Steve Harris
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Rising and Falling Powers

12/18/2020

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The ink was barely dry (well, the electronic ink, at least) on Joe Biden’s announcement of his national security team last November when Sen. Marco Rubio, eager to start positioning himself for the 2024 race, announced he would oppose the nominees’ Senate confirmation. Rubio referenced the US-China geopolitical situation and decried the group as “polite and orderly caretakers of America’s decline.”

This was (another) faint echo of the McCarthy Era’s debate about who in the US government “lost China.” The same arrogance of embedded and stale hegemony as 70 years ago; as if China was “ours” to lose then and China’s rise in the past 40 years is ours to stop now.

Countries rise and fall, as I (and Paul Kennedy) have pointed out before. As often, a country rises (i.e. gains global military/economic/cultural power) even while another country rises even more and it appears that Country A is falling. Power (which includes the perception of power) is relative. [There’s probably a good line here about “absolute power is absolutely relative;” but I won’t go there!] That’s certainly the case with the US and China these days, even discounting whatever absolute decline was wrought by Trump’s flailing melodrama of a foreign policy.

Kennedy showed that there is a pattern in which great powers either get “fat-and-happy” or over-extended in their commitments. Leadership is hard, competition is tough at the championship level, in football or geopolitics. So, there is no surprise that the “American Century” might well be over.

The question is what, if anything, to do about it. Too often, historically speaking, the relative decliner is too lazy or frustrated and starts a war. It seems that this was the road (at least in terms of trade and economics) down which Trump was headed and which Rubio is claiming in his proto-Presidential positioning.

Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 were certainly in this position; fearing the growth and potential industrialization of Russia. Similar arguments could be made for Germany and Japan in the late ‘30s, vis-à-vis both the US and Russia. One could even make the case that this was the situation faced by the Southern states as they joined the Confederacy in 1861. The idea is that even though war is a crapshoot, the broader geopolitical and demographic trends are so ominous, that war looks like the less bad alternative. However, since humans are slow on the uptake, the decision in favor of conflict usually comes so far along in the process that the apparently falling power is too late to overcome the long-term trends and, after some initial success, succumbs to the long-term rising power. See, e.g., German vs. British or American war plane production in the 1940s or German (1917) or Japanese (1941) sneak attacks triggering US entry into WWI/WWII.

In our case, the long-term rise of China is neither surprising, nor under-explained. However, having gotten used to being the only dog on the top of the heap after the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, we just don’t like it. That power vacuum has not been filled (and neither Russia, India, or the European Union is capable of filling it). China’s aggressive foreign policy, built on a huge upturn in its economic and technological capabilities is the result. It is driven not only by capabilities, but also by a national mythology of being Chung Kuo (the “Middle Kingdom”), around which all other countries/barbarians would align themselves. It shows up in trade, in intellectual property theft, in territorial claims in India, Bhutan, Vietnam, and the South China Sea, and in its well-funded economic diplomacy across the global south. It shows up in China’s swift and effective (if heavy-handed) handling of the Coronavirus outbreak. Nothing made the Soviet Union look so good in the 1930s (hidden oppression and famines notwithstanding) as the liberal democracies’ struggle with the Great Depression.

And so, America, after the hand-wringing and Trumpian foot-stomping, what is to be done?
I’m certainly not suggesting that we “go quietly,” kow-tow, and brush up on our Mandarin. Nor will a national boycott of Kung-Pao chicken cut it. Perhaps we could rename fortune cookies as “freedom cookies,” since that worked so well against “French fries” in 2003.

Certainly a more assertive stance against the Chinese is called for in terms of trade relations. Certainly a more resolute stance in favor of human rights of the many ethnic minorities (Uighurs, Tibetans, etc.) would be appropriate; hopefully, in coordination with the EU. Certainly mobilizing South and South-east Asian countries in common causes (economic and territorial) is overdue.

Having said that, we’re also certainly not going to war if China invades Taiwan or completes its dissolution/assimilation of Hong Kong. The nihilism shared by Southern slaveowners and Kaiser Wilhelm II was bad enough, but in a nuclear age, it’s nonsense.

Actually, to use a sports metaphor, the best defense against global “decline” is a good offense. We have a lot to say and do with countries around the world where Chinese have been liberally  and often clumsily strewing their cash and ideas. More importantly in terms of democracy and trade, if we want to be competitive, we have to compete!

We also have to be realistic. Just wanting China to act like a 2d tier power isn’t going to make it happen. They’re not. Bringing rocks back from the far side of the Moon shows some serious techno-chops. As much as power determines things in the world, they have more of it than they used to and, in that sense, are entitled to have the world look a bit more like they want it to.

But both the effort implied in a “good offense” and the maturity implied in realism will take some real work and some changes in our outlook: a bit less global entitlement and self-righteousness; a bit more teaming (compromising) to gain alliances. We also need to take care not to let competitiveness overwhelm us as often happened during the “Cold War” where we turned too many blind eyes towards behavior in competed-for countries (e.g., Argentina, Congo, Iran) for anyone’s good.

China is a rising power (absolutely). The US is therefore, in relative decline (however much we may still be the envy of the vast majority of the world). Whining won’t work, Mario, even if it gets you some votes.


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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

12/11/2020

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(“Who will watch the watchmen?”)

