Me (Part Two)

Generally on this blog I look at the world the way a gambler looks at football: I want to predict an outcome, not simply root for one team or the other. Of course the difference between foreign policy and sports is that sports actually has outcomes where foreign policy just keeps going and going and going... In my previous posts I'm sure I have dribbled out a fair amount of rooting interest--I certainly have my prejudices--but mostly I'm just trying to wrap my head around what I encounter when I read about the world. What I want to do here is actually come to grips with what I hope happens or what I think the best or highest outcome for the world as whole.

I don't see the globe as a fractious place where various peoples of the world battle for dominance. Quite the opposite. I see the world as more connected than ever before, where transportation and communication technologies are quickly shrinking the differences between us. I see a rising population of people contributing to a global rather than regional economy (and getting rewarded for it), I see the rules and norms of the world subtly blending into one unified vision of Humanity. I envision a world where everyone is...let me say...on the same page. That needn't be USA's vision of the world, but a larger structure where everyone's interests flatten, come together and prosper in concert rather than in opposition. We're not there yet--might not be for hundreds of years--but I think that's where we're going and each day is a heavy footfall in that direction.

Lovely vision, right? Harmony for everyone, Humanity all in unison as no time since the Garden of Eden (or...well...even earlier than that, huh?). Yeah, that's the long run vision, the Aristotelian Golden Mean writ large, where everyone works and plays in relative equanimity. But that's an abstract. Aristotle tells you that you should average everything out but that doesn't tell you whether your next choice will be good or bad. That doesn't tell you when to say 'yes' or  'no', doesn't protect you from moment to moment defeats, rebukes or disappointments.

Pessismism about the world arises out of 1) the endemic nature of the media, which can only focus on what goes wrong in the world rather than what goes right; and 2) the political world, which sees itself as problem-solving and thus can only see the problems of the world. I am convinced that the good things are vastly more pervasive than the bad things but go unnoticed because our empathy is toward suffering rather than happiness and our attention is to improving rather than maintaining. I am convinced there are more happy people than sad and more happy people now than at any other time in history. But the sad people (and there are more of those, too) get more attention because as problem solvers we focus on the out of the odinary rather than the ordinary.

Social media is a platfrom capable of finding like-minded individuals who in previous times never would've found each other. This is a boon for gamers, gawky teenagers, homosexuals, cat owners, musicians, porn enthusiasts, art lovers, lovely singles, collectors and craftsmen of all sorts, etc., but also for political radicals, the vengeful, the discontented, the aggrieved, the suicidal, the homocidal and (especially!) the passive aggressive. The trick is: those are all the same people drifting back and forth betwen categories. At any rate, these social media platforms bring us in contact with people in a way apart from traditional social and political milieus. We can connect on something more than our immediate surroundings. 

The closer we become suddenly the more we care about the World (yes, capital "W" World). Social media is a full time presence in our lives now (*) and makes us care about People, Ideas, Cultures, etc., in ways Humans never really have before, or have only on the Family level. We are now having those meaningful and productive interactions on the Species level and that's a whole new ballgame historically speaking. Most of the current animosities we see today are ancient but the way we deal with them is entirely new to us as thinking creatures. It also makes the pain more immediate. The fear, the anger, the sadness, the regret, the disappointment all over the world is now front and center all day long.

Imagine the Thirty Years' War. It lasted (as you might've guessed) 30 years and considering the build up to it was probably another 30 years, it was pretty much an ever present reality to an entire generation (or two or three) of Humans. In that time and that place, there was a batch of people that lived with this constant threatening presence called the Thirty Years War. But its worth noting that they fought wars different in those days: they didn't fight when the weather was bad, they generally tried not to interupt planting or husbandry seasons, they didn't fight in the winter, etc. They mostly just got together every now and then, went out into a field and kicked the shit out of each other til one side quit fighting. Then maybe they'd come back the next day and do it again (as long as it wasn't raining). So the "war" as a political issue was every single day of their lives but "war" as a battlefield death match was an occasional feature, probably predictable as clockwork and much more formalized and ritualized than we would recognize today. (**) There was an overal feeling of war and there was an immediate feeling of war that were entirely separte and distinct feelings.

As we gradually advance to the higher state of evolution that we are just now embarking on, each day will come with more calamity than progress. Some calamities will seem shocking and new, some calamities will be as old as time. Some calamities will be minor and local, some will be massive and indelable upon human development. Some will last entire lifetimes, others will be over in the blink of an eye. Some will ultimately make the world a better place, some will fester far into the future.

At this point the most far-reaching shocks to the system will be financial more than military. And the great power that strong countries will exert on weak countries will be economic rather than military. China is attempting to clear out and reconfigure Central Asia and there will be much conflict. But most of that conflict will be in stock markets, currencies and local economies rather than raining fire from the sky. (There will be some of that, as well) India and Japan are going to be bribing as many nations as they can find to choose Japanese or Indian Coke over Chinese Pepsi, but they won't be doing it with tank divisions or fighter bombers. They'll be co-opting nations through bond purchases and trade packages and infrastructure development (and kickbacks and slush funds and propaganda campaigns...these Asian political systems are as advanced as the West!).

So while I see things getting better over time, in the short run there will be no shortage of accidents, wars, atrocities, skirmishes, embarassments, and setbacks. Things may even appear to get worse. In the past, imperial armies raged through territories prized for their food production or simply because of an inherent military advantage; but now we have well-delineated nations and a system of int'l law that seeks to protect the agreed-upon borders. This hasn't stopped war nor are the lines drawn in a manner that pleases all people, but it is the beginning of a world order where war is less likely and, more importantly, less advantageous. Wars are harder and less profitable than ever before because of a system of alliances that punish even the victors of battle. But individually we are more free from our national or tribal alliances than ever before. Like the 30 Years War, the abstract reality of conflict  will always be there but the day-to-day reality free from great power war will expand to more and more people.

In all of this must come a consideration of simple population. As the numbers of humans rises, there are more people living good lives and more people living bad lives simultaneously. There are more people with more access to wealth and privliege and more people with less access to wealth and privelege. There are more people pleased with the order of things and more people displeased with the order of things. The borders are drawn but the borders are still brand new and not everyone will agree on the current configuration. The riches are growing but they will not be evenly distributed--they never were in the past and they aren't likely to be in the future. (***) And regardless there will always be sad stories, there will always be people that don't have enough, children that don't make it to adolescence, disasters that upend entire cities even as the threadcounts of sheets continues to soar.

Does the slow sleazy spread of int'l finance (what the kids would call "capitalism") and crony Democracy (ehh, I'm using the term loosely, really I just mean some sense of nationalist popular representation regardless of its electoral composition), across the globe worry you? Ehh, it ain't the greatest but it has a soothing effect on the overall mood of the world. The interlocking nature soothes more than it ruffles--though the ruffles are felt most immediately.

Beware: the danger of this world is that the "haves" never have enough, so while the "have nots" get steadily marginialized, their numbers will be perpetually regenerated, though with ever-changing but permanently mal-formed grievances. What I'm painting is a world of abstract stability but local instability, where the great powers generally agree on stuff but individual citizenry virtually never agrees on enough. This is called "World Peace" and we're getting closer to it every day. And though the wars will fade away, the battles will never cease. They will just move from bigger to smaller (re: fewer to more numerous).

The aforementioned Chinese incursion into Central Asia, for example, will (I believe) eventually lead to a more incuslive, larger, healthier, better educated population of humans in those territories in the long run; but in the short run, revolutionary elements (Uighars specifically and jihadis in general) will be fought (and I suspect defeated), leading to a new future of chaos, oppression, paranoia and full fledged war. And in the long run, even if those populations find themselves living longer, healthier, more productive lives, they will want even longer, even healthier, even more productive lives and will still burn with resentment of their foreign overlords. Do you see how it works? Wealth produces stability, which only produces a desire for more wealth. We can empathize with suffering and while suffering will never cease, the nature of suffering will become something all together frustrating and harder to sympathize because stability produces restlessness.

