Bloody Hell

The remarks “poisoning the blood of our country” are straight out of Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf” — his blueprint for a “pure Aryan" Germany and the removal of Jews.
Axios Explains: The racist history of Trump’s “poisoning the blood”

Pearls = Clutched.

The continued fascination, if not obsession with Donald Trump’s racism and/or race baiting, and the unwillingness of the Republican Party as a whole to come out against same is, by now, a well-known phenomenon. And, of course, the campaign to re-elect President Biden wants to keep harping on it.

“Every time he says it, we are going to call it out,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director. “He’s going to echo the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini, and we’re going to make sure that people understand just how serious that is every single time.”
Why Biden’s campaign keeps linking Trump to Hitler

Okay. So people know. Now what?

There’s a pretense at work here, the same one that pops up whenever the response to some tragic act or another is “this is not who we are.” A pretense that states that bad actions, and bad rhetoric, are only the preserve of people who themselves are objectively bad.

Rejection of ideas like all of humanity are brethren, or the content of one’s character is independent of the color of one's skin (or the faith one follows), is not new. Often, it’s borne of the idea that others represent a threat to the in-group that the in-group itself does not, or can not, represent to those others. Consider this passage from Deuteronomy:

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 New International Version (NIV)

Note the concern here, supposedly put forth directly by the Abrahamic god, that Jews who marry Gentiles will be turned to other faiths, rather than being able to bring their new spouses into Judaism. This is pretty much the same thought process that underlies Mr. Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” remarks.

So when the Biden campaign decides that they’re going to make it a point to constantly remind people that Donald Trump’s rhetoric carries shades of Adolf Hitler, the goal there is what? Somehow shame Republican voters into being more courageous in the face of what they see as an existential threat? That hasn’t worked so far. Remind Democrats of who they're up against? I can’t imagine that any of them have forgotten. Convince the marginally-attached or swing voters to turn out for Biden? That’s not how negative campaigning has ever worked.

The problem with making racists out to be monsters is that people come to only see those they understand as monsters to be racists. And while the fears of many conservative Americans may not resonate with people outside of those circles, that doesn't mean that the people who hold those fears don't see them as valid. And so they don't see themselves as monsters (and, accordingly, as racists). And this explains why Republican politicians aren't lining up to call Donald Trump out on this. (Senator Mitch McConnell’s wry comment that, as President, Donald Trump was fine having McConnell’s Taiwanese wife in his Cabinet was pretty good, however.) When Senator J. D. Vance says that comparisons between Mr. Trump and Adolf Hitler are “preposterous,” he’s standing up for Republican voters who are willing to buy into the belief that a person’s values and ethics have a strong correlation with national or ethnic origin, but who are unwilling to see themselves as anything like the ethno-nationalists of 1930s Germany. After all, only a monster could have thought that following Adolf Hitler was a good idea.

And that’s what makes hammering on this so pointless. Not that people's minds are already made up, but that their self-images are already set. I think that the back and forth over Trumpian rhetoric has become about virtue signalling, and, as such, statements only really land with people when they align with that person's conception of virtue. And as conceptualizations of virtue become more openly partisan, attempts to appeal to shared values are going to be less and less effective.

Kind of Gray

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

After Haley gave her answer, the voter told her that it was "astonishing" that she gave an answer "without mentioning the word 'slavery.'"
Nikki Haley didn't say slavery caused the Civil War. Now she's facing major backlash

Personally, I'm not really sure why one would bother to ask Nikki Haley what she thinks of the Civil War. ("And I wanted to see what you think was the cause of the Civil War," does not strike me as a good reason.) The fact that it was going to result in an open pander to conservative Southerners who still want to hold on to the idea that the nation as a whole should consider their ancestors to have been good people in spite of the fact that slavery is now considered one of the worst evils of humankind (a rather predictable trap that occurs when one believes in absolute morality) should have been evident from the start. And maybe that was the point. After all, I'm pretty sure that whomever asked the question was expecting the response they received.