The answer we have been living under for 230+ years was famously laid out by Montesquieu and realized in the doctrine of separation of powers in the Constitution. Under this model, each of the “three branches of government”: legislative, executive, and judicial is supposed to be limited in its natural tendency to accumulate power by the countervailing authorities of the other two. Despite the wide range of the ordinary jousting between and carping about each branch from advocates of the other two, the only fundamental shift among the three since the early 19C has been the accumulation of discretion by the executive branch, which has been driven particularly by the increasing breadth of governmental action and responsibility, as well as military technologies which have altered the nature of the nominally limited Presidential war powers.

Another change, however, calls out for remediation: the embedded nature of the political class as a whole which has manifested in members of Congress serving for multiple decades with little competition, hideous gerrymandering, an ossified duopoly of political parties, and election mechanisms corrupted long before Citizens United (2010). We have created a political oligarchy whose differences from the “democratic centralism” practiced by the Chinese Communist Party are far fewer than we would like to think. And, as is the nature of oligarchies, they prefer to “police” themselves, with the result that, once in office, Congressional “Ethics” Committees are a joke (Congress writes its own special health insurance and pension rules and exempts itself from standard rules preventing discrimination and abuse) and impeachment has descended into political theater.

Addressing these concerns will require a set of Constitutional changes that go beyond the simple tinkering of imposing term limits and reserving political speech rights to actual persons (i.e., excluding corporations). Efforts in the post-Watergate era which led to the creation of the Federal Election Commission (another model of bureaucratic toothlessness) were well intended but ran headlong into the power of incumbency and First Amendment sanctimoniousness.  When ordinary political processes have been corrupted, expecting them to produce useful and meaningful controls is naïve.

In The Republic, Plato proposed that a council of Guardians, made up of a small group of the wisest, best educated men, would be the best form of government. Such an approach doesn’t sit well in a democratic age with risks of corruption and difficulties of selection looming large. Nor does the closest current example: the Iranian Republic, bode well for a plenary, omnicompetent group dictatorship.

Perhaps a blending of Socrates and Montesquieu might be an improvement. A council of the wise whose scope of authority was limited to electoral and governmental integrity. They would be charged with administering electoral laws and constitutional provisions, including limitations on expenditures and methods, processes of selecting candidates, demarking electoral districts, and hearing allegations of corruption and other improper behavior on the part of elected officials.

A group of 5-7 members, eligible for a single term of 5-10 years, prohibited from further participation in politics and government (for themselves and their immediate families) could be trusted to act for the public good. Two members would be chosen by each house of Congress (using weighted voting to limit majority domination) plus three members to be chosen by the Supreme Court.

This Democracy Council would combine aspects of a standard administrative agency (including a combination of rule-making and enforcing powers), the recent upsurge in state-created citizen redistricting commissions, and Congressional “Ethics” Committees. Funding would be constitutionally guaranteed at a multiple of the budget of the Supreme Court.

A fourth arm of government might seem too radical, but this Democracy Council might be seen as at least half a branch. Judicial in stature, legislative in powers, but with a limited jurisdiction and enforcement powers, it might be an important step in restoring confidence in the democratic process. There are many examples of election commissions used in other countries, some of which have maintained integrity and independence from incumbent governments, from which we could draw lessons.

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The Laws of History

12/4/2020

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After a recent posting here, my friend Trevor Getz challenged me to respond to a recent article in The Atlantic about the views of entomologist-turned-psychohistorian Peter Turchin. The subtitle reads: “A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news.”

Now, whenever a historian offers predictions, check your wallet, and whenever someone talks about the “laws” of history, find another conversation—quick!

I have to say that I share Turchin’s medium-term pessimism about US society and global economic and ecological outlooks. However, having read some of his other work, I don’t share his methodology or certainty.

In fact, when I first looked at this article about Turchin and predictions, I immediately thought of Gavrilo Principe, the Serbian assassin of Archduke Ferdinand, whose pistol provided the spark that set off World War I. It is not too much to say that if the ‘barista’ at the Sarajevo Starbucks (avant le lettre) had taken an extra couple of minutes preparing Principe’s macchiato, then Principe would not have been in a position to shoot the Archduke when the latter’s car stopped to back up after making a wrong turn, right on the corner where Principe was sipping his brew. Then: no July Crisis, no mobilizations, no war (at least not the one we got and any other would have sent the world in quite another direction). It was, in short, a fluke. No “laws” of history, psychohistory, or cliometrics (statistical analysis of history) could have predicted it.

Similarly, if you had asked a hundred political scholars and pundits in late 2014 who would be elected President two years later, a certain orange-coiffed individual would have never been mentioned. Nor, to take our immediate situation, were any of the prognostications about 2020 made just a year ago worth the electrons they are printed on. In fact, (as was much noted at the time) a shift of only 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would have swung the 2016 election. And, as an echo (though much less covered in the media), a shift of about 42,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin would have re-elected the President. That is not to say that Clinton’s election in 2016 would have disrupted Turchin’s diagnosis, nor that the Biden victor will do so; merely to note that a swing of 3% of 1% of the vote certainly qualifies as a contingency, which sends the universe barreling down a different course.

Is it possible to extrapolate trends and find some patterns as bases of prediction? Sure. But, as I have said in other contexts, “The only thing we know about a strategic plan is that it’s one thing that won’t come to pass.” Can bright people, working at a sufficiently large scale, find some useful insights about the nature of human development? Absolutely. However, to project these into the future is another matter. There’s a big gap between plausibility and likelihood; a few seers are ever audited.