"Better" only creates a new threshold of want. Survival only creates a new threshold of bitterness. Education only creates a new threshold of anguish and frustration. Helping disadvantaged people reach modernity will not necessarily create more happiness. But it is where markets and governments feel compelled to go. And the people will be brought along whether they like it or not.

Wait...what happened to lovely vision? It's still there. The good and the bad are simultaneous and will remain so as the world gets better (or worse, depending on where you stand). Yes, the borders are in place, the international relationships are in place and they will create a steady move toward stability. But they have much evolution ahead.

I believe bringing more people into modern economies and cultures and educational and professional systems will bring more inventions, more innovations, more discoveries, more cure for diseases, more saving of lives, more improvement of lives (and tons and tons more art). But it will also produce huge chunks of people that do not see the benefit: some because they will not have access to it, others because they don't believe in it, others because they're simply unlucky, others because they yearn for something that is long gone (or never was to begin with). The world is moving toward longer life spans, more opportunities for personal enrichment and fulfillment; but this will only create a larger population of people who want more stuff, more respect, more recognition. The demand curve for happiness never goes down, thus can never be satisfied.

I had meant to discuss what I wanted for the world but really I just ended up talking about where I think it will go. In short, large institutions with the most financial resources and large gov'ts with the most military resources will continue to bend the world's humans into its sway. And even though most people will be better off physically and materially, they won't necessarily be any more satisfied philosophically or spiritually. And while that sounds bad....my assumption is that's what was going to happen anyway...and I think it'll will come with a lot less bloodshed that the direst of us imagine.

A quick example of what I mean: the Islamic State is a Sunni Arab creation meant to harken back to the days of the grand pan-Arab Caliphate from the 7th century (that, more or less, went out of business in the 1920s); the organization as we know it arose from Western Iraq where the Sunnis had been pushed from power and took to terror tactics and hit-and-run military techniques to amass an impressive swath of territory along the Euphrates River. The organization was militarily defeated but most of the adherents simply returned home where they will wait until called back into service (which has actually happened several times before already). They will continue to fight modernity and yearn for a by-gone time...by staying connected on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube on their iPhones in their SUVs.

So you tell me: has the West defeated the Islamic State? The Islamic State will come back again and again...but only if Western technology survives. The West has created a digital platform that will keep its enemies intact and fighting ad infinitum; but the enemy would eventually turn to dust without the West's technological innovations. (Interconnectedness is a bitch, man)

So in short: I see the world falling intro regional collectives like Europe, NAFTA, East Asia, Arab League States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mercosur States, Central America/Caribbean, with Russia, Australia and maybe India, Israel and Iran always staying relatively distinct). It is in these larger structures where technological advances are made, where economic smoothing and cultural integration gradually become a set of agreed-upon standards. Then ever larger standards can emerge built around politics and commerce rather than warfare. What I'm suggesting is a world where more people live longer, more productive, more stable lives; though unfortunately, these things, strangely enough, rarely lead to true happiness or fulfillment. The world is getting better but that in and of itself will only lead to a grander feeling of dissatisfaction.

The lot of wealthy individual is a steady diet of malaise and such is our collective fate. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.



(*) Facebook as a company is the leader at the moment. What it does is invaluable to us as a people, but Facebook itself can be replaced by next Tuesday. It may have a first mover advantage on the business end but it can flame out and die on the cultural end that could be catastropic and immediate. The technology will advance and continue on, but the culture may well reevaluate Facebook out of existence with a quickness.

(**) In the West we have more or less replaced these pitched battles with soccer and football (both actually derived from rugby). We have turned the grubby, ugly, dangerous business of battle into a money making mass entertainment. Not to everyone's tastes but I enjoy it and there are a plethora of other educational and/or time killing endeavors out there for those that don't care for sport.

(***) Basically put: wealth is not equal in society because it was not equal in nature. The Arabs got all that sand, the Eskimos got all that snow, how do we ever make them "equal"? What would that mean and what would be the purpose of it? Is there a single definition of "equal"?

Me (Part One)

I listened to a podcast the other day of two foreign policy gurus trying to rigidly define their own philosophical beliefs. Frankly I thought it was an annoying conversation and kinda pointless. But I invariably found myself trying to define my own views in reference to their beltway delineations. I'd like to get to an examination of my larger philosophical views but I feel like I have to place myself within the contemporary political milieu before I move on.

I've written this here before but just to reiterate: I grew up in a Libertarian household. I am not a Libertarian but I highlight this for two reasons: 1) I have never been a Democrat or a Republican and feel no fealty to either party and 2) I believe the gov't's purpose is to protect and promote the citizenry's access to free markets, anything else discussed is just politics, not gov't. I am not a natural born political person, indeed I eschew all that partisan stuff with a fury. The parties are not the gov't and their manipulative bickering is utterly self-serving and only tangentially beneficial to the republic (if at all). The flaw of the Republican Party is that they want unlimited economic growth but they don't want anything to ever change socially (which clearly ignores the fact that economic growth is a result of innovation (re: new stuff) which by its very nature is either a cause or effect of some change in the society); the flaw of the Democratic Party is they want unlimited personal expression but they don't see that as a function of living in a thriving economy (I'm not going to make the argument that rich people are better than poor people, but its clear that wealthier people have more opportunities of expression and by extension more self to express and by locking people into poverty you are cutting off their ability to grow as human beings; thus the point is to grow as many people wealthy as possible)). Also, I'm a foreign policy watcher as opposed to being a domestic political animal, which makes the Libertarian Party pretty much useless to me, as they seem to think that beyond America's borders is nothing but ocean. So I have no political affiliation and I find our contemporary cultural fascination with making everything political to be self-defeating (and really annoying).

The current political obsession (at least what I get from NPR each morning when my alarm goes off) is Donald Trump's relation to Russian provocateurs during the 2016 election. My gut feeling is that in an investigation of this sort Trump and his crew are the easiest part to follow, such that anything there is to find has already been found. What smoking guns could possibly be out there at this point? In the political realm, this doesn't matter. The point is to extend the investigation merely to besmirch Trump's reputation (wow, that's like throwing rotten fruit at a pile of rotten vegetables!) and I expect the investigation to last at least through the mid-term elections in November with or without new revelations. Do I have a rooting interest? No, not really. This is just what politicians do to each other nowadays. Ever since Newt Gingrich went full throttle after Bill Clinton in the 1990s, this is just par for the course (I'm sure this behavior goes further back than that, but that's my personal recollection). And if Trump is guilty (or guilty-looking enough) to get impeached, what do I care? We'll just get a new president that I probably won't pay much attention to and who will inherit a large chunk of population dedicated to thwarting him on day one regardless of his interactions with Russian trolls (indeed, if we think of Trump as illegitimate, wouldn't we think that even more of Pence?).

Do I think Donald Trump is guilty of collusion with Russian agents? No, but that doesn't really matter. I have no doubt that foreign agents are cyber-attacking the USA every single day, which is why I paid no mind to the original accusations against Hillary Clinton before the election. Dude, I assure you the Pentagon and the State Department are getting hacked right now (and will be again if you read these words again), it's just the way of things these days. I doubt Hillary Clinton did less than her duty in protecting the contents of gov't servers and I doubt Donald Trump did either--which is not to say that either or both of them are innocent of malfeasance. Cybersecurity is a full time job and I doubt Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump (or Vladimir Putin) have ever held that job or pondered very deeply on the topic. And why stop at the gov't? Amazon, Wal-Mart, Facebook and Google have much more valuable stores of info waiting to be hacked--the difference is they're actually going to do something about it whereas the gov't is always last to figure out what's going on.

I'll go ahead and say something controversial: I believe that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because Americans went to the polls and voted for him. I don't know why they did and I'm convinced that Trump was as surprised by that as I was, but I believe the Americans chose the person they wanted to be president free from Russian interference. Were Russians interfering? Oh, undoubtedly, as Russians hackers attempt to interfere with everything all the time, whether or not there's an election on. But Americans aren't swayed by Facebook, it is a place to confirm what they already believe, not a place to encounter new ideas.