And that response does the following:

• It casts a good chunk of the Southern population as brittle and backwards. But this is just reinforcing the stereotype that a lot of people already have of White Southerners; closeted Klansmen who will, the moment the opportunity presents itself, re-litigate the Civil War in the hopes of reinstating at least Jim Crow, if not chattel slavery. Those same White Southerners are already well aware, and resentful, of this stereotype.
• It casts the Republican Party as dependent on "deplorables." Again, this is a stereotype that a lot of people who aren't Republicans (and some who are) already hold. In a republic where one person has one vote, the votes of bigots count for just as much as everyone else. And pointing out, again and again, that people see Republican voters as tolerating bigotry does little other than give (alleged) Republican office-seekers, like Nikki Haley a reason to stoke resentment of the contempt in which those voters are held.
• It boxes in those people who think that what Ms. Haley has said is garbage. Because anyone who stands up to say that Ms. Haley's statements make them look bad to the rest of the nation will be immediately tarred as being a shill for the Democrats.

And I don't see how any of that helps anything. I suppose that there are some number of people out there who were both considering voting for Nikki Haley and of the opinion that the South needs to own up to wrongdoing in the case of slavery, and those voters may now go somewhere else. But who cares? It's not as if Ms. Haley had, at any point in this process, a snowball's chance in a blast furnace of securing the Republican nomination to be their general election candidate.

All of that noted, it's worth pointing out that one of "the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do" that Ms. Haley feels that "government" had become involved in was the right to treat other human beings as a combination of personal property, machines and livestock. Given that, she could have come up with an answer that spoke the language of freedom and rights by saying that that the war was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of people that governments, local and federal, had openly neglected up to that point.

Of course, however, it's understood that casting the South as being willing to wage war to deny "the rights and freedoms of people" they relied on for cheap labor would have Ms. Haley branded a traitor in the South. So she would have needed to be more "nuanced" than I was, above. But that's a poor reason for her to not be prepared to deal with the question. After all, she's a politician. Weasel wording one's way out of difficult questions is a requirement for the job.

The Corner of Mis and Trust

One of the side effects of increasing political polarization in the United States, and the erosion of social trust that has come with it, is a greater unwillingness to see other people charitably. (And given how often I can be uncharitable, I feel odd typing that.) For example:

The Washington Post published an editorial last month noting that political polarization is increasing along gender lines, with young ("Generation Z") women starting to lean more liberal, and young men starting to lean more conservative. Since assortative mating is also starting to take politics into account, the Post's editorial board was concerned that this could lead to a reduction in marriage rates.

Cue teapot tempest. According to Salon, "It's a good thing most women don't want to date Trump voters," portraying a "no Trump voters" requirement as "the bare minimum." A writer for Medium questions the Post's intentions, asking: "First of all, doesn’t it seem like maybe we’re talking about something else here? Like how worried we are, as a nation, about protecting and cultivating the proliferation of white families and white babies, perhaps?" An author for Lawyers Guns Money accuses the Post of "Malicious false equivalency" and "Refusal to acknowledge right wing violence."

The Daily Kos also had some slings and arrows for the Post's editorial board, taking issue with the following:

As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives.

Not so fast, said the Kos author, noting: "Higher unemployment? Really? It’s 3.9%. 'Lower rates of educational attainment?' Nope. Those rates are higher than ever, for both men and women," and then proceeding to flog the editorial board for not blaming the problem on things that liberal America stereotypically cares about, like "stagnant wage growth, out of control housing, and health care costs" and "the male ego and a wounded sense of their assumed primacy in our society."

But here's the thing. I understood, when I read the section quoted from the Washington Post, that they weren't speaking in absolute terms over time, but about men relative to women. Because according to The Education Data Initiative, while "Male and female educational attainment rates both increased between 2010 and 2022," it's also the case that "There is a greater percentage of women who obtain each educational tier compared to men from high school to master’s degree." And that for the current crop of 18 to 24-year olds, while men are more likely to have a high school diploma, they're also more likely to have not attained one. And women convincingly own the post-secondary degree statistics. And this is nothing new.

Likewise, the Department of Labor notes that the unemployment rate for men is higher than it is for women. Again, this isn't something that popped up out of the blue in late November, when open season on the Post was declared.

This isn't to say that the editorial was above reproach. It's paywalled, so I haven't read all of it myself, but the coverage of it pointed out valid limitations in the sample they were using, and like many such things, the employment data is too generalized to be of real use.

