Hispanic Fanatic

As we careen full throttle into the holiday season, it’s important to keep your stress level low, avoid getting sick, and maintain a positive attitude.

Of course, if you’re Latina, you can forget about all that, because it’s impossible for you to do any of those things.

You see, a recent study has revealed that “Latinas’ economic worries and anxiety about health costs are more intense than for other women overall.” In fact, Latinas are far more likely than other American women — especially white women — to worry about affording rent or a mortgage, getting decent health insurance for their families, snagging a job with good benefits, or keeping their family safe from mass shootings. And Hispanic women rank second only to black women when it comes to fear of white nationalism.

Wow, that’s a lengthy list of anxieties. And let’s not forget that almost half of Latinas report that they have experienced discrimination this past year, which is an enormous increase from the Obama era.

Of course, that implies that there is some kind of link between the well-being of Hispanics and the person in the White House. And that’s just crazy, really nuts and…

What’s that?

Oh, it seems that “half of Latino citizens and legal residents, as well as three-quarters of undocumented immigrants, feel unsafe because of comments made by the Trump administration.”

Hmm, it’s almost like having a raging xenophobic president target you specifically for all of the nation’s ills — and putting an overt white supremacist in charge of immigration policy — has a negative effect on people.

Well, researchers point out that “statements coming from the administration and the president really do have significant effects on Latino populations.” Specifically, the rhetoric and policies of this gang of bumbling sociopaths have not only “induced fear in undocumented immigrants, but they have also caused a substantial proportion of Latino citizens to have concerns about their safety.”

This refers to all Latinos — whether they are newly arrived, born and raised here, undocumented, or third-generation citizens — all of us.

For one concrete example of this plague, look to the fact that one-quarter “of undocumented immigrants said they were so frightened they delayed going to the emergency room for days,” which I’m sure is just fine with the contingent of Americans who love stuffing kids into cages and advocate for shooting people at the border.

But Trump’s words and actions “can be dangerous, and they can even kill when they create barriers to healthcare access.”

And what about all those ICE raids, and all the Latinos (many of them citizens) who have been arrested on their way to work or school? Well, studies have shown that “Hispanic Americans may experience worsening mental health when immigration arrests spike.” 

This stands to reason, as it can be just a little bit stressful to be walking down the street, minding your own business, and then be abruptly handcuffed by black-jacketed thugs who cart you away toward a waiting van.

Happy holidays indeed!

Researchers point out, in a totally unnecessary aside, that this “anxiety could have a detrimental impact on mental health, particularly among racial/ethnic groups that have been disproportionately targeted for arrest and deportation.”

And again, this psychological assault is not limited to the undocumented. Because these policies and actions have an impact on all Latinos, who “might also experience more discrimination, which worsens mental health.”

OK, now that we’ve established that every Hispanic has solid reasons to get sick and feel overwhelmed, is there anything we can do about it?

Well, medical professionals are actively trying to recruit more Latinos for clinical trials, so that we can better understand how these maladies affect the Hispanic population specifically. You see, Latinos are severely underrepresented in clinical trials, so doctors don’t always know if there are subtle differences in, for example, reactions to drugs that are caused by genetic differences.

As such, doctors really want Latinos to sign up for medical studies.

So the good news is that if you’re going to be sick and stressed as hell, maybe you can get paid for it.

Recently, CNN profiled a former neo-Nazi who now rejects white supremacy. Years ago, the woman (identified only as “Samantha”) inexplicably found something appealing “in the white power activists who presented themselves as intellectuals,” and she soon “became a dues-paying member of a white power fraternity called Identity Evropa.” 

This is a common route to extremism, which is why progressives get just a little annoyed when racist ideology is presented as edgy intellectualism or a valid point of view. 

In any case, Samantha worked for Identity Evropa to test new applicants — of which there were many — to see if the newbies were sufficiently “fluent in white power ideology.” And she focused especially on women, who were told the fascist movement was “a great way to be family-oriented.”

So what eventually drove Samantha out of Identity Evropa? Was it the deranged hatred toward Jews and racial minorities? Was it the violence that often culminates in the actual loss of life?