Investigations have already proven that Russian agents took out numerous Facebook ads in 2016...this is proof to me that there was no Russian interference. How many Japanese Facebook ads were there in 2016? How about Ethiopian? French? Lithuanian? Or do we assume that Russia is the only country that has access to Facebook and a rooting interest in American elections? And let me get this straight: is the Mueller investigation trying to prove that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in a hotel room in Atlantic City so that Trump could help Putin....buy some Facebook ads? Hmmm, I doubt that happened and even if it did, it doesn't have anything to do with the election. Were Russian hackers meddling in American affairs? Yes, of course they were. They still are and have been for as long as computers have been available in Russia. What does that have to do with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Nothing. Why would it?

I say all that to dismiss this political witchhunt stuff pronto. I doubt that anything nefarious happened, I doubt that it would matter even if nefarious things did happen, I doubt there'd be proof available to find if anything happened anyway, and I doubt that any of it had any effect on the election. And even if I'm completely wrong and Trump is guilty, I still don't care. I am convinced this is all just political noise (*). Putting the executive under permanent investigation isn't necessarily a bad thing, though in this environment, it's just prurient entertainment rather than serious inquiry, which is sad and wasteful but not atypical in our culture. I would note at the moment that the waste is mostly on the Left: every morning that NPR babbles about Trump it's a morning they're not babbling about the environment or labor relations or healthcare or race issues, etc. NPR is abrogating their responsibility to a myriad of other issues because they'd rather feed the schadenfreude of their Hillary-voting listeners. Oh well, their loss.

Do I like Donald Trump? No. The nicest thing I can say about him is I rather enjoy having a president that I can comfortably ignore. My problem with Barack Obama for example was that I kept trying to like the guy, but what was there to like? His empty rhetoric was more gentle and soothing than most politicians...but every bit as empty. At least with Trump I am confident I have no chance of liking him or in any way needing to hear anything he says. A friend of mine recently lamented the awful spectacle kids today are growing up with, but I think its good for children to learn early on that the President of the United States is not really someone worth paying attention to. POTUS is a fungible commodity and as I've suggested in previous posts, it is a purely political position with more responsibility than power and thus mostly just a suffering of slings and arrows. I don't need the President to reassure me or entertainment me or whatever it is people get out of listening to the President talk. And with Trump around, that feeling is only magnified.

As a foreign policy guy, have I seen any changes in American policy in Trump's first year? Not really. North Korea has dominated Trump's agenda so far but I would suggest that North Korea is a can that presidents have been kicking down the road for decades and the end of the road seems to be approaching. Trump has seized on it for the purpose of selling weapons systems in Asia the way Obama seized on Putin's adventures in Ukraine to sell weapon systems in Eastern Europe. Trump is a little louder than previous presidents but the policy itself is no different. (I think as soon as the Winter Olympics is over all the rhetoric from both sides will ramp back up and I think military action is a strong possibility; I'll expand on this in a future post)

Trade policy is clearly something Trump...well, talks a lot about. Yes, he kinda talks like a Neanderthal but rhetoric is part of the process. The reportage of rhetoric is part of it too: NAFTA re-negotiations were set to take place regardless of who won the election but if Hillary had been elected I'm sure we'd hear less about it. The American public would probably just get random vague updates of 'everything's fine' whether it was fine or not; whereas Trump's style is to bluster around in public when this is the kind of thing most politicians would soft pedal in the press. Oh well, that's the man's style. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. I dunno. I can understand why people wouldn't like his style but I wouldn't say that the style in and of itself is illegitimate or guaranteed to fail. I don't know that it is. Is the actual negotiation any different? Probably not. The negotiations themselves will be handled by a variety of under-secretaries steeped in farm subsidies and tobacco regulations and emissions measurements and blah blah blah details that no single person could possibly understand. I think the public relations is unique to Trump but the actual deal itself is not likely to be wildly different from what President Hillary would've ended up with.

Both disavowed the TPP (which actually perfectly dovetailed with Trump's wariness of China though he never seemed to notice that), with Trump suggesting that multi-lateral deals are inherently bad; I don't mind more bi-lateral deals but to suggest the multi-lateral deals are a priori bad is just a dumb thing for a president to say even if he actually believes it.

Trump removed USA from the Paris Climate Accord. Meh. The Accord itself is nothing but symbolism and removing USA from the Accord is also nothing but symbolism. And when the next president puts USA back in the Accord, it'll still be nothing but symbolism. I don't see that it has any effect whatsoever on the actual environment or even on the nature of int'l environmental negotiation. In short, the Accord never meant anything to me so USA not being in it doesn't mean anything to me (and USA inevitably triumphantly returning to it will still mean nothing to me). Removing USA from the Accord was just a piece of pure rhetoric designed to be a finger in the eye of Trump's political enemies (because...well, honestly, the Accord doesn't have any other purpose). Yeah, I think it's stupid but the way politicians talk to each other has been stupid for hundreds of years (**).

Trump pledged to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, causing much uproar around the globe. But why? Do you realize that Congress just passed that same resolution last summer? Do you realize that every American president since HW Bush (and most all of the losing candidates) have made the same pledge? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is something that has been pledged numerous times in the last 20 years, why does everyone care now? Moving an embassy will take at least 10 years, no way this happens until after Trump's well out of office--which is the same as saying it won't happen. So this move that won't happen that has been promised many times before...why does everyone care now? Y'all pay much too attention to Trump. He's just a doofus with a Twitter account. But he's president, you say; yeah, the president is a doofus with a Twitter account. He's president so most everything he says is gonna be empty nonsense and he's Donald Trump, which only ups the percentage of empty nonsense to come from his mouth. So why does everyone pay attention to him? I don't get it, I find him very easy to ignore.

Trump constantly threatens to revoke (or rescind or not renew or whatever the proper language is) the Iran nuclear accord. Critics of Trump suggest this is simply a move to un-do the Obama legacy and while that is certainly part of Trump's calculus, I think these critics are underestimating the power this talk has on Iran's actions. The recent protests in Iran were largely about the Iranian population's dissatisfaction with gov't spending and foreign policy signaling a desire for a gov't more responsive to the citizenry. Now I don't think the Iranian leadership is feeling particularly threatened by this but they have been warned that the people will be pissed if the economy returns to its pre-nuclear deal state. And Trump can exert a great deal of leverage over that. Most presidents are more politic about how they use their leverage, most aren't as naked as Trump, but all presidents do what they need to do to get the best deal. All of them. So, again, while his style is kinda crass, in this case the end effect is not wildly out of line from what US presidents do all the time.

Trump's obsession with border walls, travel restrictions and trade embargoes strikes me as a serious step backward that I cannot endorse in any way. But realistically they are tools available to an executive and politically speaking they're not wildly out of left field. Bill Clinton built most of the wall we currently have with Mexico (which was initially built by Mexico, incidentally). Countries have borders, sometimes delineated by walls but virtually always accompanied by some kind of bureaucratic formality. I personally don't believe more walls are necessary, barriers work both ways and I'm never in favor of more of them. But discussing how best to protect our borders is not inherently racist or even xenophobic. It wouldn't be the top of my agenda if I were president--and I don't agree with Trump's position--but the fact that he has a position is not shocking or particularly threatening. This is all part of the debate that gov'ts have.

As for travel restrictions I'll resort to another contemporary political argument: gun advocates like to suggest that regulating guns will only leave guns in the hands of the criminals as the laws are only effective on the law-abiding. Likewise with travel restrictions: the 'bad dudes' you're trying to keep out will find some other method to get here because they're not coming here to follow the laws. The only people affected by travel restrictions are the people that will honor our customs--which is precisely the people we should welcome! This is is the one area of Trump's potential alienation of our allies that worries me: we're more likely to keep out allies than enemies with policies or even rhetoric like this.

Trade barriers are stupid 100% of the time. Trade should be unfettered forever. Even in the middle of war, I'd be inclined to trade with our enemies. Trade is a human right not a hostage of the State!