Of course, there's nothing unusual going on here. People are seeking to validate, and then amplify, the beliefs of their audiences. Because that's how one attracts, and retains, said audiences. And unlike myself, a number of the people that I've taken note of here write for money; they're charging for subscriptions, selling advertising on their pages or both. And that requires an audience who is willing (or at least perceived to be willing) to share disposable income. I write because I want to write, and Alphabet doesn't charge me anything to host my blog. It takes time, but no money on my part, so I lack a profit motive.

As polarization grows (which it can't do forever) and the camps define themselves more and more by their opposition to the other, we can expect to see more of this sort of thing. And that's partially because the country is at a point where being uncharitable is seen as the correct thing to do. I'm somewhat Left-leaning overall, but not particularly partisan because I don't believe that there are a number of people in the political and media spheres who are engaged in deliberate wrongdoing. I might not agree with what they're up to, but I would still submit that they're actively engaged in doing what they think will make the world a better place. It may turn out to be a road to nothing but sorrow and pain, but it's genuinely paved with good intentions.

P.S.: It's also worth noting that the American Enterprise Institute noted that attitudes towards Donald Trump was becoming a deciding factor in who people would or would not date some three years ago... The Washington Post isn't the first to see something here.

Keeping On

I wasn't really paying attention, but last Friday marked 17 years, to the day, that I've been writing this weblog. (It was even a Friday when I made my first post.) It's been an interesting time. What's interesting about it is that despite the fact that I pretty much make it a point to post often enough to ensure I hit 13 posts a month (a decision I made after January of 2007) it hasn't come with a sense of being disciplined about it, even though I suspect that this is precisely how many people would see it. It's just something I do, and other aspects of my life have simply flowed to fit around it. In fact, I don't have much of a sense of it at all. At a Christmas dinner yesterday, I was asked what I've been doing with myself, and despite all of the time that I spend wandering the World Wide Web in search of things of interest, drafting (and sometimes abandoning) topics and writing and posting things here, none of it came to mind when I went to answer the question. It's just sort of faded into the background of things.

But I suppose that, in the end, this is what one wants discipline to be like. The activity stops being something that one has to actively fit into their day on a regular basis, and it just becomes something that one does, almost as if it were a part of oneself. At its worst, it can feel like a compulsion, or even an addiction, in the sense that I start to become a bit put out when I don't attend to it regularly enough. It nags at me, and drags my attention back to itself when I would rather be doing other things. But again, it's possible that this is a feature and not a bug.

I've decided, time and again, that I wouldn't use Nobody In Particular as a place to complain about the world and/or people in it. I've pretty much given up on that. I, like a lot of people, I think, tend to be somewhat more attuned to the negative things that I encounter in my life than the positive. One thing that I would like to do, however, is delve more deeply into philosophy, just because I find the subject interesting. I'll also have to get out with my camera(s) more. I've started to notice that I don't shoot as much as I used to, and that tends to be more positive activity than being irritated with current events and the coverage thereof. So it's on to year 18 of this activity. It hasn't done what I'd set out to do with it, and I'm not really sure anymore what it does, but it's still been a worthwhile part of my life.

Papered Over

Recently, the Colorado State Supreme Court issued a ruling that, in effect, states three things:

1. That the events of January 6th, 2021 constitute an insurrection against the United States of America.
2. Then lame-duck President Donald Trump participated in the above insurrection.
3. The Presidency of the United States is an office of the government of the United States.

And because the court found the three above statements to be true:

• Donald Trump is no longer eligible to hold political office in the United States.

As a result, the court has said that Mr Trump is ineligible to be on the primary ballot for the Colorado presidential primary. There's been a lot of back and forth about this, and one of the arguments that comes up quite often is that the voting public should be allowed to vote for whomever they please. I find this be be a strange argument, mainly because it's more or less unique to this circumstance. It's never been argued that former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger should be allowed to run for President, and have his name on ballots, even though he's ineligible to serve. If not meeting some of the Constitution's requirements for eligibility to be President mean not having one's name on ballots, why would others be any different?

But honestly, none of this is the least bit worthwhile. The Constitution, the United States Criminal Code, policy, regulation, all of it; they are all simply words on a page. When I was younger, and people would bring up the fact that this or that group had some or another right under the Constitution, I would rather testily remind them that: "The Constitution doesn't protect anything. People have to do that." And American history is full of examples of the Constitution being ignored because it was in enough people's interests to ignore it.