No, she left because — to absolutely no one’s surprise — angry men who despise blacks and Latinos usually loathe women as well. Apparently, a guy who is willing to attack total strangers based upon the color of their skin may not be the most respectful toward the ladies. Hey, who knew?

Samantha’s male peers in Identity Evropa tried to persuade her to stay, telling her that her body “could hold a lot of Nazi semen and make many Nazi babies.” Despite such smooth talk, she left, and today she receives death threats from her former pals. According to CNN, there are “other women who, like Samantha, spent about a year in the alt-right before quitting, unable to take the abuse anymore and fearing for their safety.”

Indeed, “the alt-right is far more hostile to women than previous iterations of the white supremacy movement,” with many experts insisting that its “not even possible to have an alt-right movement without the underlying misogyny.”

Now, we can all be happy that Samantha is no longer a Nazi. But in reading her story, there is one crucial element missing.

You see, Samantha only left the alt-right because she was being oppressed. In other words, she was fine with dehumanizing ethnic minorities. Hell, she enthusiastically promoted hatred toward non-white people. Only when women became the object of scorn and derision did she say, “Whoa, not cool.”

Samantha, and many right-wingers like her, possess an almost total lack of empathy for anyone who doesn’t share their background. Such individuals will alter their repugnant views only when — or if — it affects them personally.

Science backs this up. Researchers have found that liberals and conservatives display equal levels of empathy. However, liberals are far more likely to have empathy for all people. But conservatives tend to have empathy primarily for their own group. 

In one study, researchers found that Americans who felt more connected to “people like themselves” tended to support Trump’s ban on travelers from Muslim countries. They also displayed “less empathy toward immigrants.” The opposite was true for those Americans who placed less importance on their own group.

One could also look at how the conservative movement still largely views gay people as deviants, sinners, or debauched weirdoes who deserve second-class citizenship at best, and capital punishment at worst. Yes, a few libertarians and younger Republicans aren’t down with the whole virulent homophobia thing. But for the most part, the GOP is just fine with gay Americans having fewer rights than straight citizens.

The exceptions, as you can guess, tend to be those Republicans who have gay family members. Oddly, they often change their minds when it affects their loved ones.

The most infamous example is that loveable war criminal, Dick Cheney, who was “a leading Republican at a time when his party was campaigning on forbidding gay marriage.” During this time, Cheney “voiced support” for his daughter Mary, a lesbian.

How about that? He voiced support for his daughter.

Should we applaud now? 

It is highly unlikely that Cheney would give half a damn about gay Americans if his daughter weren’t a lesbian. And the man clearly didn’t care about, say, Iraqis to the same extent.

An indifference to the rights of others — or in extreme cases, to the very humanity of others — continues to vex the conservative movement. What can one say about people who justify jamming kids into cages, in large part because those kids speak a different language? And why should we celebrate people like Cheney or Samantha, who will definitely, absolutely do the right thing… provided that they have some kind of personal stake in the outcome?

Perhaps it is simply asking too much to consider, even fleetingly, how our actions affect people who don’t look, act, or worship the exact same way that we do.

But is it really that difficult?

Baseball season is over, which is always a little sad for me.

It’s not just that I love baseball, and now have to endure six months without it. The bigger issue is that my hometown Milwaukee Brewers just concluded their 50th season in existence, which means a sold half-century without a single World Series championship.

Damn.

In any case, baseball may be on hiatus for now, but it is perpetually relevant as a metaphor. And I don’t mean in a Ken Burns kind of way, where the death of Joe DiMaggio is the end of the American Dream, or something strained like that.

I’m talking about more concrete analogies.

For example, I’m sure we all enjoyed the sight of Trump attending Game 5 of the World Series and receiving a thunderous, sustained booing that reached “almost 100 decibels, the type of disapproval typically reserved for undocumented immigrants and freshman congresswomen at his rallies.”

I mean, here was the president, taking in the national pastime, in the nation’s capital city, and hearing from the nation’s citizens that he sucks, in a spontaneous display of First Amendment zeal that has not been outlawed despite the country’s right-wing lurch. And in an irony-heavy addendum of the type that Americans are known for, he was also serenaded with chants of “Lock him up!”

I mean, if that doesn’t make you swell with patriotism, nothing will.