Trump wants to increase military spending, but that's certainly nothing new. I perceive this as a subtle reach toward bi-partisanship more than militaristic bluster.

Trump is critical of NATO and while I don't want to say I agree with him, I do think he has a point: Europe should be embracing their own defense as a means of establishing a common identity and to funnel their energies into their own protection rather than waiting for someone else to do it. I don't say that as an aggrieved American but as someone that wants to see a strong Europe. I think Europe is missing a big opportunity to coalesce and industrialize and become truly more independent. The EU merely takes baby steps in this direction and Trump hasn't actually instituted any kind of diminution of American influence in NATO, which I think even he would see as a mistake. I would suggest NATO is a clear example of the difference between his rhetoric (riling up voters for America first-ness) and reality (NATO gives USA ungodly amounts of control over Europe, foolish for any president to give that up).

Cyber-security, for better or worse, is something Trump is going to reshape considerably. I know nothing about that stuff but I can tell it's high priority in the bureaucracy these days. I can only hope the powers that be (and that surely does not include Trump) will make the right choices and allocate wisely. (Won't stop Russian trolls--or other foreign entities--from meddling in our elections, though. Just saying...)

Domestically, Trump was able to push through a tax cut, which his benefactors must've truly appreciated (and given the looming interest rate hikes coming in 2018, probably not a bad idea for economic stimulation). And he was more or less able to deconstruct Obama-care but I'm undecided on that topic: the larger population needs something but I don't know that Obama-care was it. I was impressed by its ability to make insurance available to more people but not impressed with its ability to make AFFORDABLE insurance available to more people. (And, oh by the way: insurance is not healthcare, it is the monied bureaucracy behind healthcare, which is not at all the same thing. The fact that we started with more bureaucracy rather than more healthcare was the red flag that Obama-care was not the savior of our republic. That said, scrapping it without a new plan in place is hardly a bold leap forward) I suspect that after November Trump may introduce some new health care plans (I recall him being a fan of dedicated savings accounts for healthcare, which isn't a bad start).

And, yeah, Trump talks talks talks in a manner that the NPR crowd really can't stand. But what do I care? 30 seconds of NPR and I'm out of bed turning off the radio like a champ. Otherwise...I dunno....is there something truly noteworthy about Trump? He's an idiot (Touche. But hardly America's first idiot). He's sexist and racist (Oh, he's a pig but I'm not sure how deeply that touches his legislative or foreign policy agenda; his weakness is blind support for the people that support him). He's bad for our children (Too much TV or social media is bad for everyone and that's where you're most likely to see Trump, so to preserve your health, turn it off). He's bad for gov't (I'd say the worst part of Trump on that level is that he was so shocked to win that he was way behind on a proper transition team which has left him with numerous unfilled posts and surrounded by folks that can't survive the political tribulations; but I can't help thinking that that's his problem, not mine). I dunno....are there other complaints?

I don't like Trump, I just don't care about him or his pointless talk (I suspect I'd think the same of President Hillary). I wanted to like President Obama but he was such a weak executive and he wasn't a foreign policy guy. I wanted to dislike George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but rather liked them both. I didn't realize how much I liked HW Bush until he was long out of office. To echo the author David Halberstam: I didn't care for President Reagan but a lot of folks that I respect liked him a lot, so I feel conflicted. I only vaguely remember Jimmy Carter (but my studies have led me to believe he was one of the worst presidents we've ever had and that the mid-1970's in general were among America's most difficult periods to govern in a variety of ways). I don't remember Ford (and he doesn't really count anyway) and Nixon was gone by the time I was of TV-watching age. Those are the presidents of my lifetime. (***)

I was hoping to avoid ever talking about Trump on this blog but I felt I had to get a belch of it out of the way before I moved on to other things. So in future posts I will return to the opening paragraph and try to define myself as myself now that I've tried to place myself within the contemporary landscape. (Whew! I look forward to never thinking about most of this domestic junk ever again!)


(*) If the goal is to get Trump impeached, I'd suggest going after these porn star liaisons that are coming out of the woodwork. If he's paying them off out of campaign funds, then lawsuits start happening and Congress gets moving. This Russia stuff is not really meant to be discovered--do you think Congressional Republicans really wanted to know what was going on in Benghazi? No, they just wanted to look like they were trying to get to the bottom of something. And Mueller is hoping every day that he finds only enough to string this along and let other events dictate whether he condemns Trump or not.

(**) Go back and study the election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams--those guys are on your money!--saying the most embarrassing, mean-spirited lies about each other just to be president. Its sad and stupid and wasteful and the way we've been doing it since the very beginning. If you think it used to be better then you've never studied history.

(***) And just for good measure, here's a quick rundown of the thwarted candidates of my lifetime: Mondale (good god, I think he would've been awful), Dukakis (such a poor candidate, so uninspiring, had so little to offer), Dole (born to be in the Senate, don't see why he even wanted the White House), Gore (don't get me started: one of my least favorite humans of all time), Kerry (didn't even looked like he wanted to be president, though I thought a shockingly competent Secretary of State), McCain (meh, he was too old, didn't really think one way or the other about him), Romney (the ultimate stuffed shirt Republican), Hillary (I've written on this blog that I thought her presidency would have been like George W. Bush's presidency with a bit more success in pragmatic bi-partisanship).

The Mueller Investigation

After a year of diligent searching, the Mueller investigation has finally handed down its first indictments: a handful of Russian hackers working for a few minor Russian corporations. The crime was identity theft and some mail fraud, etc.: Russian agents stole identities to create bank accounts which in turn were used in social media events. Their aim seems to have been thwarting Hillary Clinton and using American social networking sites to generally spew out hamfisted propaganda against her and in favor of her opponents. There is no mention of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin being anywhere near this stuff, though we may assume that this is the initial volley of indictments rather than the culimnation of the process.

Okay...so what? Russian trolls are hacking the United States in some way every single day and have been for years. I would submit China, Israel, France, UK, Iran and any number of Latin American countries have been, too. This is the way of modern technology, it has little to do with politics. If I were a hacker I wouldn't care about the gov't, I'd rather get into Amazon or the banks (who get hacked all the freakin' time!), those are the places with worthwhile information. And, as for American elections, well, as an American I've been unimpressed with them my whole lifetime, don't really see why any foreinger would care. But the scuttlebutt around this is Putin was angry with Hillary Clinton (and Goldman Sachs, another great target for hackers) over the release of the Panama Papers in 2015, which damaged Putin's money laundering schemes and which he took as a personal attack by Hillary. The 2016 election meddling seems to have begun with an 'anyone but Hillary' mindset that favored Bernie Sanders initially and Donald Trump later on.

Does this prove collusion? No. It doesn't even suggest collusion. Foreign agents wouldn't need collusion--indeed, trying to reach out to any American politicians in the middle of this would probably be a really bad idea! They wanted to rile up the voters--not the politicians--and with Facebook, etc., that is easily done because Americans are in a permanently riled up state anyway.

So does this prove that the Russian interference made a difference in the 2016 election? No. To my mind, it shows the exact opposite. Americans are primed to support the candidate they like and to hate the candidate they don't like and any piece of info that confirms their initial prejudices is likely to be seized on regardless of its source. Undecided voters (the ones that actually swing the elections in America) are probably less prone to this kind of propaganda because they're likely to give it very little of their attention.

Americans tells lies about each other all day long, why would a foreigner saying it make any difference? Foreigners with access to the internet can participate in this on-line discussion just like everyone else, doesn't strike me as illegal or out of the ordinary in any way. Now identity theft and wire fraud are a different story and that's why these folks will get prosecuted (if they ever come to America). (Incidentally, identity theft, foreign or domestic, is going to be the real scourge of the digital future and something we as a society ought to be more worried about)

The thing that gets me is that it took Mueller a year to get to some rather minor identity theft and not much else. Well, this is pretty ordinary Russian spy stuff, this undoubtedly went on all through the Cold War, nothing special about this at all. But Obama suggested in a press conference before the election that there was Russian interference and there is a kinda famous (though possibly apocryphal) story that Obama pulled Putin aside at the G-20 Summit in September 2016 and told him to stop meddling in USA's elections. What info did Obama have at the time? Surely he had more than these minor incidents that it took the Mueller investigation more than a year to come up with.