The secret to Donald Trump's success as a politician (and I doubt that he is alone in this) is that he has been able to convince people to count his being in office as one of the things that they understand themselves to be entitled to as a matter of right and wrong. And one of the big reasons that drove ignoring the the Constitution is that it's provisions went against what people understood to be their rightful entitlements.

The United States, like most nations, really, is a nation of laws only in so far as the public sees those laws to be operating to their benefit. Part of the reason why none of the myriad charges that Donald Trump is facing right now have made a dent in his voter base is that those voters perceive the charges against him a a deliberate misuse of the law in order to deprive them of someone who actually cares about them and their success. As the saying goes, this isn't rocket science. Commentators who insist that Donald Trump is somehow managing to defy the laws of political gravity are, as far as I'm concerned, very unclear on how political gravity actually works. The current system exists, not because it is somehow just or morally correct, but because people, either actively or passively, approve of it. Once that approval is eroded, all bets are off. Regardless of what anyone, or any court, has to say about it.

Sight Unseen

A Chicago man has been cleared of murder charges after it was revealed that his conviction relied on testimony from a witness who was legally blind.
Darien Harris freed from prison after trial's key witness was found to be blind

"They didn't do anything wrong because they didn't know," [Dexter] Saffold[, the main witness of the shooting,] said of the prosecutors in the case. "I didn't have to tell nobody about my medical history."

Mr. Saffold is, of course, correct. At least, as far as that goes. This is mostly one of those headlines that prompts people to say "Really? This happened?" After all, "legally" blind and "actually" blind aren't the same thing. If there is a legal problem here, it's less Mr. Saffold's medical history than it is about the willingness of prosecutors to put anyone who they think can help them put someone away on the witness stand. I'm sure that some vetting goes on; after all, no-one wants to be the prosecutor of a case where it turns out that the witness's ability to see, let alone see the defendant clearly, is being questioned. But cases being overturned because it turned out that witnesses were too far away for an accurate identification to be believable are more common than they should be.

But I think that a lot of this can also be laid at the feet of juries, who seem willing to believe people who claim that the defendant is guilty more readily than perhaps is wise. Why, for instance, someone would believe that any sane person would commit a crime, then confess the details to a random stranger who just happened to be in the same cell as they, is a mystery to me. Were I to find myself in jail, I wouldn't say word one to anyone else in my cell, especially if I'd actually committed the crime. Because of course that person is going to seek to sell me out for a break in their own case. Why wouldn't they?

For a justice system to actually work, its verdicts have to be perceived as accurate. as the steady trickle of dubious or flatly incorrect convictions continues, suspicion that the system is more random than it lets on will grow. While this won't be a problem for everyone, it is something that should be looked into, in the name of maintaining credibility. Social trust is low enough as it is (which is part of the problem), having that distrust continue to spread may cost more than people expect.

Manning the Exits

There is a local store, part of the Kroger chain, called Fred Meyer. The basic concept could be described as a supermarket with a small department store attached. It really could be something of a one-stop-shop, where a person could get food, clothing, a television, office supplies, and the like under one roof. The stores are just big enough to have a reasonably decent chance of having what one might need. This makes them busy places during the holidays, as not only are there people shopping for groceries, but also for gifts, party preparation and the like.

In any event, I stopped by to grab some food for dinner, and noticed something interesting. There are, generally speaking, three routes out of the parking lot at this particular Fred Meyer; one each to the North, West and South. This evening, there was a panhandler at each one. For one exit to have a panhandler was pretty standard; a lot of stores in the area seem to have one place particularly favored by people needing to beg of passing strangers. But for there to be enough people attempting to work the exits from a particular location that they were all covered is highly unusual; I don't think I've seen anything like it since the "Great Recession" of the late '00s.

Whether this is an indication that problems of poverty and homelessness in the Seattle area are worsening, I don't know. This is, after all, simply a single observation. But this is the sort of thing that convinces people that things are worse than they were, say, a month ago. Unfortunately, I'm less certain that it convinces people that they should be part of the solution. And, in the end, they're going to have to be. The circumstances and policies that have lead to homes being out of reach for so many have resulted in the people who own the current housing stock being wealthier than they otherwise would be. Unless and until a significant group of people are willing to give up some of those gains, the high costs of living in the local area will result in more people holding signs by the exits to parking lots.