However, not every symbolic event from the world of baseball is so positive.

For example, major league umpire Rob Drake recently tweeted his displeasure with the impeachment process. He did so in the calm, respectful manner that we have come to expect from supporters of the president.

Ha, no — he shrieked a caps-heavy boast that he was buying an AR-15 assault rifle, “because if you impeach my president this way, you will have another civil war!!! #MAGA2020.”

Now, you might think that we have enough violence in this country without random umpires threatening to murder people who disagree with their politics, to say nothing of the recurring promise that a civil war is inevitable and, in fact, eagerly anticipated by GOP white men like Rob Drake who have easy access to firearms and no regard for the Constitution. 

Well, yes — but you’re missing the point.

Because once again, in this case, baseball is here to help.

You see, on one side of America’s political divide we have progressives, who want to move the country toward the democratic socialist model that has found great success in Scandinavian countries, but do it with more of a multiethnic focus. The other side — Trumpian conservatives — want to create a white nationalist state built upon pseudo-Christian values where the populace is enthralled with an autocratic oligarch who siphons off the nation’s resources to the super-rich. 

That’s a bit of a philosophical gap.

Fortunately, we have homicidal umpires who are happy to illustrate the difference for us. So again, baseball enlightens us.

Lastly, allow me to recount a recent email exchange that I had with a disgruntled reader. This individual informed me that I was wrong about everything, and at some point in the conversation, he stated that the Electoral College was, in his words, “brilliant” and “perfect.” He stated that a nationwide popular vote for the presidency was like insisting the winner of the World Series be the team that scores the most runs, not the team that wins the most games.

My rebuttal was that the Electoral College is like declaring the winner of a baseball game is the team that scores in the most innings, not the team that actually scores the most runs.

I thought it was a good point. But he wrote back a stream of obscenities and invectives, so I guess he didn’t agree, and that was the end of our little debate.

Yes, the guy may have been an illogical, thin-skinned reactionary. But hey, at least he liked baseball.

Hey, remember the movie Idiocracy?

A cult hit by the guy who created Beavis and Butthead, the film presented a future where morons had bred out of control, causing the world’s collective IQ to drop and civilization to de-evolve into stupidity.

Yeah, we all laughed. Of course, while watching the movie, we assumed that we were the smart ones, outnumbered by mouth-breathing dullards, which is why we had a good chuckle over the idea of blithering fools taking over the nation. 

And let me tell you, there is nothing egotistical or elitist about that — nope.

In any case, it might interest you to know that idiocracy will indeed be our future, but the movie got two things wrong. 

First, it will not be a comedy. 

And second, you are not the genius savior laughing at buffoons. No, you are part of the problem. You are one of the idiots.

You see, a recent academic paper has caused quite a commotion, because it argues that “democracy is devouring itself — and it won’t last.” The paper’s authors state that “in well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail.”

Ponder that thesis: democracy is doomed.

It’s a little grim, isn’t it?

Now, you might say this is all Trump’s fault. And indeed, the researchers agree that “Trump’s successful anti-immigrant populist campaignmay be a symptom of democracy’s decline.”

However, the bigger issue is that our brains — full of subconscious biases, fearful impulses and irrational narratives — just aren’t good at processing facts. Add to this the scourges of racism, tribalism, and selfishness, and one could argue that when it comes to democracy, “humans just aren’t built for it.”

Again, the paper’s authors don’t say it’s all the fault of those red-neck yokels who believe in Pizzagate (although, let’s be honest, they are the most obvious patient zeros for democracy’s illness).

No, the researchers believe that “democracy is hard work and requires a lot from those who participate in it,” such as “thoughtfulness, discipline and logic” as well as the ability “to respect those with different views from theirs and people who don’t look like them.”

The paper concludes that nobody — as in not one single person — can really perform these tasks that well. So be honest. Did you actually research all the candidates for your local school board election? Are you always respectful of reasonable people who disagree with you? Did you blow off the last Democratic presidential debate to catch up on back episodes of The Bachelorette?

Yeah, you’re not alone.

Some people are better at practicing democracy than others, but ultimately, “the majority of Americans are generally unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship in the manner required.”

