Spring Blossoms

It's springtime, and I'm staying away from the news for a bit, so this evening, you get a flower picture.

Killer Argument

I'd never actually understood the logic to work that way...

I've heard "I doesn't make sense to kill people to show people that killing is wrong," often enough that it's just another cliché, and I don't think much about it. In large part because I'd always found the logic of the slogan to be weird. The purpose of punishments isn't demonstration, but deterrence.

In any event, I'm not sure that the logic works even if one takes it at face value; because courts routinely hand down penalties that would be crimes if anyone else were to impose them themselves, sometimes for the same sorts of behavior. Let's take the obvious one: Were I to forcibly bring someone to my home, find them guilty of some infraction or another, and lock them in a spare bedroom for some amount of time, I would, when caught... go to jail/prison. The state would, basically, imprison me for imprisoning someone to show that imprisoning people is wrong. But I've never heard someone argue that logic as a reason that prisons should be abolished. Of course, the world is a big place, and I'm sure that the argument is out there somewhere, but I haven't encountered it yet. The closest I've come is the libertarian Non-Aggression Principle, but it more or less argues against any after-the-fact punishments that require the use of force, since it only sanctions force to stop rights abuses.

There are other arguments against the death penalty that take into account the unique (or somewhat unique) characteristics of the practice, but in this particular case, the argument being made seems like a special pleading.

The Dislike Engine

Affective polarization, the effect where opposing partisans have an active dislike for the other party, and its voters, leads to inanity like the National Security Advisor adding a journalist to a sensitive chat being conducted on a non-secure (at least by government standards) platform, and then making lame excuses for it.

Michael Waltz should have been shown the door, and the whole lot of people on the chat, including Vice President Vance, should really be feeling the heat. This sort of sloppiness has no viable justification. But the Trump Administration is circling the wagons, and attacking Mr. Goldberg, and eventually this will all blow over. Because who are the voters who are supporting President Trump going to look to for accountability here? The Democrats?

Because what affective polarization does is make the other side worse. No matter what happens. In large part because it shifts the locus of attention from what was done to who did it. And when actions are judged by the actor, rather than on their own merits, the verdicts tend to turn on people's perceptions of what kinds of people they're dealing with. And in a nation where "our side" and "their side" are often taken as signifying "good" and "evil," those perceptions can be very black-and-white.

The other down side of this mode of thinking is that there's never any benefit in doing something that doesn't play to one's own supporters. If the Trump Administration did admit that proper protocols weren't followed, meted out discipline and took concrete steps to improve, this wouldn't earn them anything... Democratic lawmakers and their voter bases wouldn't have any real incentive to give them credit for taking the right steps... the incentives of affective polarization are to move the parties father away from one another, and isolate them. And in that environment, accountability is a weapon, and little else.

But this is the path the United States is on, and so there's little to be done but make the best of it. Even if the best won't be very good.

Mixed Message

 

Bad Ends

While we cannot know the detail of the negotiation talks that have taken place behind closed doors - what we do know is that Israel halting aid entering Gaza 17 days ago was an attempt to force Hamas into offering new concessions.

That hasn't worked so far and now it appears Israel has returned to violence in order to try to extract a new deal, one that is more favourable for its political leaders, and one that offers fewer wins to Hamas.
Why has Israel bombed Gaza and what next for ceasefire deal?

I don't think that I am the only person who believes that Hamas isn't daft enough to believe that Israel would abide by whatever new agreement it extracts from them. And that's the problem with breaking a deal in order to attempt to win a better deal; it gives the other party a pretty good reason to doubt one's honesty and intentions. (But what do I know, considering that Hamas is daft enough to think they can force the dissolution of Israel?)

Although Hamas still seems willing to negotiate while the United States is a party to the talks, so there may still be some possibility that some sort of agreement can be reached; but since the Trump Administration has made no bones about the fact that it's clearly on the side of Israel, I'm curious what it brings to the table in all of this. It's certainly not going to hold the government of Israel to any agreements it makes.

I am still of the opinion that, sooner or later, all of this inevitably ends in the deaths and displacement of the Palestinians. It may not be this conflict, or the next, but it's coming, one way or another. Arab leaders may view Donald Trump's plan to empty Gaza (and I'm sure that the West Bank will come up eventually) of its residents and remake the place into an Israeli-run resort as an insult, but if President Trump could be trusted to live up to his end of the deal (and there's very little chance of that) it would likely be the best outcome that they could hope for. (Although why any sane person would want to get anywhere near a resort that's going to be under constant attack by angry former residents of the area is beyond me.)

The central problem in all of this is the same as it ever was, namely:

Hamas, to put it crudely, has one card to play in the negotiations: the hostages.

The Palestinians, as a people, have nothing to offer Israel in exchange for being allowed to stay, in either Gaza or the West Bank. They can go the "no justice, no peace" route as they have been, but we can see where it's gotten them. And while there is an Israeli Left that's willing to stand up for them, they don't have the political clout to get someone into the office of Prime Minister. Unless something changes, and gives them from real bargaining power, bad deals are likely to to be the only ones the people of Palestine ever get.