All these predictions depend on the (often unspoken) principle of “ceteris paribus,” a delightful Latin phrase which we know “all else being equal.” Great for economists and other simplifiers; but, history is replete with contingencies, personalities, and other surprises that have laid around every corner. And, if a contingency doesn’t show up, then the predictor is more likely to be right, at least directionally. I can think of a dozen plausible contingencies—some good, some bad—that would toss every prediction of the next twenty years into the garbage. So can you.

Moreover, projecting cycles of history (as Turchin does) is a practice as old as the Mayans and Tibetans. It doesn’t take much to look backward and see a rich list of “the rise and fall of ____.” Paul Kennedy did much the same as Turchin with historical grounding and considerable insight in his Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in 1987. (It’s all just an analogy from Newton: gravity, inertia, and all that.) Rejecting rigid cycles as a historical model is not to embrace the Enlightenment-driven contrary view that we are on an inexorable path to the “sun-lit uplands” of human civilization (to steal Churchill’s phrase). Perhaps, as Steven Pinker has argued in a couple of recent books, things have been getting better (civilizationally) for the past several hundred years. Will it continue? No one knows.

I was glad to see that Turchin acknowledged his intellectual debt to Isaac Asimov, whose sci-fi Foundation series (1950-52) included a character named Hari Selden. Selden, too, claimed to have discovered the laws of human behavior on a universal scale which enabled him to predict the course of developments far into the future. This science of “psychohistory” worked for a while, but then got knocked off course in a big-and-dramatic way by a mutant fluke, until some new heroes came to save the day. Perhaps Asimov was trying to re-establish Enlightenment optimism after European civilization had been knocked off course by Gavrilo Principe and Adolf Hitler.

Turchin may be right about his theory that our society will crash under the weight of too many in the “elite” class, or Piketty may be right that the cause will be that group having too much money. But we don’t need history to teach us the morality of inequality or social distension. We should fix them on our own, even if they won’t drive us over the cliff. Ditto on climate.
History, as I have argued several times in this blog, is great for many purposes (and it’s fun, too). But the future,… it’s a mystery.




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Triage

11/27/2020

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Triage

Determining where various groups of people will stand in the line to get the COVID vaccine (and the processes for making those decisions) will be the most contentious and revealing issues of the next six months. We’re already starting to hear rumblings in the media, but once we get past the Inauguration and initial appointments/policy statements, this set of questions will give us some significant clues as to what kind of country and what kind of world we live in. The answers may not be surprising, but will certainly be instructive.

Of course, much will depend on the progress developing/approving the Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford vaccines and the others that are coming along. There will be major issues around manufacturing, distribution, and pricing. Some will work better with some populations and distribution chains than others,  but the composition of The List will engender political/moral debate at both the national and global levels.

Not everyone can be first. A two-dose vaccine will require 15 billion doses. The world’s largest vaccine manufacturer has estimated that it could well be 2024 before there is complete global coverage. So The List is important and, in our current world, its construction will be (generally) public and political. Even in the US, the (present) Administration has said that allocation will be done by the states (but how are the doses to be allocated to the states?)

Various groups will be proposed for priority treatment, each with plausible arguments behind them: (not in any order)
  • The elderly (oldest first)
  • Health care workers
  • Teachers
  • Students
  • Political Leaders and those politically connected
  • Sports Teams (why not artists?)
  • People with ‘co-morbidities’
  • "Essential” workers
  • Rich people
  • People from countries that
    • paid for the vaccine in advance
    • are powerful and rich
    • have been hardest hit
    • steal the vaccine formula

I don’t propose to resolve this debate. Polling companies are likely already ramping up to take the figurative pulse of the nation (and the world). I do think it would be interesting to put people who have washed their hands a lot and always worn a mask at the top of The List. And, we can assume that ‘anti-vaxxers’ will not be interested in any event (that’s another problem).

Regardless of the result, I will be curious to see the claims/arguments from those who downplayed the pandemic. Will they manufacture reasons for immediate self-protection? Perhaps voluntarily go to the back of the line, since the pandemic was a liberal/media hoax, so there’s no rush?

Similarly, I wonder about those who are vehemently anti-government. It seems pretty clear that governments will be in charge of this. So, especially if you are a die-hard Ayn Rand fan, arguing for an entirely market-based solution (vaccine auction anyone?), you will have something to complain about. Cost issues will come up here, too. Will those opposed to “excessive” government spending also argue for everyone to pay their own way? One of the big arguments against Obamacare and “socialized medicine” in general, was that governments shouldn’t ration health care (Sarah Palin’s diatribe against “death panels”). But, in an important sense, that’s what we’re going to have. For those people whose closest contact with triage was watching episodes of M*A*S*H, this could be a wake-up call.

There is another layer of issues at the global level. Should World Health Organization make the decisions about country-by-country allocation? What about those who quit the WHO? There is a group of 156 countries called COVAX (under the WHO’s auspices) which is working this out (guess who’s not in). Wow, if you hate government and socialized medicine in the US, the thought of a bunch of furriners putting the US of A at the back of the line is pretty appalling. Maybe we should send in a SEAL team to scoop some up?

Even without military action, the rich countries have gotten used to running things globally (e.g. IMF, WTO), usually with the US in the lead. But lately, we haven’t been at the table and even when we go back, it’s likely the others won’t be as deferential as they have been in the past. A new spin in international organization/governance may be one long-lasting result.

