Book Your Flight
Now!
This
morning, #45 tweeted, “Since taking office I have
been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that
there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!
8:13 AM - Jan 2,
2018 (@realDonald Trump)”
The
tweet, like so many others, prompted a moment of head scratching and
confusion. Is #45 saying what I think he
is saying?
According
to a quick Google search of the terms Cause
& Effect and Correlation:
“Theoretically,
the difference between the two types of relationships are easy to
identify — an action or occurrence can cause another (e.g. smoking causes
an increase in the risk of developing lung cancer), or it can correlate with
another (e.g. smoking is correlated with alcoholism, but it does not cause
alcoholism).Jul
3, 2013”
We already know that VP Mike Pence would never consider the
veracity of the explanation by Google.
After all, he willingly pocketed thousands of dollars acting as an
earlier political sycophant for the smoking industry to deny any cause and
effect between the millions emulating the Marlboro Man and – like his - their
own untimely deaths choking on sputum. Then
again, no one sychophants like Pence!
With #45, we have an even deeper problem. Cause
and effect is blurred even to the point that climate science is openly
denied regardless of the preponderance of international science, measurements,
and political movements to reduce carbon emissions or reverse some of the
damage of man-made green house gases.
“Global warming has been
proven to be a canard repeatedly over and over again.
The left needs a dose of
reality.
12:43 PM - Mar
28, 2012 (@realDonald Trump)”
And
correlation may be another theory
just beyond the reach of the current occupant.
For example, after learning from his intelligence sources that Russia
and Vladimir Putin were undeniably involved with hacking our recent election,
Trump was quick to respond to the figures and information:
“Putin & I discussed
forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, &
many other negative things, will be guarded..
5:50 AM - Jul 9,
2017 (@realDonaldTrump)”
I
feel safer now. And I guess I should on
an airline this next year too, given #45’s careful shepherding of people in the
skies this year. On the other hand, a thoughtful
response by David A. Graham in The Atlantic this morning this may be once again
a sign of the narcissistic, despotic nature of our current occupant to praise
himself for what he had/has never accomplished or even understood.
“The president’s
claim can’t withstand even slight scrutiny. The 2017 milestone is worth
celebrating, but changes in statistics like air safety are achieved over long
time scales, and given the small number of crashes involved, minor deviations
in the number are unlikely attributable to any specific presidential
action—especially one take in the just under a year Trump has been in office.
“But the problems
with Trump’s claim don’t end there. First, the statistic involved is crashes worldwide.
American
aviation has already been extremely safe. No U.S. airline has had a
fatality since 2009, when a commuter turboprop crashed near Buffalo, New York,
and there hasn’t been a fatal passenger jet accident since 2006, when a plane
crashed during takeoff in Lexington, Kentucky. (Foreign carriers have had fatal
accidents in the United States, like the 2013 Asiana Airlines crash landing at
San Francisco that killed three people.) Trump wishes to take credit for what’s
happened overseas—matters both beyond the control of American power, and given
the small sample size, also a product of good luck.”
In another 18 days,
I will have been under the reign of a man who considers all good things
originating from him alone. And, all bad
things originating from him as good.
I have undergone
almost a full year of pundits, economists, political suck-up’s, and the
intelligentsia of the media trying to ascribe some deeper or cognitive
reasoning to #45, and I find myself becoming inured to the ludicrosity of it
all.
The other day, NPR
was reviewing some of the behaviors and history of Idi Amin Dada’s dictatorship
over the Ugandan people. It is not so
easy driving a car while you fall into an echo chamber.
Amin Dada used to say, “The problem with me is that I am fifty
or one hundred years ahead of my time.
My speed is very fast. Some ministers
have had to drop out of my government because they could not keep up.”
Trump: As for Tillerson's reported "moron" 'comment,
the president said, "I think it's fake news. But if he did that, I guess
we'll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win."
And, like watching Spicer defending the number of people
attending #45’s inauguration as the largest in history, Amin Dada warned us all
that “If we knew the meaning to everything that was happening to us, then there
would be no meaning.” Thank goodness for
alternative facts.
So my New Year’s resolution is to shelve any hope of #45
utilizing Cause & Effect, Correlation, or even Coincidence in his labored
fingering of the Tweet in the early hours of the morning.
The real Correlation, followed by a legitimate Cause and Effect
occurred in Alabama last month. It will
not happen again by Coincidence. It is
time for all of us to go to work.
Have a Happy New Year.
PS – If you plan to fly somewhere, you can be assured this is
the time to do it.
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