Quantum Mechanics is weirder than you think. It might be weirder than anyone can think.

Reflections on "Experimental rejection of observer-independence in the quantum world" and an updated version "Experimental test of local observer-independence".

Are we quantum mechanical or not?

This paper basically proves that the famous Schrodinger's cat experiment, which says the cat is a quantum mechanical wave function is correct. The cat is actually in an entangled state which means the cat is alive and dead at the same time. That's pretty weird! But we an make it even weirder! Imagine, if you will, [1] that you are taking the place of Schrodinger's cat. We don't want to kill you so we'll modify the experiment in line with Deutsch's proposal and Wigner's interpretation. [2] The experiment performed above is exactly Deutsch's proposal and the result is that yes, you as the observer are in a superposition of quantum states.

What is you in that previous statement? You only ever remember one set of events. You never have any memory of being in two quantum states. It appears that consciousness can only be associated with one quantum state at a time. However it also appears that your consciousness is associated with every quantum state, viz., your consciousness splits into two versions, one associated with each quantum state. What happens to the various yous? There are two basic interpretations that are famous in quantum mechanics: the copenhagen interpretation and the multi-universe theory.

The Copenhagen interpretation says that when a measurement is made the entangled quantum state collapses. In other words, one of the quantum states disappears and the quantum system 'collapses' to the other state. Any measurement you make now will show the quantum system is in the second state. the other state is gone. If you don't make the measurement the entangled state continues to evolve and you can prove that it is still there by, for instance, making another measurement later. [3] There has never been any indication that this interpretation is 'wrong' in the eyes of the experimenter who makes the measurement. In any experimenter's view of the universe, this is exactly what happens.

Yes and No. We are not quantum mechanical in our own eyes, but we are in the eyes of others.

However, if you are taking the place of Schrodinger's cat, then to me, an observer outside the box,  you are in a quantum mechanical superposition of two different quantum states. We can actually prove this. In my eyes you are in a quantum mechanical superposition. In your eyes you are not. So what the heck is going on?

If I understand it correctly, it says that the universe looks different depending on who's looking at it. Now that's really weird, but not quite as weird as you might think. Relativity destroyed the idea that everything looks the same. Depending on how fast you are moving, the order of things happening that you observe compared to someone else can change. Events that are causal won't change, but the order of events that are not causally linked don't necessarily stay in the same order. Whew! That means that causality is not violated. Thank God and Einstein for that.

So the fundamental assumptions that are made in science are the following: locality and free choice. Locality means that two quantum mechanical wave functions can only influence each other when they are in the same place. There is no action at a distance. [4]  Free choice is that assumption that humans have free will. They can decide whether or not to make a measurement and the universe can't know ahead of time what that decision will be. [5] Or we aren't really running an experiment and it's all predetermined ahead of time.

The paper above is interesting in a couple of ways. First, it carefully defines a measurement as something done by an observer. A measurement means that an observer "extract[s] information from another system by means of some interactions, and store[s] that information in a physical memory." So even if the measurement is made, if it is not communicated to the outside world the quantum states stay in superpositions as far as the outside observer is concerned. Communicate the measurement value (not that a measurement has been made, but what measurement is made) and the superposition is broken. This seems to break the Copenhagen's interpretation of quantum mechanics... The wave function didn't collapse when the measurement is made. The wave function appeared to collapse for the observer in the box, they could predict future measurements that were dependent on the value of the measurement that occurred; but the wave function did not collapse for the observer outside the box. Their measurements were consistent with not having the wave functions collapse in the box. So who is right?

Everybody is right. The person in the box definitely made a measurement. The person outside does not know the results of that measurement, so they don't see the 'collapse'. Either the wave function somehow knows who/what is making a measurement on it when or... The many world's interpretation is correct. We are all quantum states, but consciousness splits and travels down only one path at a time. And you can never get back to the other path.

*Sigh* Yes, Quantum Mechanics is very weird.
Thanks for reading,
 -DrMike

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[1] Yes, this is from the Twilight Zone, and it's not a mistake or a pun, it's a possible plot that happens in the real world that is so frigging weird, it must be just from a television show. That it's what scientists think happens in REAL LIFE is the scary part.

[2] D. Deutsch, Quantum theory as a universal physical theory, Int. J. Th. Phys. 24, I (1985).
 E. P. Wigner, Remarks on the mind-body question, in: I. J. Good, “The Scientist Speculates” (London, Heinemann, 1961) and heavily using "On the quantum measurement problem", Caslav Brukner.

[3] This 'collapse' takes place instantaneously across the universe for all objects entangled together. This would seem to violate Einsteins laws of relativity that say no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. It turns out that it doesn't, if you assume the no-cloning-without destroying postulate, which, as far as we can tell is the way the universe works. The no-cloning postulate was proposed as a way to fix this paradox in 1982. It turns out that is was actually proved earlier in 1970 to show that any quantum measurement disturbs the quantum system.