Numbers Game

"I thought I entered a time machine back to the Trump era," Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey said at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus rally on the steps of the US Capitol.

"I could not comprehend how a Democratic president who vehemently countered Trump's policies as a candidate is seriously putting forward the most Trumpian anti-immigrant proposal."
Biden risks Democrats' fury over deal on border and Ukraine

One of the reason, I suspect, that people have lost a certain amount of trust in "institutions," especially political institutions, is that politicians seem to have little compunction against pandering to favored constituencies by making everything Someone Else's Fault. Because anyone with two brain cells to rub together, and even a basic understanding of politics, understands why President Biden and his team are willing to entertain meeting at least some of the Republicans' demands on this issue. The simple fact of the matter is that the Democrats don't have a majority in the House of Representatives, and House Republicans look as if they prize unanimity over providing more military aid and funding to Ukraine. And if the President genuinely wants Congress to appropriate funds for Ukraine aid, he is going to need at least some Republican votes. Concessions on immigration are the way to get those votes. Personally, I would have sought to increase penalties for employers who hire ineligible workers over attempting to seal the border, but this may be why I'm not in politics.

In any event, the current Republican Party still dances to Donald Trump's tune, and that means that in order to bring House Republicans on board with any policy he might want to enact, President Biden must at least appear to be shuffling along to the same music. And Senator Menendez, who one suspects is able to count to ten (or $580,000) without recourse to his fingers, understands this. But the blame mustn't land with the broader Democratic Party, and it certainly can't be laid at the feet of the public, and so that leaves the President, despite the fact that he's only one person in a major political operation.

As Americans seem to become more and more allergic to actually having conversations with one another regarding politics, the parties lose any ability to persuade voters that they have viable answers to the things that people perceive as problems. Mainly because it takes more than simply party messaging to sway people. A certain amount of open and genuine person-to-person communication is also part of the mix. And that's simply not in the cards these days. When politics becomes a matter of right versus wrong, people become anchored in their positions pretty quickly. Which is fine for office-holders in safe seats, where the other party barely rates an afterthought. But when things are closely divided at the national level, the parties lose the ability to make progress in such an environment (which is why Authoritarianism starts to look good to people). And the people who have worked their way up to the highest levels in the political pecking order should know that.

Uncomplicated

Consider the following, found (like a lot of things I find, really) on LinkedIn:

This doesn't even qualify as a simple solution to a complex problem. Rather, it's simplistic. It makes a raft of assumptions, but notes none of them. For instance, who is "we?" Society as a whole? No-one asked me if retailers should be locking up merchandise. Not that locking up relatively portable, relatively high-value merchandise is anything new. And if the "we" refers to the people making the decision to put in locked cabinets at department stores or grocers, that's a "we" that lacks the authority to lock up suspected shoplifters. And of "we" refers to the criminal justice system... well, that's a whole other can of worms, but suffice it to say that they don't control both sides of the equation, either.

But even with that aside, the idea that the United States, as a society, can incarcerate its way out of the problem of retail theft is pretty preposterous on its face.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, picking pockets was among 220 capital crimes in England. Thousands were executed before the attending masses. Undeterred by the fate of their colleagues, pickpockets routinely worked the crowds at public hangings (Gatrell, 1994, 62).
The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging

If the executions of pickpockets was considered fertile ground for picking pockets, it seems unlikely that the potential for going to jail would eliminate the problem of retail theft. Law enforcement is a poor tool for attempting to force people to bear poverty with stoicism and equanimity, given the fact that even wealthy people have been known to steal when it suits their purposes.

But more importantly, being punitive does nothing to alter the perception of an opportunity gap, which is what's really at work here. Sure, there are going to be people who steal out of desire to injure others, or simply for enjoyment of the act, rather than an actual need, or the idea it's the best means available to them to better their material circumstances. A realistic threat of incarceration may deter those people. And it may deter some of the others, as well. But it's unlikely to be an effective deterrent for most, if for no other reason than most people don't expect to (and likely won't) be caught. Locking up people who steal merchandise from retailers isn't as simple as having a squad of police officers standing outside every Target or Kroger store and marching anyone the staff points to, and who can't provide some proof of purchase, off to jail. If that were a realistic plan, it would already have been enacted somewhere. And without an overwhelming police response, the chances of being arrested and prosecuted are fairly low.