I don't have a problem with the FBI investigating foreign interference in our culture (though that's basically what the NSA was invented to do, why aren't they more prominent in this?), actually I assume there is a division of the FBI that does nothing but track down foreign hackers. And it does seem like there is credible reason to specifically aim at interference in the 2016 election, that investigation should be taking place. But we needn't talk it about 24 hours a day, cranking it up to the most important story of the day is ridiculous, unrealistic, interferes with the investigation and is precisely what our enemies were trying to accomplish.

But why haven't investigators discovered anything more than this in the year and a half that we've known about it? And is this what Obama knew back in September 2016? Come on man, there must have been more indication than this back then for the Presdeint of the United States to pull the leader of another country aside to comment on.

Initially I tried to characterize this story as the confluence of two other recent stories: the FBI's inability to prevent a school shooting in Florida despite warnings of the assailant's potential for violence and a number of Russian mercenaries killed in combat with American forces in Syria (who worked for one of the companies indicted by Mueller, by the way). Something about the FBI's lack of will to detain someone simply because of nonsensical rantings on Facebook and the Russian gov't using private citizens to perform state-related functions but this is just a collection of rabbit holes I'd rather leave uninspected. Suffice to say, citizens do things their gov'ts can't stop but may manipulate to their own ends sfter the fact.

Hackers, Russian and otherwise, are at work 24 hours a day on the internet. Potentially deadly killers are out there, too, plotting the next atrocity. The FBI can investigate but can't predict their crimes or prevent them; the Putin administration can pay agents to commit acts of Russian nationalism but won't acknowledge them or protect them or give them a state funeral in the end. And all the while Ameicans will continue to look to the collective madness of Facebook for self-definition, where soundbites, snapshorts and initial impressions lead to vitriole and suspicion rather than knowledge. 

At any rate, we're no closer to impeaching Donald Trump, protecting our digital Republic, or concluding the endless swirl of propaganda this story has unleashed. We live in a stream of digital propaganda, Mueller's mission is to step in it twice.

Syria

A quick note about Arab culture: the father and the eldest son are the leaders of the clan, everyone else is just the flock. When the king dies, the eldest son is the new undisputed leader, that's just how it goes. But in the House of Assad in Syria there was a detour: the current Assad in charge, Bashaar al-Assad, is the little brother. He wasn't meant to be king, he didn't think he would be king, no one trained him to be king. King Little Bro did not instantly command the fealty of his people. Instead the citizenry splintered and began preparing for what was next (egged on by the bellicose Americans and Israelis). Syria then steadily drifted into a mix of revolution, civil war, invasion and chaos while the Assad regime continues to linger like last night's fish dinner. The citizenry of Syria is made up of a host of small ethnic groups none of whom ever truly trusted the others. The unrest drove millions of Syrians out, mostly into Europe where they did not find sweet relief.

Is Obama to blame? Though many want to say yes (solely because they assume the President of the United States to be at fault for all things), I will say no. Syria is one of those rare pockets of the world that has never been in the American sphere of influence. Throughout the the 20th century Syria was under the sway of Russians (slash Soviets), while in the 19th century it was the British and/or the French and for centuries before that it one of the more significant Ottoman centers. Damascus is an ancient city and the road to it is, as well. But for the Americans it has been an elusive place, either a Cold War stronghold of our enemies (Russia, et al) or a prickly neighbor of our allies (Turkey and Israel). We haven't sold guns there or fought wars there or bought oil there or sold blue jeans there, we don't have allies in Syria. So when the place falls apart and everyone expects POTUS to jump into the breach, that is an unrealistic expectation. Obama looked at his options in Syria and realized he had none. There are no good guys, no one to root for, no one to support. There are only waves and waves of unhappy minorities chipping away at each other (not unlike the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s). 

What was Obama supposed to do? Militarily remove Assad? (Good lord, what a terrible idea!) Fling bombs at Assad's supporters? (What would be the point of that?) Develop networks of anti-Assad factions? (We've done some of that, but I bet it ain't easy work or of much reward)  The problem with this kind of factional warfare is that no one is ever on anyone's side, there are no allies only people you shoot at and people you don't waste your bullets on. 

What is the outcome the Americans want in Syria? Again, we've never had any influence in Syria, so why would we want (or expect) any outcome? As an American, I don't care who runs Syria. I have never cared and I don't really see why I would start now. And I certainly don't see why anyone in Syria would care what I (as an American) think. The Israelis are wary of an Iranian-backed Shia-friendly leadership and the Turks aren't too keen on that either, so that is the de facto American policy as well. 

My assumption is the Russians have long since banked on Assad's demise and have their next choice waiting in the wings. Perhaps Iran does too, maybe the French and the Brits as well. I'm sure the Israelis are familiar with the factions and may even have one or two that they'd be willing to deal with. Maybe China does, too (they've loaded troops into the Syrian maelstrom just like everyone else). I have no idea who any of their rooting interests lie with, I don't know any of the players. Everyone else has a dog in this fight but I can't for the life of me figure out who the Americans are rooting for. It seemed like we were backing the Syrian Kurds but though we've traditionally been sympathetic to the Iraqi Kurds, it appears Russia has claimed their support (and their oil fields in the east) instead.

Somewhere along the way, Daesh (you may know them as ISIL, ISIS or Islamic State), appeared and threw in their lot. The pissed off Iraqi Sunnis weren't strong enough to lope towards Baghdad so instead they were hoping to find Sunni comrades in Syria and take Damascus for themselves. For a while they become a cause celebre in the Arab world, drawing the ire of USA and Iran, Turkey and Russia equally. But personally I never saw anything that would make me think there was any military savvy in the Daesh camp. Their only weapon is fame and the ability to recruit worldwide through digital social networks. Daesh has now largely been defeated (Iraq just declared victory against them in the last few days) but realistically they weren't defeated, they just melted back into the towns and cities where they came from. Perhaps they will stay gone, perhaps they can be rejuvenated at a moment's notice. One puzzling detail about Syria these days: now that Daesh is gone, the world is generally acting like Syrian conflict has been resolved but Daesh was just one of the myriad of agitators in Syria. Were they the largest one? (No) Were they the most dangerous one? (No) Were they the most important or the most dynamic or the most impactful? (No) So why does everyone think that the Syrian Civil War is resolved?

Increasingly Iran and Saudi Arabia are flexing on each other and they're making everyone choose sides. In 2015 the President of the United States went to Iran and showered them with a fresh infusion of cash thanks to a historic 'peace' treaty; in 2017 the President of the United States went to Saudi Arabia to deliver a fresh infusion of weapons to the Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques. Heretofore the Saudis and Iranians have pumped their new toys into Yemen but that has become a frustrating fight for both and nothing but a pointless humanitarian disaster to the rest of the world community. Syria is the economic engine that keeps the war machine rolling.

Syria is the powderkeg that has unleashed all the tensions. George Bush invaded Iraq after 9/11 for the purpose (I believe) of creating a super battlefield where the Americans could duke it out with their counterparts across the Arab world...but nobody showed. The chaos that ensued after the American invasion was largely Iraqi Shia groups elbowing each other for power. Al-Qaeda influence in Iraq was driven out by the Iraqis and no one else volunteered for the fight. So where does the battle go? Iraq is not the battlefield, Syria is the battlefield. Syria has a multitude of ethnic groups, none of whom are really powerful enough to rule. Assad's Alawites were, I think, a fluke of larger tide of world history: old man Assad was in the right place at the right time and he didn't fuck it up...until he accidentally left it all to the younger son. The instability of Syria goes back to that transition of power, the place has been rickety ever since with no end in sight and a million trillion outsiders flooding in to keep it going.