[4] Side bar on gravity. Newton's theory of gravity assumes that the gravitational forces felt by two bodies was instantaneous and independent of distance: spooky action at a distance as Newton put it. He knew something was wrong with this theory. It turns out he was right, it's just a very good approximation to assume that the force is instantaneously transmitted between the two bodies. Einstein fixed this with his General Theory of Relativity. The forces (actually the warping of the field of space) travel at the speed of light. In most situations, it turns out that this looks like spooky action at a distance. Only in certain extreme conditions (like the orbit of Mercury, which is deep inside the grvity well of the sun) can you actually notice the difference between the two theories. And as Newton suspected, Einstein is correct and his theory is just an approximation of what we can measure. A very good approximation. So far as we can tell, Einstein's theory is exact. Although there are some 'paradoxes' when we try to reconcile it with Quantum Mechanics that hint it might not be complete and that there might be another "Theory of Everything" that would reduce to Einstein's theory in most cases, but explain away these paradoxes in the extreme cases.

[5] All those philosophers (and physicists) who claim free will doesn't exist need to reconcile their views with this postulate of science. The postulate of free choice says that there does not exist a deterministic universe. It says that the experimenter can choose which measurement to make and nothing that has gone on before can determine which choice the experimenter will make. Of course, if everything is determined ahead of time... then we are just in a simulation and our free will is an illusion. However, free will is an open postulate, you can assume we have it or not. Science works both ways. In one case, the measurements we make are predetermined, in the other case the measurement results are random. In the latter case we have free will. In the former case we don't. In the latter case some predetermined 'hidden variables' are causing the measurements to look random. The philosophy of Occam's razor leads me to believe in the former: Human's have free will and measurements can be made via free choice and their results are randomly distributed. Of course, if you think everything is predetermined and we are living in a simulation, why would this simulation be running? What is being simulated? It could only be different initial conditions. And why would anyone want to simulate that? Or we aren't in a simulation and everything is predetermined. There is absolutely no fun in that. No fun at all. I reject that position on the postulate that humans can have fun.

A modest proposal to end the Flat Earth Society and put Silicon Valley on the map.

Flat Wrong the end piece in Scientific American, in the latest issue (May 2020) got me to thinking about how we could just end this idiocy that leads to many, many people being driven into believing obviously fallacious conspiracy theories.

• Did we actually go to the moon? (hint: we did.) 
• Was Obama born in Hawaii? (hint: yes.) 
• Is he Muslim? (hint: no.) 
• Is QAnon saying anything that's true? (hint: no.) 
• Are the Jews trying to take over the world (hint: no.)
• Are aliens here? (hint: no.)
• Do humans cause Global Warming? (hint: yes.)
• Have the Clintons murdered tens of people? (hint: no.)
• Did the Russians help the Trump campaign? (hint: yes.)
• Yada, yada, yada.

We can't actually have much proof against most of these fallacies, but the Flat Earth one, we can if we actually get high enough in the atmosphere to see the curvature of the Earth. You will convince some Flat Earthers they are wrong. Most will just come up with some other excuse and continue to try and justify the fun fact that they have been lied to for many years and they finally figured it out. That's why believing in a conspiracy theory is so fun! You've actually figured something out that has been confusing others. You know something they don't. You're smarter than everyone else because you have secret knowledge. It's all baloney, but it's still fun. At some level you know it's all baloney, but it's so fun to think about the puzzle, and if you have some underlying motive (hate those hoity-toity experts, hate that black president, hate those egg-head scientists, hate those liberals, or actually, it usually comes from jealousy in my opinion. It lets you excuse yourself that you haven't done as well as everyone else...) you can be impossible to convince.

Okay. So we want something else, too. Silicon Valley is famous worldwide for technology. It's been happening for decades. Back at the turn of the century one of the Robber Barons, who corrupted government officials, got a land grant, rights of way, built a railroad and then became fabulously wealthy, built a university to honor his son, who died of the flu at a young age. That's where Stanford came from. The university was supported with enough money to attract talent and expertise to rival any university on the planet. That was the founding point. Then it revved up with World War II: building critical equipment to help the war effort. All of a sudden Lockheed is there building planes. Hewlett-Packard & Varian & Watkins-Johnson are there building electronic equipment. Then technologists are driven out of their non-compete states to California where they build such things as the silicon chip (Fairchild, Intel, etc.), the personal computer (Apple), the laser printer (Adobe), lots of medical and radio equipment, networking (Cisco, Juno), the web (Google, Facebook, etc.) The technology coming out of the valley seems to be never ending. The GDP per person is one of the top three in the entire world and has been for many decades. So the place that used to be covered with orchards now produces the most complicated technology in the world. 

So it's rightly famous all over the world. However, when people come here what do they see? Not much. There are basically no buildings over six stories (they cost too much.) There's a couple of freeways. Lots of warehouses, no orchards anymore. Okay, we do have Apple Headquarters (pretty cool, but...) and ... that's about it and you can't really visit it. There's a 9" x 12" plaque that says "the silicon chip was invented here" outside of a strip mall. The original building has been torn down decades ago. Architecturally there's only San Jose City Hall (a very late edition.) 