Again, that is not “a lot” or a “substantial minority” of your fellow patriots. No, it is “the majority of Americans.”

And if you’re asking why this is happening now, the researchers conclude that the “irony is that more democracy — ushered in by social media and the internet, where information flows more freely than ever before — is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us toward authoritarianism.”

That’s where our favorite racist megalomaniac comes in. Trump’s role in the downfall of democracy is clear. You see, it is always easier to “pledge allegiance to an authoritarian leader than to do the hard work of thinking for yourself demanded by democracy.”

So this all very depressing — the end of democracy and collapse of America and all that.

But wait, because it gets even more horrible.

The novelist Jonathan Franzen recently achieved a literary going-viral moment when he wrote an article stating “climate apocalypse” is inevitable and that we should just “admit that we can’t prevent it.”

Franzen wrote that it is silly to go on “hoping that catastrophe is preventable.” Instead, he argues, we need to “accept that disaster is coming” and shift our attention to dealing with the resulting calamities.

This means preparing for droughts and floods and blizzards and climate refugees and political upheaval and lots of war. It means, according to Franzen, a future where “the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes.”

And then he says something about how we can yet preserve a functioning world and still be optimistic in the face of chaos. But to be honest, everyone stopped reading the article at that point because we all felt like killing ourselves.

At this juncture, I will again bring up the minor issue that some experts believe that civilization itself will start to collapse as soon as 2050.

So there’s that.

With such a cavalcade of pessimism, is there any chance that we can, as Franzen states, “begin to rethink what it means to have hope”?

When it comes to climate change and democracy and the supposed greatness of America, is it time to just cut our losses? Is it time to stop fighting the good fight and instead prepare for the worst? 

What should we do now?

Perhaps you’ve felt the need for speed.

Or you’ve felt the need for weed.

Or you’ve felt … I don’t know… the need for tweed… ok the wordplay breaks down pretty quickly.

In any case, you most likely never felt the need for chaos, and it’s not just because the phrase doesn’t rhyme.

No, it’s because you probably don’t agree with the following the statements:

• I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.
• Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
• I think society should be burned to the ground.

Wow, those are pretty crazy inklings, aren’t they?

Well, it might surprise you to know that a “staggering” number of Americans agree with those statements, including 40 percent of Americans who want to torch all of our political and social institutions, and 24 percent who believe society itself should be completely destroyed.

Yes, that probably surprises you.

Now, does it surprise you to know that harboring such dark thoughts is positively correlated with supporting Trump?

OK, that probably doesn’t surprise you.

You see, a new study has shown that “a segment of the American electorate that was once peripheral is drawn to ‘chaos incitement’ and that this segment has gained decisive influence through the rise of social media.”

The researchers state that these individuals have a “Need for Chaos” (NFC) that manifests itself in “willingly spreading disinformation… not to advance their own ideology but to undermine political elites, left and right, and to mobilize others against politicians in general.” 

Leaving aside the fact that both Chaos Incitement and Need for Chaos are great names for punk bands, the study found that NFC is a “strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers, willing to adopt disruptive tactics.” 

Yeah, this basically means angry people who blame others for their problems. These are the individuals who rant about American carnage and think hordes of “illegals” are murdering citizens in the streets and see no solution other than a Shiva-like destruction of the nation’s foundations.

And this pathology (there is no other word) is “associated with support for Donald Trump.”

Of course, there are some issues with this analysis. For starters, it discounts racism as a prime motivator among Trump voters, which as we all know, is a well-established link. 

However, there is little doubt that “NFC can also explain some of Trump’s support, as a not insignificant slice of the American electorate seems to be driven by a desire to tear down the system.”

In other words, many of Trump’s biggest fans don’t even believe in the mythical Make America Great Again slogan. They just want to see everybody suffer.These political nihilists do not “share rumors because they believe them to be true. For the core group, hostile political rumors are simply a tool to create havoc.”

And as many experts have noted, Trump himself “has consistently sought to strengthen the perception that America is in chaos, a perception that has enhanced his support.” And this effort has paid off, because many Americans — including a disturbing number of his supporters — fantasize not about peace and prosperity, but about rage and entropy. 

They envision a country — even a world — where everything burns. 