It will take a year to get everyone in the US covered. In the meantime, there will be another interesting situation: the potential for different social status between those with vaccinated/certified immunity and those without. What is the public health rationale to require vaxxers to wear masks?  (New joke line: If a vaxxer  and a non-vaxxer walk into a bar…?) Do they have to go to different rooms? Will they get other preferential treatment? Will vaxxers be allowed to wear a badge as an exemption? When some inevitably lazy/sociopathic guy decides to forge an ID card or badge even though they haven’t been vaccinated, will they be subject to criminal charges?

Generally, though, it will be an interesting exercise to make your own list. Which groups should go first? Why? How do your preferences correlate with your own demographics? Can I persuade you that seniors and teachers (and their friends) should be very high up on The List?



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Stories

11/20/2020

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“History,” as William Cronon has said, “is the stories we choose to tell about the past.”

Or, as I tell my students, there is (upper-case) “History” (the discipline and the practice and the stories) and there is (lower-case) “history” (all the stuff that has happened in the past). One of the things I am glad many of my students pick up on is that what they’re told in textbooks (and the History Channel and Wikipedia) is just one (highly digested and extremely coherent) version—one story told by one author in one time and place—and that there are many other ways to see the events, trends, and people of the past.

That’s an important part of using History as a means of teaching critical thinking: getting students to be aware of and weigh differing interpretations of the past: ‘were the Germans responsible for the start of WWI or was it the Serbs?,’ ‘was the American War of Independence about democracy or a contest between elites for which group should rule the colonies?’ We need to be aware of potential biases (sometimes explicit and plausible, sometimes not) or novel insights in interpretation. Being aware of that historians choose and how historians choose which kind of story to tell about the past is an essential part of Cronon’s point.

There is another layer to the issue of history as stories; and that is the question of the very use of narratives or stories. Humans love stories. Almost all of us love hearing stories (and some of us like telling them, too). Whether they claim to be factual or clearly dispense with any claim to the “truth,” we can get easily wrapped up in the telling of tales. Part of this is driven by emotional satisfaction from heroic epics, romances, and the resolution of tension.

But a bigger part comes from the comfort of coherence, from the psychological security of feeling able to understand a situation and taking that comfort and applying it to my own life.  If the world makes sense (i.e., is coherent) then perhaps I have a better shot at controlling it or at least I will feel less afraid because there are fewer unknowns/surprises. If “History” has “lessons,” then perhaps I can learn them and apply them and have some control over my future. That’s the theory, in any case.

If I have a reliable theory of the origins of anti-Semitism, perhaps I can take steps to prevent its recurrence or deal with its effects. Love stories and hero’s quests (even if fictional) provide more positive role models, but to the same effect. A story that makes sense encourages me to believe that the world is subject to understanding and (to some degree) control; even if, in fact, much/most/all is random and contingent.

This practice may be deeply based in human cognitive evolution and worked well enough when proto-humans were running around East Africa. Now, however, the world is much more complex and driven by the workings of human minds (not just animal behavioral patterns). It’s no wonder that modern historical analysis developed about the time of the industrial revolution as the pace of change and complexity in human societies began to skyrocket. We needed tools to try to make sense of this world and History (the practice) promised to explain change and subject history (the past) to order and usefulness.

History also depends on claims of rational (i.e. legible/understandable) human behavior. But, as we all know from our own lives and trying to understand our own friends, families, colleagues, etc. this is a dicey game. It usually ends up being about me projecting my own idea patterns on others. Why did Truman order the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan in August, 1945? Did this “cause” Stalin to react in certain ways, leading to the “Cold War?” Many theories/factors have been advanced, most of which are quite plausible. But how to weigh and sort them? Without understanding Truman’s psyche (or Stalin’s), it’s a mug’s game. And, yet, we Historians draw from whichever version we prefer to create all sorts of stories about post-war international relations and geopolitics.

Even without this logical gap in our ability to analyze human behavior, we Historians face two other hurdles: the past-ness of historical behavior (how can we really imagine what people from another culture thought?) and recent neuro-science claims that human consciousness is unknowable. It’s no surprise that some have argued that History (at least the part that tells stories filled with causation and explanation, including pretty much all “popular” history) is, in Henry Ford’s words, “bunk.”

It will come as no surprise to those who have read the initial entries in the blog that I have some sympathy for this view. What I may take as the “lessons” of history are usually projections of my own feelings and ideas. Now, as a card-carrying Historian (AHA member #8429936), I still think there is value and use in studying the past; just not as much as many of my colleagues. How I choose to order the events of the past, how I connect a string of individual’s decisions over time, how I “understand” history—all are great tools for me to see myself.

And, while I’m working on that, I still like getting wrapped up in a good story.


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Party Time

11/13/2020

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Trump’s election in 2016 was an overdetermined quirk. His defeat in 2020 was not, however, a return to “normal.” Among the many aspects of the defunct old order is the Republican Party, whose behavior (both corporately and in terms of the “leaders”) has been even more egregious and surprising than the rise and fall of a certain solipsistic putz.

With a few exceptions (McCain, Kasich, Romney (from time to time), and a smattering of second-tier Bush-ites), the lust for power and fear of a non-white-male-dominated America has led to a smorgasbord of craven kow-towing. The jettisoning of institutional values in Congress and the administration was breath-taking until it became routine. A recitation of the list would be numbing.