A couple of buildings almost ten stories high in downtown San Jose (there's an airport nearby, so all the buildings are short.) So we need something that will really put Silicon valley on the map. What could that be?

A Modest Proposal for a Flat Earth Conspiracy Ending Ride in Silicon Valley. 

The basic idea is to build the most incredible combination of a Ferris Wheel, a balloon ride and a roller coaster, all world class and one continuous ride. Of course, it would also include a world class restaurant and history of technology museum. 

Here's the basic idea. Buy a large plot of land going up into the top of the Santa Cruz mountains, probably somewhere on highway 9. We need lots of parking and easy access as we'll need lots of people to support it.  How many? We'll figure that out later. 

So at the bottom of the hill the public comes in and parks. They are shuttled to a funicular train that takes them slowly up 2500 feet to the top of the mountain. While going up they can see all of Silicon Valley: Moffett field, San Jose, San Francisco Bay. A pretty amazing view!  

And what do they see at the top? They see the largest Ferris Wheel in the world.

The original Ferris Wheel (264 feet):

The largest Ferris Wheel today (550 feet):

Silicon valley's Ferris Wheel, three times as tall (over 1400 feet tall):

The ride takes about three hours. The cars hold around 50 people, there are bars & restaurants in some of the cars. And at the top, you can see all the way to San Francisco!

Which is an awesome view, a spectacular view! But... you can't see the curvature of the Earth at 4500 feet. You can see from San Francisco to Monterey, which is cool, but this won't convince any Flat Earther of any thing. That horizon looks pretty flat. How high do you need to get to see the curvature of the Earth?

It turns out you need to be about 80,000 feet high to see the curvature of the Earth. How do you get that high? The cars have to be airtight. We build a SkyBridge to take them up to 80,000 feet. We hook them up to balloons at the top of the wheel and spend three more hours going up and down a set of ropes held up by balloons. You get to see all the way from San Diego to Crater Lake in Oregon. You can see Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. You can see the curvature of the Earth. How much would you pay to TRAVEL TO SPACE?

But wait. We aren't done yet. When you get back down you can take the lazy, sedate funicular train back down to the parking lot... or you can take the most amazing roller coaster in the entire world. The longest, fastest, most spectacular, roller coaster in the world. How do we do this?
Well, first we are starting at 2500 feet, so we go into a 700 foot drop right away, and it's inexpensive as we are going down the mountain side. We do a triple 360 degree loop and then the track ends halfway down, but the cars keep going because they are actually quadcopters and they do free open air loops! Wow! Then they put you back on the track and you do another record 1000 foot drop with three loops and a final 500 foot drop that is, by itself, the largest roller coaster in the world.

Anybody who likes roller coasters will LOVE this one. Three of the largest drops in the world. Extremely fast, smooth and the free flight will be amazing! (and make it safer.)

Now you may have some questions, like can you suspend a set of guide wires that can pull up the cars from 80,000 feet? Well, it turns out you can. you can buy the rope you need today (Kevlar rope of 7.5 cm thickness can individually hold itself up and the cars.) So if you make 10-20 ropes held up by balloons and each car has a pair of balloons helping to hold it up: it's safe, it's simple and it's doable.

And how much do we need to charge for a ride? Let's estimate how much it costs to build. The existing largest Ferris Wheel cost around $300 million. Ours is about 5x as big or $1.5 B. The SkyBridge is relatively cheap. The kevlar rope is cheap, the balloons are cheap, add another $500 million. The Mountain Roller Coaster can't be more than $500 million. Then a parking lot, a funicular and a museum, plus ancillary out buildings and a control tower, another $500 million. So that's about $3 billion dollars (less than the bay bridge.) It's about a six hour ride. So you can run it 18 hours a day and with 50 cars and 50 people per car you can run 5000 people through this system every day. So let's say you get money at 5% and pay off the loans over 30 years and your finance costs are 30-50% of your operating income (maybe a bit high.) To generate this income you need to charge around $300-$500 per ride. Free drinks for everyone! Blackjack and other gambling... are you outside of American jurisdiction or do you have to get an Indian tribe to go in with you? Gourmet food. And junk food. What more could you want? I'd take that ride, for sure!

Thanks for reading.
 -DrMike

@WSJ Idiocy again: “The Lockdown Rebellion”: No, "The Covidiot Death Parties"

An opinion piece from the @WSJ in their 'main street' section:

The Lockdown Rebellion

Ordinary Americans protesting to reopen the economy face only contempt from elites.

By 

William McGurn

April 20, 2020 12:40 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lockdown-rebellion-11587400850

—- it’s not a rebellion, it’s a corporate led PR stunt that the @GOP is exploiting. Billionaires are afraid their profits will diminish, they don’t care who dies. This is standard fare in the media ecosystem. You can get what you pay for.

Here we go. I'll quote the opinion piece and point out the fallacies. What's the motivation? Who's gaining advantage? Who's financing this? Does it make sense? Who's dying? —-

There they go again, ordinary Americans denying science and refusing to defer to their betters.

