People Powerless

Jacob Weisberg tilts at the same windmills that Rick Shenkman tackled with a weekend article on Slate, and takes the same licks for being "a liberal elite." It's hard to be a serious watcher of American politics, and not come to the conclusion that one of the major problems with America is the Americans, and it seems that more people are willing to be critical of the American public as one of the primary, if unintentional architects of its own problems.

But until the American public itself ends its love affair with the idea that there's always a painless (at least for them) solution to any problem, we're going to continue to be susceptible to people, like Scott Brown, who assert that one can seriously rein in, if not eliminate, with government deficits "simply by cutting government waste." If you're even a casual follow of personal finance advice, you'll likely have heard (over and over) the idea that you can't very well tackle the inefficiencies in your household budget until you sit down and study it, and know where each and every expenditure is going. Let's face it, the Federal budget for the next twenty minutes, let alone the rest of the fiscal year, is likely complicated enough that you'd need an advanced degree in finance to even look at it without being driven completely insane. The idea that anyone, running as an "outsider" could know enough about it to be able to unequivocally state how to fix it seems silly on its face. (Besides, even if the problem were that simple, given the sheer amount of dollars that it entails, could any crusading member of Congress really tackle the problem on their own? Either a good chunk of Congress is in on the scheme and would vigorously oppose changes, or the waste would have to be VERY well hidden, and likely inextricably linked to necessary projects and services. The idea that ending it would be painless to the public is nonsensical.)

And so that leaves the question - how do you convince someone that they're part of the problem without shaking their understanding of themselves? The terms ignorant, unreasonable and inconsistent are considered insults, and not trivial ones, either. And that, I think is what drives a brand of populism that is able to, for all intents and purposes, both deny and take shelter in an overall lack of understanding How Things Work. While on the one hand, our problems are caused by a hateful elite that wishes to enrich itself at the expense of the noble masses, the realization that this elite exists, and that their plans are easily defeated with a simple donation to to vote for the correct crusading candidate makes one part of a heroic elite that understands what's really happening - a cut above the "sheeple" that buy into the misinformation that change means sacrifice or loss.

I don't have the answer to that question. I barely have a handle on knowing what I don't know. I think it will take a smarter man than I to infuse the nation with a new progressivism that reminds us that looking for villains isn't as productive as everyone pulling together.

The Panic Trap

Daniel Engber, over at Slate, has posted an interesting article that attempts to tackle the seeming hysteria over infant abductions, and explain how it's misguided, or even dangerous.

"Here's some perspective: Your baby's odds of getting snatched are considerably smaller—five times smaller, in fact—than her odds of being struck and killed by a lightning bolt."
Invasion of the Baby-Snatchers

Great. Now let's all sit back and watch as the nation's parents start hustling their children inside at the merest hint of rain.

While I appreciate articles like this, I really wonder what the point is. Does it really matter if the chance of a baby being abducted from a hospital is one in ten or one in ten million? Once the idea that this is a threat enters the public consciousness, nobody wants to be "that person" - the one who lost a baby - especially to something that a different choice of hospitals may have prevented. Parental investment in children these days is off the charts, as near as I can tell, and many parents are loath to do anything that smacks of risk. It's impossible to live in a society where "even one is too many" and not have people pull out all the stops over remarkably rare circumstances. But coupled with that is a level of judging that seems to make the stakes even higher than they already are. One of the things that I've noticed in the wired world is how quick people are to apply the label of "bad parent" to anyone whose children have less than stellar outcomes. Kid picked up by the cops for kyping a pack of bubble gum? Bad parent. Daughter knocked up at 15? Bad parent. Son threw a rock through a window? Bad parent. Baby injured in the home? Bad parent. Child snatched by a stranger? Bad parent. As invested as people are in their children, they seem just as invested, if not more so, in avoiding the label of "bad parent," and the social delegitimization that goes along with it.

In the face of this, the overwhelming majority of the article that Mr. Engber devoted to carefully explaining to us just how rare infant abductions are seems like a complete waste of otherwise useful bandwidth. I count about five paragraphs of "news you can use," starting with "So if baby-snatching was never much of a problem to begin with, why are health care administrators across the country so focused on its prevention?" Here we get into the economics of health care and health marketing. This is the good stuff. We all understand that the whole point behind sales and marketing is to manipulate us - and it's always worthwhile to see a new perspective on how and why.

