of how much a soda tax would amount to, and although it’s regressive, it’s pretty modestly regressive. But we have no idea whether it would accomplish anything. We can only try and find out.

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Chart of the Day: Hillary and Bernie Duke It Out on Soda Taxes

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Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

by MinnieBCHogplu Posted on April 23, 2016

in hot water

Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

By on Apr 23, 2016comments

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

We knew coral bleaching was a serious issue in the Great Barrier Reef, but the scope of just how widespread it was has been unclear — until now.

Extensive aerial surveys and dives have revealed that 93 percent of the world’s largest reef has been devastated by coral bleaching. The culprit has been record-warm water driven by El Niño and climate change that has cooked the life out of corals.

The unprecedented destruction brought leading reef scientist Terry Hughes, who runs the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, to tears.

“We’ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it’s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once,” Hughes said in a press release.

The Center conducted aerial surveys and dives at 911 sites spanning the full 1,430-mile length of the reef. They show the hardest hit areas are in the northern part of the reefs, which have also endured some of the hottest water temperatures for prolonged periods.

More than 80 percent of reefs surveyed there showed signs of severe bleaching. The southern end of the reef fared better, but overall the bleaching represents a massive blow to biodiversity at the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Great Barrier Reef also faces pressure from ocean acidification and fishing impacts, ramping up concerns over how to protect one of the most unique ecosystems on the planet.

Beyond its beauty, the Great Barrier Reef also has a huge economic benefit on the Australian economy. It generates $4.45 billion in tourism revenue annually and supports nearly 70,000 jobs, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

The damage caused by this round of bleaching will be felt for decades, but it’s not the only reef around the globe to feel the heat of climate change. 2015 marked the third global coral bleaching event ever recorded. This one been the longest of the three as hot ocean temperatures fueled by El Niño and climate change have caused reefs to suffer across every ocean basin.

While every basin has been hit, some reefs and coral species have survived through the event. That has scientists trying to quickly understand why the survivors made it through. That knowledge could be crucial to ensure reefs continue to survive as oceans temperatures continue their inexorable rise and water becomes more acidic due to climate change.

“We can’t afford to sit by and watch climate change drive all the world’s coral reefs to extinctions by the end of the century,” Julia Baum, a reef researcher at the University of Victoria, said.

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Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

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Pigeons with tiny backpacks test the air in London

by Soon9014mxz Posted on March 15, 2016

Pigeons with tiny backpacks test the air in London

By on 14 Mar 2016commentsShare

Shielding your picnic lunch from London’s plentiful pigeon population is almost as much of a tourist tradition as taking a selfie with Big Ben. But one group of pigeons have a job quite different than stealing your sandwich: measuring the city’s air pollution.

Equipped with air quality sensors and GPS trackers in small, feather-light backpacks, six racing pigeons from the Pigeon Air Control project are flying around London to get on-the-ground (or in-the-air?) readings of nitrogen dioxide and other toxic compounds.

Today, the birds started tweeting. And no, that’s not the chirps of a long-awaited springtime you hear — it’s the pigeons’ Twitter account, which promises to provide air quality readings for Londoners who tweet at the handle @PigeonAir.

The three-day campaign from Pigeon Air Control, from March 14 to 16, is mainly a publicity stunt to draw attention to dirty air in London (aka “The Old Smoke”). In 2015, The Guardian reported that 9,500 Londoners die each year from long-term exposure to their city’s noxious cloud.

According the The Guardian, Pierre Duquesnoy, the pigeon project’s visionary, said “he was inspired by the use of pigeons in the first and second world wars to deliver information and save lives, but they were also a practical way of taking mobile air quality readings and beating London’s congested roads.”

It’s become surprisingly popular to strap equipment onto our feathered friends and send them out to gather data in the world’s major cities. First, there were garbage-detecting vultures in Lima — and now, this. What’s next? Strapping laser technology onto the world’s seagulls to measure sea-level rise?

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Pigeons with tiny backpacks test the air in London

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John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and it’s everything we hoped it would be

by TashaMathew Posted on February 29, 2016

John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and it’s everything we hoped it would be

By on 29 Feb 2016commentsShare

After months of largely ignoring Donald Trump in the hopes that he would just go away, America’s best Brit John Oliver finally took on the apish rich kid (and future president?) in a brilliant 22-minute tirade on Last Week Tonight.

In addition to the usual criticisms — for instance, Trump is a vulgar, racist, corrupt and failed businessman whose largest vocabulary word is “great” — Oliver looked at Trump’s claim that he is self-funding his campaign, a myth he trots out to prove that he isn’t beholden to corporate interests. But, as Oliver pointed out:

While it is true that he hasn’t taken corporate money, the implication that he has personally spent $20 to 25 million is a bit of a stretch, because what he’s actually done is loaned his own campaign $17.5 million, and has personally given just $250,000. And that’s important because up until the convention, he can pay himself back for the loan with campaign funds.

He didn’t stop there. Trump — who recently blamed his refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan on a faulty headset — is also remarkably thin-skinned. In 1988, Oliver pointed out, Trump was called a “short-fingered vulgarian” by writer Graydon Carter, and he’s still pissed about it. To this day, Carter said he occasionally receives photographs in the mail from Trump, usually tear-sheets from magazines, with his hand circled in gold Sharpie and the message, “See? Not so short.”