They see bedlam all around them. And it makes them smile.

What do measles, anti-abortion laws, and overt racism all have in common?

Actually, not much except for this: All three were thought to be eradicated decades ago.

But now, as I’m sure you’ve heard, these three social maladies have made a roaring comeback. Really, when it comes to catching contagious diseases, treating women like cattle, and screaming at ethnic minorities in public, well, it might as well be 1965.

For example, “this the most severe year for measles in 25 years — and it’s looking like we’re even on track to break that record.” This is because many parents are scared of science and have opted not to vaccinate their children, a truly terrifying combination of ignorance, misanthropy and societal suicide that has been endorsed by the great scientist of our time, Mr. Donald Trump.

As for Roe vs. Wade, many progressives figured that after nearly a half-century of stare decisis and settled law — and the progress that women have made toward gender equality in the interim — that there would be no way that conservatives could possibly yank away this constitutional right in a fit of blatant misogyny.

Let me tell you something. The hard right wing of the GOP will tell you when they have finally gone too far, and you will have no say in it (and also, their answer will always be, “We have not gone too far”).

That brings us to racism. Oh sure, the more wide-eyed among us thought that bigotry was dead around the time Obama got elected, and that we had entered a post-racial world… sorry, it’s hard for me to type that phrase without bursting into derisive, cackling laughter.

Regardless, most Americans agreed that racial prejudice still existed. But many of us believed that racism was so beaten down and socially unacceptable that we no longer had to worry about, say, a guy mowing a swastika into his lawn for all his neighbors to see. And the very idea of thousands of neo-fascists marching through the streets chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans… that was just nuts. Never gonna happen — nope.

So why are we here? How are we here?

There is, of course, no all-encompassing answer. But we can look at one undeniable cause for America sliding into retrograde.

And that is because a certain mindset — making America great again — has been embraced by people who are too fearful, too overwhelmed to face the present day. And fetishizing a glorious past that never existed leaves a culture unprepared for the issues of the future. The yearning for a simpler time only leads to simplistic answers.

One of the prevailing attitudes of America’s bygone decades was blatant ignorance masquerading as charming naivety. With the rise of the internet, information is easier than ever to find. But when facts are too upsetting or truths are too difficult to face, many Americans deny their existence and whiplash toward the bad ideas of previous generations. And people start saying kids are better off without vaccinations, or that women shouldn’t get the right to choose, or that segregation isn’t so bad after all. All the decayed norms that were thought dead and buried long ago crawl out of the nation’s grave.

Perhaps this maddening lurching of one step forward, nine steps back will one day be viewed as a necessary stage of America’s evolution. However, even if we eventually look back on this time and sigh with relief that we made it through, I am positive about one thing:

Nobody — and I mean, nobody — is ever going to glamorize 2019.

I live in California, where Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday, and you can’t walk a mile without glimpsing a sign of the region’s strong Latino history and culture.

But most states are not California. 

For example, I grew up in Wisconsin, and at the time, there were so few Hispanics around that my family supplied most of the Latino culture, and whatever I did on the weekend instantly became the state’s Latino history (hey, at least it felt that way).

The point is that despite the many contributions that Hispanics have made to America, and our current status as the largest ethnic minority in the nation, running into public displays of our heritage is about as common as meeting a bilingual Trump supporter who listens to NPR.

In fact, a report last year by the University of California, Los Angeles “concluded that not enough is being done to recognize and include Hispanic contributions, with the report going as far as labeling it ‘a pattern of willful neglect’ toward the Latino population in the United States.”

Hopefully, that is about to change. You see, this month, a group of bipartisan legislators reintroduced a bill in Congress to create a national Latino museum in Washington, D.C.

The building would be located near Smithsonian museums devoted to the history of African Americans and Native Americans. This, of course, would give us a tightly packed trifecta of museums about ethnic groups that this country has just loved, loved, loved nonstop.

In any case, legislation to create a national Latino museum has been introduced in the past, but the bills have died in Congress. One congressman has said that the proposal “is not a partisan issue, and it shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” which would be cute in its naivety if it weren’t so sad. 

Because the truth is that everything is partisan in Trump’s government. These are the same people who see glaciers melting as a partisan issue.