— It starts with the typically sarcastic #FlameAndBlame tactics of the shills of the right. The unwashed masses are great! They can be manipulated into helping my billionaire overlords. So what's really going on? Nobody is deferring to their 'betters', they aren't deferring to those who have spent their lives learning, gaining expertise, putting in the sweat and work that is required to be a fully functioning member of this society. Some people expect that their privilege should get them things instead of their hard work. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Too bad. —-

In state capitals across the country [No, in a few carefully handpicked states], citizens are protesting the continued coronavirus lockdowns. A CNN critic calls them “Covid-19 deniers,” notwithstanding that the science they allegedly deny still lacks conclusive answers to some of the most fundamental questions about the coronavirus.

—- ‘Protesting’? No. They are holding Death Parties (Notice the Confederate and Nazi flags.) The result will be their deaths and the deaths of others. They’ve been infected by the @GOP #DeathCult conspiracy theories. The billionaires don’t care if they live or die as long as they can juice the news cycle to get favorable PR sowing doubt on the opposition. It’s sad to see how exploited these Covidiots are. We'll talk about the science in a bit —-

In the past week, demonstrations have broken out in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Washington. In Pennsylvania the state legislature got into the act, [Oooooh! That's telling, yes it's an act, a partisan act] sending Gov. Tom Wolf a bill that would order much of the state re-opened more quickly than he would like. More protests are planned for this week.

—- ‘broken out’. One in a hundred thousand people have been convinced to risk their lives and the lives of others to make a political point favoring billionaires and immoral corporations. And the billionaires and corporations are gleeful that their bullshit is working to confuse the serfs on the right. And they’ve sent their press flacks out in droves to support them. Did Andrew Carnegie care that multiple people died in his steel mills every day? Hell no. And neither do your corporate sponsors. —-

So who are these people? Some are folks who fear a permanent expansion of government and worry when they hear leaders such as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy saying that constitutional considerations about lockdown measures are “above my pay grade.” Others are troubled by the First Amendment implications of politicians shutting down churches.

—- Just No. These people have been agitated into lethal stupidity by billionaires and their corporate shills, like you. Attending any Death Parties soon, William? Or would you recommend sheltering in place? —-

The do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do behavior of those imposing these rules isn’t boosting trust in authorities, either, whether it be Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot going out to get her hair done or New York Mayor Bill de Blasio being driven to his gym even as they were imploring everyone else to stay home. On Monday Mark Zuckerberg told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News that Facebook now classifies “a lot of the stuff” protesters are saying as “harmful misinformation”—and that Facebook will “take that down.”

—- Yes. Even the greatest shill for corporate America and billionaire, Zuckerberg, sees that this is dangerous bullshit and will end up killing people. There you go using #FlameAndBlame tactics again with anecdata (anecdotal data that spins a story but doesn't tell the truth.) What about Trump's rallies? What about Ivanka's private jet flights? What about... you get the idea. Everyone makes mistakes but not all of us hold Death Parties that are going to get a bunch of Americans killed. This is exactly what you are advocating. Stop it. Stop it now. —-

Lost in all this is that the protesters are for the most part simply struggling Americans who have concluded that—at least for them—the cure is turning out to be worse than the disease.

—- No, struggling Americans are being exploited by cynical billionaires and political flacks, like you. It’s disgusting. you think death for them is better than a skeletal economy for your overlords? —-

“These protesters aren’t rich or privileged,” says Stephen Moore, a Trump economic adviser. “Most are folks living paycheck to paycheck or small-business owners seeing their livelihoods destroyed, and they are the ones who are bearing the crushing burden of the lockdown in their states.” Mr. Moore says he’s formed an organization, Save Our Country, to help them ensure their voices are heard.

—— ‘formed'? I would say led, then exploited. Does Stephen try to channel the Death Parties into relevant protest? No. He eggs them on. Because he knows it’s a small set of Covidiots even willing to chant these stupid things and risk their own lives and other's lives. The blowback is going to be massive. Get ready. We don’t care how much you apologize for these anti-American terrorists, we aren’t changing our minds. Stop shilling for the immoral corporations and think about what is right for Americans, not about what your paycheck depends on. —-

Feeding the sense of grievance is not just the lockdowns but the way they have been imposed. Start with the overkill. This includes sheriff’s deputies arresting a paddle boater alone in the ocean off Malibu, Calif., city officials in San Clemente filling a popular skateboarding park with 37 tons of sand, and various states restricting big-box retailers from selling “nonessential items,” which means that you can get three scoops of chocolate chip from your local ice-cream shop but God forbid Home Depot sell you a bag of mulch.

—- Boo Hoo. Anecdata. This opinion piece is non-essential, actually harmful. Socially distance yourself. People make mistakes. Look at you, shilling for a corporation! Because the rules aren't perfect, burn them down! —-

Though it is common to portray the protesters as putting profits over public health, these are hardly wealthy investors worried about their portfolios. Unlike the roughly one-third of Americans who can work at home and still draw paychecks, for most Americans the lockdowns are more than an inconvenience. And the urgency of reopening looks very different for the 22 million American workers who have just lost their jobs—or the 1 in 4 small-business owners who, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say they are two months or less away from shutting down permanently.