Rumblings about Trump continuing in politics are media noise. He may run a fund-raising/celebrity/reality show scam, but between the COVID carnage and his upcoming personal and financial travails, his cult of personality will grow quickly stale. What will be even more interesting than who seeks to assert some mode of post-Trump leadership (Haley, Cruz, Cotton?) is the question of what they will stand for. Even leaving aside the pettiness, crudeness, and idiocy of many policy decisions, there is little left of what used to be Republicanism.

In his typically unintentional irony, Trump regularly referred to any number of traditional Republicans who dared not to fall completely into (his) line as “RINOs”: “Republicans In Name Only.”  (as usual, the best way to read Trumpian critiques is to reverse the pronoun, i.e., he criticizes others for his own character traits).

The problem is that such a critique assumes that there is something substantive to being a Republican. There used to be, of course, but what is left?: tax cuts and deregulation based on trickle-down economics: yes. Balanced budgets and deficit reduction: No. Federalism and deference to local groups: No. Compassionate Conservatism: No. Liberal Internationalism: No. Respect for the Military: No. Fierce devotion to individual freedom: spotty at best.

Even plausible policy positions (regardless of whether I agree with them) on immigration, education, judicial interpretation etc. have been drowned in Trumpian vitriol. Nor is it apparent who has the moral standing to bring any sort of coherent, politically viable collection of “conservative” policies to the public forum.

There may be a Republican Party going forward, but it is likely to be, itself, RINO.

The Democrats are not in much better  shape. Once the target of indignation is gone, they will likely revert to their infighting, wrestling with climate, identity politics, coherent foreign policy etc. AOC has already started down this path. Other “progressives” join her in conflating policy hopes (which I generally share) and political feasibility. In our polarized political discourse, most tugging from the wings generates animosity on the other wing and fear in the center.

My argument is not about which ideology should prevail in either group, a topic that has already engaged the commentariat; rather it goes to the shells/labels/institutions which carry some set of ideas forward.

Change is in the air. The world is different, the country is different. The parties (at least their shells) remain. They are stale, corrupt, and well past their “sell-by” dates. As a political society, we are overdue for a realignment. The Nixon/Johnson switch in the loyalty of the South is fifty years old. The Progressive line up through FDR is pushing 100.

The nineteenth century saw all sorts of party births, deaths, and realignments. It’s doubtful either Adams or Jefferson would have recognized their progeny fifty years after they had passed. The British went through a tortured period of transition from Liberalism to Labour from the late 19C through WWII. Many countries have a lengthy roster of current parties and a bewildering list of historical incarnations. A substantial number have really just been personality vehicles who collapsed after their leader left the scene. Their ideological consistency has been fortuitous in the moment, and then evanescent. Is the GOP next in this line?

What may keep the shells of both Democrats and Republicans alive in the US is that they have insinuated themselves into the legal process of politics. Their sclerotic duopoly controls gerrymandering, access to primaries and election rolls. A robust antitrust model would blow them apart and re-open the political markets to competition. Why is it that taxpayers should pay for a private group to select its leaders? The Methodists don’t line up and the federal trough when they elect a new presiding Bishop, nor is Walmart’s Annual Meeting subsidized (at least directly) by the State of Arkansas. Some states go so far as to provide that in case of a vacancy in their US Senate seat, the incumbent’s state party central committee gives the Governor a short list of acceptable replacements.

The duopolistic nature of the system is most evident in the high art of electoral district line-drawing. Now armed with sophisticated mathematical models parties design districts for incumbency rather than community (with no small degree of racial and class discrimination). Early-19C Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry (and his salamander-shaped legislative district map) would be envious. The recent move in some states to neutral citizen-driven apportionment processes offers some hope on this front, but the entrenched parties and pols (and their judges) will likely make this slow going.

This is not rooted in an aversion to the “two-party” system; although splintering may be the result, at least for a while. Coalition governing is no panacea, even if it is no worse than what we have. A bit of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” is called for. Let’s shuffle the cards and see what shakes out.

Besides the structural benefits, noted above, a re-shuffle would energize the process and allow for new leadership, new alliances, and new ideas to emerge. If we need a new political culture of engagement in this country, tossing out the Ds and the Rs (or, at least, not preventing their implosion) would be a good start.


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A Path Forward

11/6/2020

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Some years back, when I was managing the merger and integration of businesses, I was told “The hard stuff is easy and the soft stuff is hard.” I have found it to be true in many circumstances. Combining payroll systems or marketing logos or divisional structures can be a real pain, but they pale in comparison to corporate culture. Every group of people has language, attitudes, and an ethos by which they relate to each other and operate whatever activities they have as a group. Sociologists call these “institutions” (not to be confused with formal organizations) and they usually take a lot of time to consciously change.

The same points apply to societies in general and to US democracy in particular. As we look to next year, we see our culture has been severely battered over the past few decades and we need to figure out what to do. As noted above, the “hard” stuff is (relatively) easy. Legislative agendas are afloat, including social justice, health, environment, and dozens of other areas. Although the likely blockage of Mitch McConnell will render significant steps (and anything that AOC would prefer) nugatory. Relations with Europe and China will be repaired, capable people will be appointed to senior positions and some progress will be made.