So will we live long enough to see a national Latino museum? Well, America’s attitude toward Hispanic history has not been encouraging thus far.

Many historians say that the few sites marking Latino history are often “shabby, largely unknown and at risk of disappearing.”

In addition, many of the historical sites dedicated to Hispanic influence “usually center around the Spanish exploration era, colonial times and Old West settlement periods” because these are regarded as “safe” sites that downplay the racism and segregation Latinos had to overcome.

Yeah — who wants to learn about all that icky racism and segregation? Talk about a buzzkill.

But if you despair that there may never be a national museum dedicated to the history of Latinos in this country, cheer up.

Because you can always road trip to the National Mustard Museum. It’s right there in my home state of Wisconsin.

Wait… I can’t tell if you’re laughing or crying.

Last week, I wrote about wealth inequality in this country, which has reached levels not seen since just before the Great Depression and which is largely unique to America among industrialized nations.

Basically, over the last few decades, the “richest Americans have reaped a disproportional amount of economic growth while worker wages have failed to keep pace.” And for some unknown, truly bizarre reason, millions of working-class Americans keep voting for people who only make this situation worse.

Now, at the risk of generating class warfare, let me point out that this situation is — in the words of leading economists — completely fucked up.

We simply cannot go on shoveling money to rich people, hoping that they will magically invest in dying factory towns and crumbling inner cities, when all they do, in actuality, is horde more shit for themselves.

Disbelieve me at your own peril, because there are historical precedents for powerful nations that adopted hero-worship of the rich, and it did not turn out well for them.

For an example close to my heart, let’s take a look at the Maya. Hundreds of years ago, their mighty empire covered parts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and my family’s homeland of El Salvador. Hey, there is at least a slight chance that I am descended from Mayan royalty.

Yes, let’s go with that idea.

In any case, between about 300 and 900 A.D., “the Maya were responsible for a number of remarkable scientific achievements— in astronomy, agriculture, engineering, and communications.” These were the people who were “producing rubber products about 3,000 years” before Americans figured out how to do it.

So yeah, they were the powerhouse of the era — the most advanced civilization on Earth at the time.

And then they were gone — just like that. 

The Mayan empire “went from bustling cities to abandoned ruins over the course of roughly a hundred years,” creating “one of ancient history’s most intriguing mysteries: Why did the Maya, a remarkably sophisticated civilization made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse?”

Well, historians have pinpointed two chief reasons for the Mayan’s abrupt demise.

The first is — you guessed it — the “increasingly parasitic role of the elite” in rotting the empire from the inside out. In essence, the richest Mayans were obsessed with building wealth, and their insatiable appetites “forced peasants and craftsmen into making a critical choice, perhaps necessary to escape starvation,” which was to abandon their farms and towns.

As a result, the rich people weren’t rich for much longer, because everybody who had knocked themselves out to serve the wealthy finally said, “To hell with this,” and took off, causing the cities to crumble.

Does this setup sound remotely familiar to anybody who has spent time in Manhattan or San Francisco — places that are so far beyond the means of the middle class that they have become enclaves of pure wealth? And all while the homeless population has surged, and working-class wages have stagnated?

Do you really have to think about the answer?

By the way, the other chief reason for the Mayan empire’s implosion is climate change.Even though “the Maya were no fools” in that they “knew their environment and how to survive within it,” they still “continued deforesting at a rapid pace, until the local environment was unable to sustain their society.”

Well, it’s a good thing nobody in a position of power today denies the severity of climate change— nope.

Historians point out that these twin factors caused the Mayan civilization to shatter, and that “the results are the ornate ruins that stretch across” Latin America today.

So let’s ask ourselves the following: Are these among the last ornate ruins that this hemisphere will see, or will another mighty civilization soon destroy itself?

Humans are social animals. Yes, even you sullen loners, shy introverts, and lone-wolf bad boys out there — deep down, all of you need to connect with other people, at least on occasion.

One aspect of our social nature is that we take cues from one another. Although we want to believe that we think for ourselves 100 percent of the time, and are not subject either to the overt influences or the subtle hints of our peers, the truth is that we are constantly looking at, listening to, and measuring ourselves against others. Deny it all you want — science backs upthe idea.