—- These Death Parties are organized by wealthy investors who are corporate funded and death indifferent. Immoral one might say. Yes, the shutdowns are more than an inconvenience. And government should be making sure we are all equally capable of living through it without harm. It’s immoral to tie healthcare to work. It’s immoral to have jobs with pay that won’t let you live. It’s immoral not to support small businesses with unemployment insurance and paid sick leave. The GOP is an immoral party. ——

Ditto for the charge that they are antiscience. Surely we could all use a little more modesty. Any honest appraisal would have to concede there is much that scientists have gotten wrong (the many models whose estimates of, say, deaths and ventilators needed proved wildly off), and much we still don’t know (the true lethality of Covid-19, the average number an infected person will infect, and so on).

—- Right! We don’t know and our president is trying to stop us from knowing. He's purposely screwing up testing. He never let a fact get in the way of his lying-for-popularity bullshit. The models are fine, the differences are in the assumptions and what they tell us about real life. You are a purposeful idiot here, purposely misunderstanding how science works to mislead your readers. One of the five signs you are a corporate shill. ---

Medical officials haven’t always been right, either. In [early] January, Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who serves as a lead member of the president’s coronavirus task force, assured America that Covid-19 was “not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”

—- This is unconscionable bullshit. Dr. Fauci expected the US to follow the pandemic guidelines set up by Bush. If we had, we would have been fine, (See South Korea) but we didn’t! @realdonaldtrump so screwed up the response that we are the worst case of death and destruction in the world. Time to throw the #PlannedIncompetents out, not say the models are broken. Our @POTUS has almost always been indefensibly wrong because he depends on his 'gut'. He thinks: 'How can I take credit if it works? How can I assign blame if it fails?" And what do you do, William? You seem to follow scripts from your billionaire handlers. Who should we pay attention to? Corporate shills who are only after a buck or scientists who have methods for determining truth? It's not too hard to figure out, is it? —
This is no slam on Dr. Fauci. To the contrary, this is the way science works, as experts revise and adjust to new information. But it should be a warning not to regard these experts as oracles or science as a source of unequivocal answers beyond dispute. Scientists should have doubts and continue to put their hypotheses to the test.

—- You should have doubts about your ethics, William. Doubt is the seed immoral corporations sow to hide their death dealing ways. Smoking cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Burning fossil fuels doesn’t cause global warming. Fluorocarbons don't cause holes in the ozone. Belching sulfur from power plants doesn't cause acid rain... I’m very tired of this corporate shilling passing for conservative opinion. Who’s paying you?—-
The protests remain relatively small [tiny, 0.00001 % of Americans]. But they do expose the elite disconnect with ordinary America. A recent New York magazine article captured the condescension and lack of empathy when it declared the protests are probably “going to spread nearly as rapidly as the coronavirus itself in the rich soil of anti-government subcultures where it’s widely accepted that ‘tyrants’ are exploiting the emergency to impose their godless socialist views on freedom-loving but fearful Americans.”

—- Yes, this is being pushed by the media and their billionaire donors. Where was the publicity and support for modern day society when a million times as many people marched for women's right and the support of science? We heard and saw nothing but the conservative press making fun of the majority of Americans. Opinion pieces in the @WSJ supporting the greatest mass movement by Americans in the last century: zero. This piece is manufactured bullshit to support billionaires. There’s no two ways around it. It’s a manufactured PR stunt supported by immoral corporations using a bunch of angry dissatisfied Covidiots. ——

A better sense of this subculture might be the words chanted by Kentucky protesters outside their governor’s office last week. Their outrageous message? “We want to work.”

— Go to work. Do something reasonable. Protest responsibly, like the millions of Israelis who all wore masks and stood six feet apart to protest the Trump clone, Netanyahu. No, the message of these Covidiots is "we want to die and take others with us." It’s totally irresponsible and you're pushing it, William —-

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.

Thanks for reading. I’m just one person, so can’t keep up with all the bullshit the @wsj and its billionaire owners and supporters spew out every day. Anybody want to help me counteract this immoral corporate PR blather that causes America harm? Drop me a line.
-DrMike

Wall St. Journal nails it again! Never listen to the their opinion pages unless you want to see billionaires begging.

Wall St. Journal nails it again! Never listen to the their opinion pages unless you want to see billionaires begging.

I've only agreed with three @WSJ opinion pieces in 60 years. Two have come out around the failed Trump presidency. I forget the other one. Just this morning they failed big time again. The WSJ published a hit piece on the Democratic Party and Joe:

Joe Biden and the Slow Death of Liberalism

Democrats are again choosing a moribund ideology bereft of new ideas. Radicalism beckons.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-and-the-slow-death-of-liberalism-11586536797

Wherein 

Barton Swaim 

complains that Democrats forsook the radicals and chose the candidate with the most likely chance to beat Trump. I guess because if they had chosen Bernie Trump had a better chance of winning?