It’s not the sort of behavior one really looks for in a presidential candidate, but like a Zika-infected mosquito who just won’t go away, Trump continues to beguile the American people — many of whom plan on voting for him, despite his refusal to acknowledge climate change, his endorsement of war crimes, and his utter lack of qualifications. A big part of his popularity is the idea that Trump is a successful businessman. But is he? Not according to Oliver:

Over the years, his name has been on some things that have arguably been very un-good, including Drumpf Shuttle, which no longer exists; Drumpf Vodka, which was discontinued; Drumpf Magazine, which folded; Drumpf World Magazine, which also folded; Drumpf University, over which he’s being sued; and of course, the travel-booking site GoTrump.com, whose brief existence was, I imagine, a real thorn in the side of anyone hoping GotRump.com featured a single thing worth masturbating to.

But Oliver has a plan to take down Donald Trump, and it starts with separating the man from his brand — and his name. According to Gwenda Blair, author of The Drumpfs: Three Generations That Built An Empire, the name Drumpf was originally the slightly less presidential sounding Drumpf. And as Oliver said:

Drumpf is much less magical. It’s the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of a foreclosed Old Navy. Drumpf. It’s the sound of a bottle of store-brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station minimart.

And while Oliver acknowledged that it might be odd to bring up Trump’s ancestral name, Trump deserves it, for the following tweet about Oliver’s former boss:

Oliver then informed the audience that he has registered the domain DonaldJDrumpf.com, where he will be selling hats (at cost!) reading Make Donald Drumpf Again and offering a web extension that will turn every instance of the word Trump on your internet browser into Drumpf.

“If you are thinking of voting for Donald Trump,” Oliver said, “the charismatic guy promising to make America great again, stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf, a litigious serial liar with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who he can’t decide whether or not to condemn. Would you think he would make a good president, or is the spell now somewhat broken? That is why tonight I am asking America to make Donald Drumpf again.”

It may be too late to make Donald Drumpf again before Super Tuesday, but it’s still a long way to November. You can get your Drumpf hat here.

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2016 Is the Year That Voters Finally Got Tired of Reality

by merinenty Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jeff Stein makes a potentially important point today:

On Saturday, about 80,000 voters participated in Nevada’s caucus — roughly two-thirds of the total that came out in 2008….Low turnout in Nevada wasn’t an outlier. New Hampshire saw 10 percent fewer voters in 2016 than it did eight years ago. In Iowa, turnout was also down — from 287,000 in 2008 to 171,000 this year.

….Sanders thinks “the core failure” of Obama’s presidency is its failure to convert voter enthusiasm in 2008 into a durable, mobilized organizing force beyond the election. Sanders vows to rectify this mistake by maintaining the energy from the campaign for subsequent fights against the corporate interests and in congressional and state elections.

The relatively low voter turnout in the Democratic primary so far makes this more sweeping plan seem laughably implausible. Three states have voted, we’ve had countless debates and town halls, and there’s been wall-to-wall media coverage for weeks….And yet … we have little evidence that Sanders has actually activated a new force in electoral politics. If he can’t match the excitement generated by Obama on the campaign trail, how can he promise to exceed it once in office?

Of course, it’s one thing to say that Sanders hasn’t generated huge turnouts in a primary against a fellow Democrat, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t generate a huge turnout against a Trump or a Cruz. The problem, of course, is that Hillary Clinton would quite likely generate a huge turnout as well. The prospect of either Trump or Cruz in the Oval Office would do wonders for Democratic panic no matter who the nominee is.

Sadly, turnout is a red herring. The real lesson of this year’s election is that candidates have learned there are no limits to what they can promise. Campaigning is always an exercise in salesmanship, and salesmen always overpromise. This year, though, we have two candidates who cavalierly and repeatedly promise the moon without making even a pretense that they have the slightest notion of how to accomplish any of it. And voters love it! Trump’s crowds go wild over the idea of Mexico paying for a wall and Sanders’ audiences go equally wild over his plan to blow away the entire American health care system and replace it with the NHS. This is the year that fantasy sells, and it sells big.

The conventional wisdom is that this is happening because voters are uniquely angry this year and attracted to outsiders who say they’re going to blow up the system. Maybe so. But I’ve heard that story pretty much every year for nearly my entire adult life, and weak economy or not I don’t really buy it. What’s different this year isn’t the electorate, it’s the candidates. American voters have always had an odd habit of simply believing whatever presidential candidates say, regardless of plausibility or past record, and this year two candidates have tested this to destruction. And guess what? It turns out that a lot of Americans will almost literally believe anything. I mean, China bashing and Wall Street bashing have always been good for some cheap applause, but this year we’re hearing blithe claims about crushing China by taxing them to death and smashing big banks into little bitty pieces, and the crowds are applauding even harder.

Trump and Sanders have shown that you can take overpromising to a far higher level than anyone ever thought possible. Is this unique to 2016? Or will others learn this lesson too? I guess we’ll have to wait for 2020 to find out.

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2016 Is the Year That Voters Finally Got Tired of Reality

Posted in ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2016 Is the Year That Voters Finally Got Tired of Reality