But here it's wrapped in a quixotic call for reason and clear-headedness that, let's face it, is going to go unheeded. (It didn't take long for the "for good parents, no price is too high" crowd to start showing up in the comments.) One of the salient points of the No Brakes! articles (also in Slate) is that you can't simply reason someone out of a deeply-felt emotional reaction - especially when their peers are involved - teens or adults. So next time, let's get the lowdown on the art and science of luring families into being lifelong health-care consumers by laying bait for fretting mothers. Surely, there's more than five paragraphs worth of material that can be wrung out of that.

No Bleat For Me

I understand that being called "a wolf in sheep's clothing" is intended as an insult. It implies that you're a dangerous predator, using subterfuge to avoid alarming your harmless and innocent prey, who are undeserving of being snacked upon. But I think that I'd rather be thought of as a deceitful wolf, than a sheep, thank you very much.

Can You Hear Me?

Researchers in the United Kingdom and Belgium have hit upon a way to use Magnetic Resonance Imaging to find out if someone who appears to be in a permanent vegetative state is conscious and aware of what's going on around them. The idea seems remarkably simple (even if the technology to implement it is not). Because thinking about different things lights up different parts of your brain, the researchers ask yes or no questions, after instructing the patient to think about one thing for yes, and another for no. Then they use the MRI to "read" the answers. Once they get this locked down, it could really help doctors with determining who's a vegetable, and who's not, more accurately than they can now.

As with all medical advances, this one has it's ethical concerns, but this is one that I hadn't really thought about:

[...F]or example - it is lawful to allow patients in a permanent vegetative state to die by withdrawing all treatment, but if a patient showed they could respond it would not be, even if they made it clear that was what they wanted.

Which raises an interesting question - could you, via a living will, opt out of the test if it becomes widely used? I suspect that I'd find it much worse to be locked into a completely non-functioning body, and if an MRI test could mean being kept alive for years on life support, I don't know that I'd want one. But that's a question for another day. (To be honest, I foresee a fight there, and it's not one that I relish having.)

In the meantime, here's to hoping that on the heels of this medical breakthrough comes another, perhaps one that would restore the pseudo-vegetative to some function and ability to interact with the outside world. Part of me sees such a thing as pie in the sky - a forlorn hope born of a level of frustration with the sheer unfairness of it all. (Even though I intellectually understand that fairness has nothing to do with it, the wish for happier endings dies hard. While the therapist in me has learned to be somewhat cold-hearted, the friend in me cries along with the wounded and suffers for being unable to make them whole again.) But were it not for people chasing what others have considered pie in the sky, we'd likely be nowhere near as far along as we are.

Decontextualized

On Friday, Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda made his first public comments about the recall. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he told Japanese broadcaster NHK: "I am very sorry that we are making our customers feel concerned."

"People can feel safe driving in the current situation," he added. "Please trust that we are responding so it will be even safer."

He was seen driving off in a black Audi, according to ABC News.
New gas pedals on way to dealers, Toyota says

Whether it was intended to or not, the last line seems to have given at least one person the impression that Mr. Toyoda wasn't as confident in his company's cars as his words may have suggested. And I could see how you would get to that. After all, wouldn't one expect the head of Toyota to drive (or be driven around in) Toyota or Lexus vehicles? Of course you would. If, that is, he were in Japan or the United States. If you've never been to Europe or Japan, you might be surprised to find that the automotive market is dominated by domestic producers in a way that simply isn't true of the United States. You can spend two weeks in London or Tokyo and count the number of American-branded cars you see on your fingers. The United States is remarkable, at least in my experience in being a nation with a large domestic auto industry that still imports large numbers of cars. Given that Switzerland is bordered by France, Germany and Italy, all of whom have strong domestic automakers, it's not the least bit surprising that Toyotas would be pretty thin on the ground, even if the head of the company is in town. But, if you think of the auto market everywhere as being similar to that of the United States, you'd never realize that, and might instead conclude that an auto-executive seen in another brand is snubbing his own company.

Which is where another really important part of journalism comes into play - context, or the lack thereof. News is more than just information, or a recitation of facts. Those facts fit into a larger frame of reference that defines the overall narrative. It's difficult for an audience to understand the information they're being given, if they don't have a frame of reference for it. So shouldn't journalism also be expected to contextualize, rather than simply disseminate, information?