More challenging is the “soft” stuff. Political polarization, exacerbated by mercenary mass media, makes it seem that, as a society, we can’t talk to each other. Norms of courtesy and comity have been discarded (not least in relationships within our governmental bodies). This has been largely the work of the soon-to-be-erstwhile Administration and its craven allies. However, those on the ‘left’ are hardly innocent. Hillary Clinton’s infamous reference to Trump supporters as “deplorables” was insulting, over-generalizing, and destructive. The schadenfreude over anti-maskers getting infected is of the same ilk. Judgmentalism is rife on both sides.

The question is not whether I like everybody in this country (much less agree with them); rather, it is how can I contribute to mending the body politic. This requires sympathy rather than disparagement, an effort to listen to and through what others are saying, and listening to more than MSNBC/Fox News. Pretty much everyone I know (even in that bizarre bubble of culture known as the Bay Area) is complicated and contradictory. Underneath the vast majority of our fellow citizens there are some common values; unfortunately, they (we) have slipped into simplistic, Manichean thinking (both as to ourselves and each other).

More fundamentally, I have to decide that while it would be easier and nicer to imagine a country where everyone (more-or-less) agreed with me, that is not the case. Unless I am prepared to jump ship, I am part of this place and I will be better off with a community that accommodates and compromises than one which embraces some sort of ideological fantasy. There is no history of social revolution in this country (1776-83 replaced one set of white male elites with another); nor, as evidenced by the down-ticket strength of the GOP, (media hype over the “Proud Boys” notwithstanding) is one foreseeable (much less likely).

It means discarding easy (red/blue) labels and categories. It means making some hard choices on tough issues: social justice, abortion rights, and gun rights, among others, that aren’t fully aligned with my views. It means making an effort to find real concerns underneath the rhetoric and respecting them. It does not mean throwing away what I believe, but dealing with the reality of a complex and diverse population.

It also means working to engage others in conversation and encouraging everyone to participate in our shared endeavor. Civics lessons shouldn’t be limited to those under 22. This needs to be a conscious choice—setting a new habit—to value our political community as much as our political policy preferences. After all, what are our choices:?
  • God smites all evil people, leaving just those who are right-thinking (i.e., us).
  • We assume that it’s a generational thing, and that in twenty-or-so years, enough of “them” die off to foster necessary change.
  • A modest-sized progressive majority makes the desired changes and “they” roll over and accept it.
  • We battle it out indefinitely and have a miserable and dysfunctional body politic for a while.

It would be nice to have leaders who would lead us in a constructive direction. The corrupt political class (on both sides) is caught up in power dreams and few have stepped beyond this. On the other hand, it’s not (just) their fault. As Joseph de Maistre said (1811): “Every country has the government it deserves.”

Real leadership is cultural, moral and inclusive; in attitudes, not budgets.

I’m sure there are many who would say I’m being naïve, a Pollyanna, or that I have ‘sold out.’ I am eager to hear alternative ‘real-world’ solutions to our predicament.




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Agendas

10/31/2020

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Agendas

Well, after a grueling and seemingly interminable election cycle, next week we can all take a few days off before starting in on the 2024 campaign.

In the meantime, it would be good to consider how to handle the next four years. While most of you (dear readers) hope and expect the Dems to come out ahead, we were all stunned with the upset of Hillary in 2016; so let’s not blithely assume all will go well.

Of course, it may not be exactly next week that we know what we’ve got; election contests have been known to go into December (2000) or January (1800); but soon enough, in any case; and, hopefully, peacefully.

If Biden wins, but (thanks to Cal Cunningham’s libido or other factors), Mitch is still running the Senate, then we can look forward to four years of hardly any substantive legislation. At least much of the bleeding, in terms of foreign policy and administrative actions, can be stanched. But, that’s about it substantively. Trump’s greatest shortcoming has been the lack of moral leadership and that is something that Biden will change.

If Trump wins, all bets are off. Some folks will move to Canada/Costa Rica, but most of us will have little choice but (relatively comfortable) unhappiness and anxiety. Suicide rates among certain metropolitan elites will go up. Hands will be wrung and great damage to the country and world will result. Jobs, hope, and lives will be lost. No one will be surprised at assassination attempts and more domestic unrest. Barr, DeVos, and Trump unleashed. Many terrible thoughts run through my mind, but the question is: After hands are all wrung out, what is to be done?

   1. Hunker down.
   2. Create a bubble of tolerable friends and family
   3. Take care of those who are most at risk.
   4. Resolve to come out the other side in 2024, just as we have come out into
       2020 (not pretty, but ….)
   5. Find hope and gratitude (Jesus and Buddha are both available).


If the Dems take over (and there are no crises/disasters in the interregnum), don’t expect miracles. The Senate filibuster will have to be dismantled (this is a risk since the pendulum WILL swing), but getting a majority for action will not be simple. Moral leadership in the pandemic will be welcome, but huge challenges—scientific, logistical, and economic— lie in the way of moving to the ‘new normal.’ After all, the Dems are not in great/coherent shape themselves, they only seem that way by comparison.

Beyond the policy front, it is important to remember that in terms of the composition and views of “America” much has not changed. Trump’s incompetence and venality have been exposed for a while. If COVID had not shown up nine months ago, with all its personal and economic carnage, it’s quite likely we would have four more years. Similarly, if Trump had shown a modicum of political nous and really focused on re-election rather than ranting, he would have had quite a good shot. As it is, the degree to which you are worried that he might still be re-elected indicates how little is different. Was Obama a fluke? Was Trump? We have no idea how my historian successors will characterize early 21C America.  Even if some Trumpians fade into the woodwork, we have to recognize the fact (not fake news here) that a lot of the country preferred his dissimulation and bluster. As a nation we have to try to understand their anger/fears and see if at least some of the root causes can be addressed.