The slow death he complains about is that Liberalism has 'nothing new' and is 'rehashing old ideas'. 

Like Medicare for All. And he is correct. The Republicans have been able to kill this idea in our checks and balances government for 90 years. That wall of hate is showing cracks, though. See Obama's and Nancy Pelosi's ability to push through the Affordable Care Act that added 20 million Americans to the healthcare system. The Republicans have been trying to dismantle this healthcare system for ten years and failed. It's here to stay. And expansion of the ability of government to meet it's deftly stated needs in the Declaration of Independence (Equality for All, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness) continue unabated. The American healthcare system is currently the most expensive system on the planet. It is also one of the most inefficient, cruel and byzantine systems imaginable and delivers the worst results. Claiming to be market driven with no market pricing. Monopolized with no regulation that is meaningful in managing costs. That's about to change. 

Why is the Republican party the failed conglomeration of conspiracy theories and billionaires?

When one party fights to the death to restrict government from fulfilling its first and founding pledge:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"

that party slowly loses legitimacy in the eyes of the American people and must resort to raw illiberal power: gerrymandering, voter suppression and identity politics: white supremacy. This Grand Old Party has no legitimacy, so to survive it becomes beholden to the highest bidders, the death merchants, to have any chance to stay in power. The GOP is no longer conservative. It has been taken over by the Tea Party, the "kill government" radicals that want to reinstate feudalism. They have sold their souls to the billionaires and the billionaires have brought the party to heel.

What are the fundamental tenets of today's Republican party? There are two types of tenets, those that support white identity politics and those that support the billionaires. Let's look at each of them in turn. Then we will compare them with what the Democratic Progressive Party is based on. The difference is as clear as night and day. One party is the party of death, the other party celebrates Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The differences couldn't be more stark.

White identity politics is about to fail spectacularly. #BankruptcyOrDeath is not a healthcare policy.

White identity politics. What does this mean? It means supporting the wedge issues of the mainly white upper middle class and dragging the uneducated along with them for the ride. It means punishing minorities and the poor whites themselves to show that nobody deserves a helping hand. I've got mine, so fuck you. What are the white identity wedge issues? Abortion. Faux-Christianity. Guns. Poor people are morally unfit and must be punished and incarcerated. Keeping power. Ensuring that whites get what they want or nobody does. And they've settled on the nobody side of the issues for the last 150 years. It took a Great Depression to instil a safety net. It took a Great Recession to advance universal healthcare. The last thing the Republicans want to admit is that they are a minority in America. They've been in charge forever and resisted every sharing of power with all their might. When my grandmother was old enough to vote she couldn't because white men resisted universal suffrage. Just like they resisted allowing blacks to be citizens. Just like they instituted Jim Crow laws that made apartheid legal in the US. Just as they continue to gerrymander districts to ensure that they have legislative majorities with a minority of the vote. One man one vote is anathema to White Identity Politics and the GOP has embraced WIP.

Who are the most ardent supporters of the GOP? Evangelical Christians. Why have the Republicans embraced the wacky ideas these mostly white religious fanatics have been pushing? Yep, they're white. No other party would even consider these crazy things as viable options, but the GOP is in it for the sheer numbers. They also embrace the Nazis, the fascists, the white supremacists, the rapture enablers, the faux moralists, the supporters of Royalty and the white Russian oligarchs. Is there anything white that the Republicans wouldn't support? Nope. This leads to an incredibly convoluted platform that's really just an amalgamation of hateful spite and intellectual bullshit. 

What does this cause them to support? RealityTV stars that lie and manufacture truth, because there is no there there. The only universal truth they can agree on is "hate those different than us and punish them." Hate the gays. Hate the Jews. Hate the immigrants. Hate minorities. Hate liberals. Hate other countries. Hate the muslims. Hate other religions. Hate the experts. Hate anyone who doesn't show fealty to our King. Hate anyone who doesn't fall in line with the lies and conspiracy theories. Don't fraternize with the opposition. It's our way or no way. Hate the government. Destroy it when given a chance. Forget compromise. How can you compromise with those who aren't human white Republicans? The vermin need to be punished, incarcerated, held in concentration camps, deported, deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's an evil philosophy. It cherry picks passages from a bronze age book of fairy tales to create a selfish might-makes-right feudal philosophy of what I call speciesism.  They are attempting to create a new species of humans that don't include anyone but their white identity in-group. It really is a #DeathCult and Trump is the perfect leader.