While Russia leads the Syrian Constitutional Convention, an attempt to approximate the interests of all the various groups of Syria with Russia's chosen leader on top, Syria is poised to be the skirmishing ground of Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Turkey and Israel making periodic jabs. The newfound alliance of Russia, Turkey and Iran will face some rough times going forward as their interests begin to diverge. And what of the refugees? Will the UN stand up for the right to return? Does the EU get a seat at the new Syrian Constitutional Convention? Some commentators will bemoan the lack of American presence but I think President Trump is eager to be somewhere else (gotta admit: Trump does his best work when he's complaining about the places he's not allowed to go).

Obama's innovation on Syria was to pretend like he was working with Russia. Russia's interest in Syria transcends Assad, if he falls I don't think that puts them out of Syria. So while the Russians are ostensibly propping up Assad, I think they can un-prop him at a moment's notice. And when the time comes to declare a winner, the Russians will be there to act like that's what they wanted the whole time. So while coordinating with Russia against Daesh was always a pretty weird idea, I give Obama props for weaseling his way into Russia's business. And, again, Obama didn't have any good choices anyway, so much like the Sacramento Kings front office, any decision he made was likely to fail, circumstances are just not in POTUS's favor. In the end, Obama effectively removed the USA from the Middle East and left Russia holding the bag, a situation Trump seems eager to continue.

Perpetual instability used to be the goal of American policy in the Middle East. W Bush tried to alter American policy in the Arab World by aggressively choosing sides (he chose Iran, not that anyone noticed at the time). Obama shifted it back by removing the troops meant to hold the military gains made in Iraq. Trump seems eager to go back even further to a time before the American Revolution, when these Asian nations all fought each other but we only heard about it years later. We have come back around to the Samuel Huntington thesis of all cultures at war with all other cultures as globalism throws them together, though this time it seems like we've removed ourselves (and don't be surprised if China is the one who appears victorious in the end). 

I expect the resolution of all this action to be the powers that be figuring out what the Western world knows: people are worth a lot more money when you keep them living a life of improvement than when you run them into battle with each other. Living people produce a helluva lot more GDP than rotting corpses. Humanity is gradually becoming aware of this. The beauty of market forces is it produces technological innovation in service of peace rather than war. When the warriors embrace building nations rather than destroying them, when they choose to encourage life rather than ruin it, then the world will be a peaceful place, where battles are fought on PlayStations or Twitter rather than desert graveyards. Could take a while but I suspect that's where this is all leading.

Saudi Arabia

Over the past week in Saudi Arabia a dozen princes and a few various gajillionaires (and undoubtedly hundreds of lesser-known citizens) were arrested for the nebulous crime of corruption. Among the arrests was the head of the Saudi National Guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the nephew of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud. Having already ousted the head of the Saudi Land Forces, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (another nephew), this past summer, the entire military and police apparatus of the Saudi state falls to the king's son, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. There are vague reports suggesting a coup was in place and that these maneuvers staved off a revolution, but claiming victimhood while being the aggressor is just what bullies do. With the vanquishing of the last of the previous king's sons, the path to the throne of Saudi Arabia has been laid for MBS.

MBS has already issued a decree (called Vision 2030) to make Saudi Islam more kindly and gentle, allowing for more women's rights and cultural activities, and swearing off Jihadi violence, all in recognition that as fossil fuels wane (*), the Kingdom's entire economy and society will soon be in flux. The Kingdom needs to change, to modernize and MBS is set up to be the man to try. It seems to me, though, that the recent arrests will create something like a gov't in waiting, a revolutionary force ready to snap into action should MBS make any fatal mistakes. So though MBS shored up his grip on power at home, he will likely have a pack of vultures hovering over him for the foreseeable future, to say nothing of the foreign enemies he is now preparing to go out and face.

As the Saudi purges were taking place, the Yemenis assassinated another Saudi prince and launched a ballistic missile at Riyadh's airport (shot down with an American Patriot missile). MBS has been the Saudi point man on the war on Yemen and while I think the Saudis are ready to be done with it, the missile launch (of Iranian origin?) and the high profile assassination will undoubtedly keep the Saudis in Yemen for a while.

Amidst all this activity, the Saudis were able to force Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri to resign (and remain in house arrest in Riyadh...?), which is meant to undercut the Iranian-backed Hezbollah faction in Lebanon. I don't understand how this is the effect, Hariri and Hezbollah were not natural allies, but I assume the Iranians understand the game has changed in the Levant.

Likewise, earlier this year the Saudis (along with Egypt, the UAE and Kuwait) blockaded Qatar, home to al-Jazeera and the 2018 World Cup (which the Americans won't be attending...), a straight-up bully maneuver. Again, I don't understand the purpose of this, it seems to me it pushes the Qataris into the orbit of Iran (and possibly Turkey), which doesn't necessarily seem like a good thing for the Saudis.

A grand confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been brewing for decades. The Persian Shia and the Wahhabi Saud have nowhere to go but at each other. The Iranians resent the wealth and influence the Saudis have accumulated by sucking up to the West, the Saudis reject the notion that Iran is a great empire of people. The Shia-Sunni divide is less philosophical at this point than logistical: for hundreds of years Shia have allied with Shia, Sunni allied with Sunni, the grand networks of the Muslim world are long since built out and in place.

But it looked for a while that the Saudis were backing away from the fight. With the Kingdom's economic stagnation due to flat oil prices (an effect they themselves created, I think, to forestall Iran's economic growth in the face of their 2015 deal with the Obama White House) and their new touchy-feely young Crown Prince, it seemed like they were turning their attention elsewhere. But considering the massive arms shipment President Trump (following through on an arrangement with  Obama) sent to Saudi Arabia earlier this year, the Saudi detente with the Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, the deepening relationship with Israel, diplomatic interaction with Russia (including a missile defense system--to go alongside the American Patriot missiles I presume) and now this complete restructuring of the military and political forces in Riyadh, it seems like the Saudi war machine is gearing up.

Traditionally the West's natural ally in the Middle East was Iran: the Persian Shia are the most like us and the least like everyone else in that region. They relied on Western support for centuries until the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. Since then Iran has disdained the West, forcing the Europeans and Americans to cozy up to the Saudi regime instead. I've long thought this was gradually flipping back and that the key to American foreign policy was recognizing that the Iranians are the good guys and the Saudis are the bad guys.

I've long thought that the Saudis were the enemy. When one compiles a list of nations with repressive cultures and broken economies where the citizenry are devoid of economic opportunity, social mobility or self-expression, Saudi Arabia goes right near the top. The regime is richer than God and utterly without regard for their own people. The people of Saudi Arabia are basically the property of the royal family in the way the trees and the dirt of the land are. Iran, on the other hand, is a vibrant democracy (well, sorta...) where women are allowed to participate (well, sorta...), where the people are allowed to come and go freely and interact with the outside world (well, sorta...) and where the oil riches are plowed back into a civic structure rather than diverted to some royal family's coffers.

Now we've come to a new milestone in Saudi Arabia's history. Don't get me wrong: palace coups and subtle back-stabbings are long how the Saudi royal family (most all royal families really) has handled their business. But the fact that this is so public, so obvious, and such a seemingly desperate maneuver is all together new. And the fact that it coincided with an attack on their capital and an enemy assassination of one of the still favored princes is eye-opening. (Indeed, why isn't this bigger news in the USA? Because Americans don't care about the rest of the world, I suppose)

Some will see this as a weakening of the American position in the Middle East. I think getting out of the Middle East is probably a good idea. When Obama removed the bulk of the American troops from Iraq in 2010 and began working with Russia in Syria, that signaled our shift out of the greater Middle East. After 9/11, we cleared out Iran's enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq with forces that we removed from Saudi Arabia. We went from protecting the Kingdom to strengthening the Kingdom's adversaries (and why not? 9/11 was carried out by Saudi hijackers with Saudi coordination and Saudi funding, not Iranians with Iranian coordination and Iranian funding). Then we invited in Vladimir Putin to take our place as the major meddling foreign power in the region. It didn't seem like a good idea at the time but at this point I'm embracing it. And I think the sudden dissolution of the Saud Kingdom is probably a step in the right direction--indeed, it suddenly seems like the culmination of George Bush's strategy in 2001.