At a policy level, it would be great if Joe and Nancy and Chuck et al. came together and knocked out a high-level legislative agenda in the first 100 days. Besides repairs, there is much to be done and much is mapped out: environment, health care, taxes, voting rights, infrastructure, economic stimulus and jobs. The gating factor is not substance: solid policy choices have been mapped out; it is (as ever) political will. Speed and momentum are more important than details in changing the national energy and attitudes. Lay down some markers, fill in the gaps and details later in the year and into 2022. Surprise everyone with a touch of compromise in order to get things done; quickly, if imperfectly. It is likely too much to expect the more aggressive wing of the party to rejoice with incremental (if meaningful) progress on all these fronts; but we can at least hope that they don’t get too righteous. This election is a referendum on Trump, not a mandate for drastic change.

At a personal level, what is to be done? My list above still pretty much applies:

   1. Hunker down.
   2. Create a bubble of tolerable friends and family
   3. Take care of those who are most at risk.
   4. Resolve to come out the other side in 2024, just as we have come out into
       2020 (not pretty, but ….)
   5. Find hope and gratitude (Jesus and Buddha are both available).

May the Force be with us….


 
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The Comforts of History

10/23/2020

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As both a historian and a (recovering) lawyer, I have often wondered whether people make too much of history and precedent.

On the legal side, I suppose, the ritual invocation of precedent (a key component of our English-originated common law system) is designed to assure that judges move the law only incrementally so that social change will be kept within tolerable bounds (for both political and psychological reasons).

Sportscasters, on the other hand, reciting statistics such as “Crawdad State has won seven of the last eleven meetings with the University of Clamato” are just using the past as filler. It’s not like the performance of any player from ten years ago or more has any effect on today’s contest. These commentators (from many branches of journalism) conflate a label with a thing. The Crawdad Pincers may still wear all red uniforms, but there is no thing there; just a tradition, a label, a memory—each a social construct.

Still, such constructs can be powerful; as alumni who receive pleas for donations can attest. Traditions do make us feel warm-and-cozy. They reinforce a sense of belonging and identity. They are hardly confined to athletics. We Americans used to say (until the 1970s) that we had “never lost a war.” Pride in victory, pride in continuity, pride in ‘us-ness.’ Alas, past results are no guarantee of future performance.

Historians have studied how we construct traditions; which may or may not have anything to do with the past. Leaders of national states or those that aspire to have done so to great effect over the past 150 or so years. Scottish tartans and Bastille Day were both invented in the late 19C. Confederate war memorials were not constructed until the 20C.

Why is it that we so value the (apparent) venerability of what we do and what we believe? I suspect it has something to do with the values expressed with regard to the common law: continuity and community. More, we seem to be hungry for self-validation by reference to the past. Finally, its usually easier to avoid being blamed if I can cite hoary precedent.

All of these are incentives to construct (at both the personal and societal levels) a useful past and put at risk our ability to construct an accurate one. If, as William Cronan has said, “history is the stories we choose to tell about the past;” then we need to be circumspect about accuracy (not so much falsification as artful selection). A reading of history rooted in continuity, community, self-validation, and security is conducive to comfort.

Perhaps our veneration of the past is a left-over from when tribal elders were consulted before group action. Chains of memory were the only way to access wider experience. In the era of modern historical practice (the last 200+ years), this may no longer make sense. We have, perhaps, too much history; too rich a vein of human experience is accessible to mine, and so we have examples, and counter-examples, and counter-counter…etc. This is one of the great and fun things about delving into history, but it doesn’t make it easier to extract lessons for the present.

Nor if such histories are then used as the basis for future action. The ability to cite precedent for one’s actions is likely to be solipsistic and therefore problematic. There are likely many examples of this in terms of personal behavior, but I will touch on two at a more macro level: boundaries and race.

Countries rise and fall, but like the Crawdad Pincers they are not things. Does the fact that England once ruled India mean that if it were to regain global hegemony, it should claim: “this used to be British territory, so we have a right to it now”? That seems to be the offered rationale of much of China’s bullying the other countries bordering the South China Sea, war between Iran and Iraq, or Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, or Russia and Ukraine. A simpler response to the China’s (et al.) claim is: “so what?” Why does past status (especially centuries-old) create entitlement to the future? At what point does it not matter anymore? In Anglo-American law, we have concepts such as adverse possession (which times-out old claims to land) and statutes of limitation (which puts all manner of old wrongs to bed on the ground that we have all moved on and it would be too much trouble to figure out the exact events of the past, much less their relative equities and those of all who came since).

Indeed, to apply a variant of the Chinese claim, everything in the world should belong to Kenya (or Tanzania or wherever the first humans lived), since they (or their descendants) were “there first.”

Another variant of the problem arises with claims to racial and ethnic identity. We are all Africans. For some of us, our ancestors left earlier or later and stayed (for some generations) in South Asia, East Asia, Beringia, North America, before making their way to South America (similarly for other migration patterns). Why is it that the three hundred (or thousand) years of lineage in Poland or Ghana or Vietnam should be definitive?