So they embrace the wedge issues: abortion is okay for me, but not for you. Guns are okay for me but not for you. My religion is the truth, yours is evil. You must follow my made up morality. You can't force me to treat everyone equally. The only reason for government is to support my religion and build an armed service to protect me from you and those other foreigners. Anything else the government does must be torn down. There is no room for collective action. It's every man for himself. I'll help my fellow white privileged neighbors in my town, but fuck those assholes in the big city. They're filthy vermin sucking the life blood out of the country and they can just stop pretending to be Americans and go back to their failed countries and die. Most of them revel in this attitude of "owning the libs" because they have no moral basis for their lives, it's just a game they are trying to win. They feel secure in their white privilege so they don't give a shit that others are suffering and need help. The poor and suffering must be in that state through a moral failing, not a systemic abuse from those in power? No way. We're cruel, but not that cruel. There's no racism anymore. Black lives don't matter, everyone's lives matter. It's a story they tell themselves because to admit the truth would be devastating. They say they have no privilege. They have achieved everything through hard work and good morals. They deserve what they have. They are good because they are rich. You are evil because you are poor. How else to justify their policies?

What to do when your White identity is no longer the majority?

The problem is that these policies are only supported by a minority of the population. How can you make a party that stays in power with a minority of the voters? You can't. Unless you cheat. Unless you sell your souls to the highest bidders. So of course, that's what they have done. They've sold their party to the billionaire led resource extraction sectors of the economy. What ideologies does the Republican Party support that white supremacists really don't give a shit about? Low taxes on high incomes & unfettered capitalism. Even the Republican base supports higher marginal tax rates on millionaires & billionaires. But not the Republican Party. Why? Because these millionaires and billionaires finance the party. The members just have to suck it up and give their money away to make the economy more unequal. Rich is good, only Congressman get free money from donors, the unwashed masses have to get their own. 

Unfettered capitalism leads to a whole slew of sins. Markets are the ultimate arbiters of what is moral and right. Monopolies are good. What's good for Exxon is good for the country. Thus the support of coal and other fossil fuels. Never mind that coal kills more people each year than there are workers in the industry. Some billionaire extracts the profits and shares some of those profits as donations with the Republican Party ... so it must be okay. Same for oil. Who cares if it will burn the earth to a crisp? That's tomorrow's problem, today they are paying me to lie about it. Same thing for farmers, tobacco farmers, not farmers actually, but immoral corporations. Cigarettes don't cause cancer, people do. Opioids aren't addictive, people need them to fend off the pain of their failed lives, their lack of meaningful work, their polluted landscapes, their putrid food and their poor healthcare. But so what? The immoral companies give us money, the morally bereft poor don't give congressman anything, except their vote if they can be hoodwinked into it!  Being poor is a sin; it's your fault! We'll support your hate on the others that have caused you to be poor, but we aren't going to do anything about it. Unless you happen to be a large farm conglomerate. Then we can subsidize you, not your workers, to the tune of billions of dollars. And don't forget to donate some small portion of that graft back to us. We'll give you trillions in tax breaks, all we ask is for a measly billion or so in donations.

How can this morally bankrupt system be fixed?

It really is a morally bankrupt system. And it won't be fixed until the party finance system is changed. Which is why it's important to support HR#1, the bill to fix this dark money, hidden finance system that takes away the votes of Americans and substitutes it with the donations of billionaires. But that's another blog post for another day. That's why the "billionaire tears" campaign of Elizabeth Warren was so powerful (raise marginal tax rates on the rich so they pay their fair share and tax all property, not just housing.) Even Republican voters can see the sense of this proposal. She would make an excellent VP. She would grab the suburban women's vote out from under the Republican hate mongering subservient culture and deliver it to the Democrats. It would be a landslide. 

Why does the Wall St. Journal care about this stuff?

This leads us into refuting the main point of the heinous hit piece in the WSJ claiming that Joe Biden has no platform and is just rehashing old failed Democratic policies. First remember that the WSJ is an immoral corporation. It is run by a foreign billionaire. The same one that runs Fox News. Whereas on Fox News they just spew conspiracy theories and hate on the out groups, the WSJ must actually report facts about corporations, not about what they do or the harm they cause but about the money they are or are not making. They limit the bullshit and hate spewing to the their editorial pages and their think pieces. It's all from the same script though. They need to paint the Democratic progressive agenda as communism. They have no choice. They want unfettered capitalism. They want monopolies. It's the American dream! I may grow up to be a big corporation that can spew my costs upon the unwashed masses and extract billions! And I want the government to help me extract what's rightfully mine from those stupid Americans. It's harsh capitalism for the masses and government socialism for the corporations. 

Old, failed policies? Nope, regardless of which party Americans are in, it's the policies they want!  That's what scares the WSJ: Americans want Universal Healthcare.

What are these old, failed policies that Democrats have been pushing? Universal healthcare has been a long standing plank in the Democratic platform. Starting with FDR and the New Deal. He could only get Medicare for the aged passed, unemployment insurance and welfare for the poor. And that took a Great Depression. Harry Truman tried to extend it and failed. JFK tried to extend it and failed. Lyndon Johnson, the master politician of the ages, managed to pass the civil rights act and the war on poverty, greatly expanding the safety net and finally putting to rest the question of separate but equal. Clinton tried to improve health care, but lost by one bribed vote. Obama and Pelosi managed to pass the Affordable Care Act by one vote. In addition to providing subsidized health care it also expanded Medicare for the poor to the states. Joe is doubling down on this policy. Joe is proposing to lower the age for Medicare to 60, the exact opposite direction that the Republican Party is screaming for. The majority of the Democratic Party wants a public option but is afraid of the Medicare for All option implemented in the rest of the world because it would be hard to satisfy all the special interests (even though the current system is still the most expensive and least effective system in the developed world.) The Republicans can always pitch a change as scary and make up reasons for people to hate it. The Democrats will settle for moving the needle forward every cycle until, poof!, Medicare for All is actually here. 