By the way, if you bend too easilyto the will of others, you may end up a Nazi, and if you don’t bend at all, you may end up a sociopathic killer.

So once again, moderation is key.

However, it’s not just basic concepts such as personal space, small talk, and sarcasm that we learn from our fellow humans. We also learn how to be aggressive.

For proof of this, let’s look at the famous Bobo experimentsof the 1960s, which were held at Stanford University.

In addition to having the most adorable name ever for a psychological study, the Bobo experiments showed that children learn through the observation of adult behavior. 

The study used inflatable plastic toys called Bobo dolls, which are basically large cartoon clowns bottom-weighted so that they return to an upright position when knocked down. 

You’ve probably seen one, or at the very least, had a terrifying nightmare involving them.

The researchers divided preschoolers into one group that observed aggressive adult behavior, another group that saw nonaggressive adult behavior, and a third group that didn’t watch any adult behavior.

The kids in the first group saw adults punch, kick, and generally pummel the Bobo dolls. And you guessed it —  children in that group later modeled the adults’ behavior by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

In sum, if kids saw a grownup kick the shit out of the Bobo doll, they were more likely to be violent too.

The researchers said that the kids had, more or less, gotten permission to be aggressive little jerks because they saw an authority figure do it first.

OK, that’s all very interesting, you say. But certainly it’s not the case that grownup, voting American citizens “get permission” from authority figures to, for example, be racist — right?

Ahem.

Well, it may intrigue you to know that researchers have “found empirical evidencethat Trump’s rhetoric has indeed lead whites to express more bigoted views of ‘the other.’”

After analyzing white people’s attitudes toward race and individuals of different ethnicities, researchers found that since Trump began his campaign in 2016, many white Americans have expressed more bigoted views about Latinos, blacks, and other groups, and as a bonus, they are more comfortable saying these statements out loud.

The researchers conclude that “Trump is giving respondents tacit permissionto be bigots.”

You see, Americans heard a major party nominee for president begin his campaign by slurring Mexicans, and as a result, years later, we discover that “Trump’s language [about Mexicans] doesn’t just embolden people to say more negative and more offensive things about the group he’s talking about, but it actually leads them to say more offensive thingsabout all groups.” 

For these Americans, Trump has been an authority figure punching Bobo dolls. They think that if the president “is using this language, then it must be acceptablefor me.”

They have, psychologically speaking, been given permission to be racist.

By the way, the original Bobo study found that the effects of modeling violent behavior lingered in children for months after witnessing aggressive actions. The researchers believed that once people have deemed a behavior to be acceptable, it is difficult for them to regain their previous mindset. So the kids had their personality altered in the long term.

Feel free to draw your own analogies to that.

If you’re anything like me (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), then you are starved for the tiniest semblance of good news from the White House of Horrors.

Well, in what can only be called a Christmas miracle, or just a fluke happenstance that statistically was bound to happen, we have our first significant positive political development in the two years since Trump began wrenching America from its moral moorings and started flaying the Constitution.

Yes, it looks like criminal justice reformis finally coming, not because Trump endorsed it or even understands it, but because for once he got out of the way of social progress and decided to not do the worst possible thing just because he could.

The legislation was championed by an oddball mix of social justice warriors, surly libertarians, religious types on both the right and left, and basically anyone who believes pot dealers shouldn’t get longer prison terms than rapists.

Of course, the impact of this on ethnic minorities cannot be overemphasized. After all, it is primarily Latinos and African Americans who have been the victimsof the misbegotten war on drugs and idiotic mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws.

And all it took was a couple of decades of ruined lives, destroyed communities, and gruesome injustices to convince America to be a little more civilized and get in line with just about every other industrialized nation in the world.

Hey, forgive us — sometimes we’re not the brightest. 

In any case, I am happy to report this sliver of good news at this most joyous time of the year.

So never let it be said that I am just a seething cauldron of cynicism, misanthropy, and bitter rage who focuses all his energy on the dark devastation that has befallen America.

Well, at least that’s not me all of the time, and that’s something.

Oh, in other news, the president’s moronic idea of building a wall on the Mexican border appears to finally be dead, dead, dead.

Merry Christmas.