Much of the answer has to do with the traditions and cultural/community identification noted earlier. But these are modern choices—constructs made (in many cases) in the last two hundred years—and all this is to leave out the issues of genetic mixing which will (when fully understood) make a hash of everyone’s claims of cultural purity/identity. Its great to celebrate cultural traditions (Ok, maybe a little less schmaltz in the gravy and don’t get me started on Riverdance), as long as we don’t take them too seriously.

This is not to say we shouldn’t do old history, but merely that we need to be mindful of its uses, abuses, and the limits of what it can tell us.

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Viruses, Damn Viruses, and Statistics

10/17/2020

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The pandemic has revealed real problems with many institutions—American and globally. Public discourse, hobbled by delusional leadership and lame/mainstream media enamored of simplistic rationales,  has struggled with figuring out where we are. It’s likely to take several years to get the story straight. Meanwhile,  misapprehensions of the nature of science, historical perspective, and statistical analyses have undercut public understanding and sensible public policy.

Let’s start with science.

There is no such thing. By which I mean that there is no “thing”, no organization, no clear voice, and no offer of definitive answers. There are thousands of smart people around the world, most of whom in relevant fields have been busting their collective butts to figure out the nature of the beast that besets us and how to deal with it. However, it is not in the nature of science to “know” much of anything. There are working hypotheses with varying degrees of evidence behind them. Even questions which have been studied for centuries sometimes get turned on their heads in light of new information and ideas. Just ask Newton and Aristotle.

To expect, in the middle of the largest real-time experiment in global history, with the immense pressure of daily death counts and crashing economics, that initial guesses (masks, isolation, gloves, ventilators, risks by age cohort) would be even mostly correct reflects more our collective desperation than an appreciation of what scientists have to offer (most of whom have been careful to speak precisely about the meaning of their ideas).  Trumpian critiques (if that is not too exalted a characterization) also reflect more of their speakers’ inability to cope with a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment than a concern with the effects of early ideas that turned out to be incorrect, incomplete, or in need of revision.

Since Francis Bacon wrote, four hundred years ago, the nature of science has been to accept (revel in) this uncertainty and revise ideas in light of experiment and experience. Indeed, attacks on “science” are rooted in a coded resentment of scientists’ epistemological flexibility and ability to tolerate the limits of what we (as a species) know of our world.

Second is history. Global political, environmental, and medical crises have combined to make it feel like the end of the world is at hand. And, while I am moderately concerned about the first, and quite pessimistic about the second, the coronavirus is not the pandemic that will end humanity: not even close. This is NOT to downplay in any way the loss of millions of people around the world; their suffering and that of their families, the economic hardships that will continue to bear down on billions of the global poor, or the exhaustion of thousands of devoted care-givers.

There are many ways in which history can give us a little dose of perspective on our current situation (even with due allowance for past and current statistical deficiencies). The “Spanish” Flu of a century ago has been commonly cited as a precedent for our situation. However, that pandemic killed about 3% of the global population (the equivalent of 200-250 million people today). The Coronavirus toll looks to be in the neighborhood of 1% of that (i.e. .03% of global population), although the impact in South Asia and Africa is still at very early levels. The smallpox which Europeans brought to the Americas in the 15C/16C killed about 90% of natives over a century. Even the famous “Black Death” of the 14C wiped out about 30% of Europeans. So, even if a vaccination shows up in reasonably soon and global inoculation is completed in four years, we are facing a serious, but not species-threatening, situation.

Similarly, from an economic point of view, global GDP looks like it will take a hit of less than 10%. This would push us back to the levels of 4-5 years ago. If the effects were confined to not being able to see the live-action version of Mulan in theaters or missing the 2020 Pantone color of the year in clothing and houseware stores; these would seem like “acceptable losses.” (btw, it’s “Classic Blue”). The impact on hundreds of millions individual workers and their families (as compared with consumers and corporations) is devastating; but the impediments to relief are entirely political at both the national and global levels. The problem, as Shakespeare said, “lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” The pandemic has presented us with a challenge and we haven’t stepped up.

Finally, statistics. Much could be said here about the numbers thrown at us daily in the media; the marking of mortality milestones: 200,000 Americans dead, 1 million humans dead. Tote boards in the corner of TV news shows. When will California hit 1 million cases? When will India surpass the US as the home of the most infections? Maps with buttons sized to the number of cases or dead in a particular jurisdiction (as if county or state lines mattered).

Little of this is helpful in understanding the actual scope and impact of the pandemic. The virus doesn’t pay attention to borders and population density is crucial to seeing what matters to people on the ground. Local angles are much more insightful than aggregates. Here are a few interesting points that show that the mass media’s reliance on big numbers/raw data is deceptive:
* There are more cases in Guatemala (pop: 15M) than China (1.4B).
* Eight out of ten of the hardest hit U.S. states (cases per capita) are in the South.
* California has 10% fewer cases per capita than the US average, even though it has more cases than any other state (although Texas and Florida are catching up!).

And these are just the reported numbers. When all is said and done, historians of the pandemic will likely see that the death tolls are twice as big as the numbers being reported and that case counts could be off by a factor of 20. So, while I hasten to add that correcting for these problems tempers, but does not undercut my point about historical perspective; it seems likely that the public consciousness of the size of the problem is pretty weak.

If it were merely a matter of getting the record straight, we could let historians sort it out over the next 5-25 years. But the misunderstandings lead to knee-jerk public policy and contribute to the loss of trust in the “system.” More people will get sick and die and more workers will lose jobs as a result.

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    Condemned to Repeat It --
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    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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