My pause is the effect this will have on the global economy. Since going off the gold standard in the early 1970s the underlying basis of the American economy is oil. As long as there is oil in the world pumping up out of the ground and flowing into markets around the globe, the American economy has its bedrock. This is why American presidents have been so willing to sacrifice much blood and hardware for the preservation of ocean shipping and propping up dictators. But our interest is merely that it flows, not who owns it or who uses it (**); but as long as Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia are interested in pumping up the oil and selling it around the world, that's all that needs to happen. If our enemies will keep doing that, then what interests do we have left in the Arab world? We have established the oil economy infrastructure, as long it keeps running--and our enemies are motivated to keep it running--then why do we need to be there? (Other questions, like, as the world's energy needs cycle away from oil, how does this effect the value of the US dollar?, will be answered over time, whether or not there is war in the Middle East)

So how does the coming war play out? Well, part of MBS's plan for the future of the Saudi economy means bulking up industrial production and expanding the work force to becoming a consumer class (standard feature in the West, kinda brand new in the Arab world). Undoubtedly that industrial production will be military materiel probably to be sold to Sunnis throughout the Arab world to fight the Shia. This is all together new for the Saudi regime and the Saudi people, are they prepared for this kind of massive cultural shift? We've seen in America the leveling force of social media, how will the Saudi population take to more openness? Will the Saudi economy prosper? The bulk of the industrialization will undoubtedly be military in nature, will the Saudis make war or just the materiel?

The larger area is still in flux. Lebanon is suddenly in need of a new prime minister, Syria may be on the cusp of a Putin-led Constitutional Convention, Yemen is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, Iraq is still figuring out how to react to Kurdish separatism (and is there room for the Saudis to maneuver in Kurdistan?), Egypt is still in a serious identity crisis, Qatar is still blockaded, Turkey is going through its own recent set of purges, and the recent merger of Hamas and the PLA has yet to fully take shape.

And what of the Americans? I've long believed in supporting the Iraqi Kurds (Syrian Kurds, too) but otherwise I'm cool with standing back and letting the area re-shape itself. Trump's blustery talk, I suspect, is just talk and he may well see the wisdom of not putting Americans into the coming fray. Imagine that: a major global war without American marines. And if Iran comes out the victor...well, you know Americans love a winner.


(*) The concept of "Peak Oil" I think is generally misunderstood. The phrase doesn't indicate the end of supply of oil but rather the end of demand for oil We've already discovered that renewable energies (wind, water, solar, biofuel) are increasingly efficient for more local needs (making the average consumer less dependent on the grid) while nuclear is cleaner, faster, cheaper, etc., for large scale industrial or emergency production. Ideally the recent move toward cleaner natural gas (and corn) will guide us to the necessary mix of renewable and nuclear that will obviate the need for oil or coal or timber soon.
(**) The oil market itself is the basis of the American economy. Who actually owns the oil or uses the oil is not of interest to me. It may be of interest to politicians, plutocrats and business men but that is of secondary interest to the USA itself. And they are not my concerns, so I don't give a fuck about the businessmen that won't get rich off the oil they don't control.

From Hef's America to Trump's America

Hugh Hefner, magnate of the Playboy Empire and envy of single men all over the world, passed away recently. Generally celebrity deaths bring an 'Oh! That guy died?' and then I move on about my day (RIP Tom Petty). But I grew up on Hef's work and I dug into the post-mortem reportage more than usual. I was not surprised at the handful of condemnations of Hefner's life and I guess I wasn't surprised either to find very few defenses of him; truth is he lived too long for anyone to feel the need to sing his praises. To use a football metaphor: he outkicked his coverage.

Rather than bringing me closer to women or the world of sexual fulfillment, growing up on Playboy gave me false expectations of what that world was actually going to be. You see, I read Playboy. I didn't just stalk pictures of hot naked chicks--though I certainly did plenty of that. I dug into the words, the ethos and I look back and see that they did a lot to form who I am today. I did not understand as a boy the consumerism at work, that the hot naked chicks were a piece of the on-the-go lifestyle of an aspirational young professional man, that the women were meant to go right alongside the cars, clothes, and home stereo equipment that were meant to fill a sensible man's home and heart. No, I thought the words were guides to how to get the women, which turns out not to be the case at all. I thought hot naked chicks were going to be into Thelonius Monk albums and the comedy stylings of Mort Sahl, that they would be into passionate discussions on Constitutional law and college football. Not so much. Turns out hot naked chicks don't tend to want to talk about Saul Bellow novels. Oh well. It all still very much enlightened me to my own deeper sexual desires of...well, no desire...and my appreciation of a world of art and commerce. I dig Thelonius Monk and Mort Sahl even if my female contemporaries have no interest in that at all (indeed, I still prefer Monk and Mort to my female contemporaries).

I long thought it was kinda strange that when Hefner burst onto the scene in 1954, Playboy was considered the far edge of prurience. But by the time I deeply encountered Hef's work (circa 1984), Playboy hadn't changed one iota--and was the tamest thing around! Hefner went from most dangerous to least dangerous without taking a single step.

What was the transition? And how much of that transition came from Hef himself?

Hefner was influential in the early 1960's in desegregating night clubs, bringing black and white entertainers and audiences together in the same space. In the 1970's he put a lot of money into the defense fund of Roe v. Wade and encouraged birth control options and availability. Sex and sexual desire became topics that could be discussed in polite society. He encouraged a world where people could explore their own desires rather than giving in to the social expectation of marriage and family. From 1954 to 1984 brought an immense amount of social change throughout America and though I would suggest Hefner was more the effect than the cause, he was a beacon for people (women as well as men) who wanted to have their own enjoyment of success. And the post-Playboy years had a lot to do with expanding the range of acceptable images in polite society, as seen in the shift of American cinema in the 1970s: nudity, sex, insanely graphic violence, adult situations, people of color, foreign languages, etc, all under the guise of a ratings system that quantified its family friendliness.

Let me make clear: the vast sweeping social changes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are, I believe, a result of the post-war economic forces that demanded that, say, women and African-Americans participate in the work force. The cultural changes are a result (I believe) of the larger economic forces that demanded full participation in the economy. As people get more money, they want more freedom, so divorce become an easier process, higher education become readily available to more people, entertainment and news options expanded to wider audiences. Hefner didn't do any of that by himself but he was a face of change. He was a face of individual liberty rather than the social order and culture demands individual leaders to personify the opportunities and desires of the larger populace.

Though Hefner was a little bit older, the audience he spoke to were the Baby Boomers: those Americans born between 1945-1960, who grew up in a society that was rapidly changing. That generation of folks grew up with new technologies, expanding social interactions and were raised by parents who came of age during the Great Depression. The Great Depression generation knew the value of a dollar because they learned about money when a penny still bought stuff. That generation treated their children with a preciousness hardly seen in the history of parentage. The Baby Boomers grew up insanely wealthy and with the expectation that wealth would only expand. And they were selfish and egoistic--and rewarded for that selfishness!--like no other generation of humans before. Hefner championed the individuality but how does one separate out the egoism?

He championed the protest, he championed the social changes, and he championed the economic growth too. These are all separate and distinct paradigms but the culture that came from them is a soup of the good and the bad. And Hefner made a life's work out of mixing the good and bad together. As the Baby Boomers were continually rewarded despite their petulance, they grew to believe that the petulance itself was the source of the change. Hef taught them tolerance but he also taught them indulgence.

By the time of his death Hefner lived in a world where Donald Trump (the Baby Boomerist of them all) was charged with countering the inchoate demands of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, groups that don't seem to want anything but change itself, groups that want abstract concepts rather than actual things. A world where its hard to tell the knights from the windmills. Hefner may have seen it as sign that all is well that the President of the United States has become merely a self-indulgent blogger rather than a power broker. Oh well, at least the President is an avowed heterosexual.