Regardless of which party they are in, Americans want billionaires to pay their fair share. 

What's another of the old, failed policies the Democrats are pushing? Having billionaires pay their fair share. Higher marginal tax rates. Taxes on all property, not just housing. This scares the hell out of billionaires, so the WSJ must absolutely throw every dirty trick and bullshit argument against it. It's a matter of life and luxury. However, if you want to minimize middle class taxes, you must maximize billionaire wealth extraction. The middle class is all for this, the billionaires have been waging class warfare on the poor for aeons. The poor have nothing more to be extracted, so the billionaires have moved onto the middle class and the middle class sees it plainly and clearly. They saw the billionaires command the Republican party and defy 80% of the American people to pass their last tax scam. They pretended to give the middle class tax breaks - but those breaks expire in a few years. The billionaire tax breaks and the taxes on corporations are permanent, until the Democrats can get control of the Senate. Then poof! the maximum resource extraction will begin. 

The United States has turned into the largest tax haven in the world. If the billionaires want to keep that status they are going to have to pay their fair share of the tax burden. When was the growth in productivity and the economy the highest? It's directly correlated to the marginal tax rate on the rich. The more the government takes the harder the billionaires have to work to support their luxuries. And they respond well to financial incentives. There have been several theoretical papers that have pegged the maximum extraction marginal tax rate to be between 70 % and 85 %. The current effective rate is below 25 %. This will change. And corporations aren't people, corporations are immoral slow artificial intelligences out to maximize their profit. They can respond to the higher marginal tax rates, and they already do with financial shenanigans that have nothing to do with real capital and investment and everything to do with tax avoidance. So nobody has any love lost for the corporate tax rate on the Democratic side. 

 The billionaires have been winning the class war for the last fifty years. The inequality is beyond anything seen since the Great Depression. This current Great Decimation will put an end to that. If they want to stay in the United States and be protected by Americans, the billionaire class is going to pay. And they aren't going to dictate the laws anymore either, it's going to be a negotiation. One man, one vote. Donations are public knowledge. Lying and conspiracy theories will be evident to all. This is the point of HR#1 (another blog post on another day.) And all of the Democrats have signed on. Things are going to change. 

Sharing the burden of an educated society leads to high productivity and a growing economy.

What else do the Democrats want to change? They want the millennials and generation X and Z out of the debt that the billionaires and their parents should have covered (like the boomers covered the GI bills) but haven't. There is no reason that education shouldn't be a public good with shared costs through taxation of everyone as they reap the shared benefit of an educated population. You can't run the world with a bunch of high school dropouts, no matter how hard you try. You need a well educated body politic. The Republicans hate this because it makes it harder to bullshit their voters. If the voters can't understand logical arguments, they're much easier to fool. Trump loves the uneducated because they believe his bullshit, even as it changes minute to minute. When you don't exercise your reasoning ability you lose it. So it's for the good of society that we support universal education with shared costs. The more productive economy will gladly pay for their kids' educations in the future, There's no reason that the younger generation has to pay for their own education and their kids' education. That's just rich old white people being selfish again. Taking from their parents and making their children pay for themselves. It's a selfish policy and it will end.

Inequality is a bad idea.

The other "old, tired and failed" policy is that all men are created equal. No discrimination on the basis of sex, race, gender, orientation, religion, immigration status, or political party. It's going to be a fair fight all around. No gerrymandering. No voter suppression. No illiberal democracy. No fascism. No favoritism. No inequality. The laws will respect the people's will not the billionaires pocket books. This is HR#1 which eliminates the purchasing of politicians and the corruption of money. This will be the hardest change for the Republican Party to accept, if not for money, gerrymandering and voter suppression they will never have a majority with their current platform again. They will change or they will be relegated to the dustbin of history. 

What other progressive ideas do the Democrats support?

What else does the Democratic Party stand for? Higher minimum wage. Paid health leave and parental leave. Subsidized pre-school and day care. Taking care of the earth (which means ending fossil fuel subsidies and carbon emissions.) Continued expansion of civil rights (all men are created equal.)  Gun control - no you can't have weapons of war in your house. Ending cruel and unusual punishments. Right to privacy, including decriminalization of drugs and reparations for past incarcerations. Women in control of their own bodies, subsidized birth control and abortions. And finally the support of these rights to the world. Cooperating with democratic regimes and undermining autocratic regimes. 

The differences couldn't be more stark. One party fundamentally supports the American exceptionalism, the other party is bought and sold by a small group of oligarchs. The battle will be fierce, it will be long, but it will be won.

 Thanks for reading,

 -DrMike