Aw, hell: Hef gave up on this world years ago. He cashed in on playing a parody of himself for the last few decades--and why not? He still lived a comfortable life. But make no mistake, this man invented the Playboy Jazz Festival and championed the work of John Coltrane and Miles Davis and made music criticism one of the bedrocks of his ethos; but by the time I came along in the mid-1980s, Playboy readers were electing the likes Phil Collins and Hall and Oates to the music Hall of Fame. *smh* Hef must've been crushed to realize that his readers, the folks he put so much time and energy into educating about the good life were listening to god damn Phil Collins! The move from Coltrane to Phil Collins mirrors the move from FDR to Trump. How sad Hef must've been surveying the world he wrought.

Its easy to say that the emperor has no clothes and his empire doesn't either, but I think its time to flip that cliche: the emperor has nothing but clothes. A well-tailored suit but no heart, brain or spine within it. Don't blame Hefner, he wanted everyone to be naked.

North Korea

Growing up in the Cold War 1980s, my generation was steeped in the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction: the balance between world powers was that each side could obliterate the other thus it was the continual avoidance of suicide that motivated nations. When I went to bed at night the street light outside my window created a mushroom cloud shaped shaft of light in my otherwise dark room. Yes, I was properly terrified as a boy.

As I've gotten older and read up more on the subject, full-on nuclear war (imagined to be the Americans and the Russians flinging all of their missiles at each other all at once) was never really gonna happen. When you realize how long it takes to fuel the missiles, make the reactions to satellite input, make all the necessary notifications within the gov't, get the air force and navy readied for response, and just how many bombs and missiles were in play, etc., it would've taken several hours for this all to take place and one assumes that during that time someone would've had the sense to find a non-suicide solution (thank god, Ozzy Osbourne was never in charge!). Indeed, upon reflection all-out nuclear war doesn't really even seem possible--even by accident!

However, as I get older and more well-read, the concept of Limited Nuclear War seems very possible. Perhaps even likely. It only takes one bomb properly placed and then a measured response. And it could happen in the blink of an eye by actors with nothing to gain but chaos.

So as my terror of Mutually Assured Destruction has waned, my fear of Limited Nuclear War has stepped into the anxiety void. In the days of missile defense, we hope that this threat has been neutralized if not eliminated. But even if missile defense works perfectly (which I suspect it will not) you still end up with this nightmare scenario: a nuclear missile gets launched, the missile gets shot down, crisis is averted, nobody dies...but a whole planet wakes up the next day and says, 'Wait....What the fuck just happened?' The world would be a changed place, no?

Over the last month or so that scenario creeps ever closer. North Korea has tested numerous missiles in the last 30 days and exploded their largest nuclear weapon yet. Kim Jong Un (AKA 'North Korea') has threatened to test his next long range missile by tipping it with a nuclear warhead and flinging it at Guam. Theoretically, the Americans will be able to shoot it down before it threatens lives or infrastructure....right? So far the Americans (and the Japanese) have declined to show off any of their anti-missile capabilities, perhaps we don't have any, perhaps we simply don't want to show what we can do.

Obviously the Americans make everything about themselves, so we fear an attack on Los Angeles or Honolulu. But the real target is Tokyo. Us Americans are young, we're new at all this foreign policy stuff but the rest of the world is ancient, they've been doing it for centuries. And the animosity between Japan and....well, virtually all Asian nations...cannot be minimized. In the first half of the 20th century, Japan dominated the Asian Pacific from Australia to the Bering Strait, brutally attacking the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even marched through the Korean peninsula into China (the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 is marked by some historians as the true start of WWII). Animosity toward historical Japan and the modern-day economic powerhouse (eh, sorta) is at play just as much as pissing off the Americans (though at bottom pissing off USA and pissing off Japan are pretty much the same thing).

What's the next move? President Trump has chided the South Koreans for 'appeasement', but what does that mean? What would it mean to appease the Un regime? Da fuck does that dude want?

Invading through the Korean peninsula is the traditional manner of attacking China, so creating a buffer state on the east side of the Yalu River has been China's defense against the rest of the world for decades. In the years after Mao's ascendancy North Korea was bred to be a cat's paw to scare away potential interlopers. Many say China has the power to shut North Korea down but I would suggest that's not as easy as it looks at this point. I suspect the Chinese are truly irritated by Kim at this point but don't really know how to pull them back.

China's failing here is ignoring the Kim regime. Clearly they have let the danger rise, perhaps even encouraged it. But to what end? China wants the buffer, they don't really want much more. China likes the Korean situation just the way it is: a rubber stopper firmly placed in China's one weakness. The fact that the North Koreans are frustrated in their aims to control the entire Korean peninsula is actually probably a delight to the Chinese: the rubber stopper itself has another rubber stopper on the opposite side to keep it firmly in place. The Americans/Japanese/South Koreans frustrated on one side, the North Koreans frustrated on the other, the Chinese happy that its enemies are played off against each other. The Chinese mistake is they have forgotten about evolution: by letting the North Korean nuclear program steadily advance, the Chinese are stuck with a well-armed madman right next door. How is that a good thing? (*)

There's a detail in the reportage on North Korea that I think has been not been well considered: if the Kim regime can hit Tokyo with a nuclear tipped missile then it can hit Beijing with a nuclear tipped missile. The danger for China is not that North Korea sucks them into a war they don't really want to fight, it is that they are held hostage by their own attack dog. They bred the dog to attack the west but the dog can just as easily turn on its master. And rather than ransom USA, the 20th century superpower, why not ransom China, the 21st century super power (and the center of the universe in much of Asian mysticism)? China has way more power over Kim Jong Un than USA does, wouldn't the weaponry be better pointed West than East? To my mind, this is the one opening USA and its allies have. I kinda thought that Donald Trump was (strangely enough) the one guy that might have success dealing with North Korea.

But the Trump presidency has led only back to the aforementioned scenario of shooting down the threatening missile. It appears it is on its way...

China would have to recognize that Kim has gone too far. China has no interest in war so close to its border, no interest in the North Korean refugees that would flood in, no interest in completely losing the Korean peninsula to infidels. China likes the status quo of a divided Korean peninsula (much like USA likes the status quo of independent Taiwan). But if this Guam business goes down, USA would have to step up and flatten the Kim regime. China should be as eager to avoid all of this as much USA. And yet Xi Jinping seems more interested in purging his military than getting it ready for Americans on the doorstep.

So where is all this coming from? Well, Kim Jong Un has been bred to be bellicose since birth and he's got the keys of the kingdom (much earlier than anyone anticipated), this is what he was built to do by father and grandfather. But China should be able to mitigate that, if forces within North Korea itself could not.

I think its Vladimir Putin. I think Putin is in pure chaos mode: Trump in the White House, Islamic Jihad at a fever pitch, Saudi and Iran are talking about banging, India and China are talking about banging, the Israelis are itching for a fight and the internet is bringing it all together. North Korea is the perfect cherry on top for the forces of weirdness. I think Putin has a bug in Kim's ear, I think he's telling the kid to keep firing because the Japanese will wet themselves, the Americans will bluster around like idiots and the Chinese won't do anything to stop it.

Yeah, all this stuff is real. But don't mistake North Korea for the main course, its just the hordoerve (god, why invent such a hard word to spell?). War with North Korea would just be the first step of much longer war. From the Sinai to the Korean Peninsula, Asia is shedding its skin. The prospects of a very big, civilization-size war is looming. There's no mutually assured anything at the moment. If USA is lucky we'll be able to sit this one out (but how likely is that?).


(*) Another ill-considered detail in all of this is South Korea's position vis-a-vis nuclear powered North Korea. The long range goal of the South Koreans is to reunite the Korean peninsula under their rule. Perhaps they might like having nuclear weapons. Perhaps they like the idea of absorbing the North's nuclear arsenal and being able to threaten China and Japan. So have the South Koreans ever really tried to stop the ongoing weapons development of the North? Or the Americans? It doesn't look like it to me.