Not to say that there's no place for better law enforcement in all of this. But the law enforcement system in the United States is simply not set up to solve this problem, for all that it looks to some like the easy way out.

Missing Planks

One of the podcasts that I listen to regularly is "The Rest is Politics" with former English politicians Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell. While on "opposite sides of the aisle" as we would say here in the United States, both men were expelled from their former political parties for an unwillingness to walk as far out on the wings as said parties wanted them to.

In a recent episode, Messrs. Campbell and Stewart were speaking about a report, from the Resolution Foundation, that lays out what's currently wrong with the U.K. economy, and how to fix it. They note that there are a lot of things that politicians should be doing, such as avoiding either a nostalgic take on a past that never really existed (MAGA, anyone?) or looking forward to a version of the nation that doesn't yet exist, being realistic about the current strengths and weaknesses of the economy (and playing to those strengths), helping second-tier cities catch up to the top tier, focus on the long term, realism about trade-offs and the like.

When "realism about trade-offs" was raised, Mr. Stewart said: "I would wish that somebody would take this report and lay out the really blunt, brutal implications of this." And those blunt, brutal implications basically came in the form of noting that there are certain things that people want, but that they can't have, and that creating the future will entail pain for certain people, who are going to be asked to bear more of costs than they will directly receive in benefits.

It's all fine and good, but the reason why politicians like Mr. Stewart end up wishing for this sort of straight talk from politicians, but rarely getting it is that it's pretty much always a losing strategy in an election. People want what they want, and simply noting that it's economically infeasible will, more often than not, simply create an opening for someone else to come along and declare that, in fact, it is possible to have one's cake and eat it, too. People tend to want to believe that even serious, long-standing problems have solutions that are straightforward and don't cost them anything. One can chalk this up to ignorance, wishful thinking or what have you, but it's a general fact of politics, and one that needs to be acknowledged. It may be satisfying to complain about people's sense of entitlement, but it's a side effect of the idea that people have rights, which is nothing more than another word for entitlements. In other words, once one opens the idea that there is a way the world should be, it's impossible to dictate to people the contours of "should" that they must stay within.

This is why crises tend to be dealt with only after they have occurred, even when they've been seen coming from a long way off; the teeth of a clear and present crisis tend to dictate what needs to happen, and thus cuts out all of the arguing that otherwise takes place.

Fortunate Ones

If you have people you love and who love you, you're blessed. If you're not homeless or wondering where your next meal is coming from, you're blessed.

I saw this on LinkedIn today, and my first thought was: "That's a pretty low bar for being blessed."

I get where the writer was coming from. The piece as a whole was about taking some time this Christmas season to give something to people who were less well off. But I'm not sure about the attempt to position the reader as somehow doing well for themselves simply because they can routinely manage the basics. Part of it, I think is that it aims low. Most of the people I see from posts from on LinkedIn aren't in the millionaire class. (I suspect that those people have more effective networking tools than LinkedIn.) And I doubt that whatever genuinely wealthy people who are on LinkedIn see any of my posts. So it's middle-income people talking to middle income people. But it's really the wealthy people that one should be talking to, if one is looking for those who are "blessed," "privileged" or just fortunate.

Yes, I understand that by the standards of many people in the world, even those of us in the United States who feel that they're "just getting by" are living like kings. (Even if many Americans I meet are openly envious of the number of families in places like India or Indonesia who have household servants to manage the menial tasks.) But giving from the middle to the bottom doesn't strike me as a workable long-term solution.

If course, foregoing a nice dinner or a new item of some sort to give money to the poor is something that many people can do, and it's something that's easy to control. But it's also the lesser sacrifice. In the big picture, people changing their buying habits would do much more for other people. But, it would mean sacrificing low, low, prices when buying stuff, and people find that painful, rather than gratifying. Easier to count one's blessings.

Zero Sum

Perhaps the strangest thing about the current Israel-Palestinian conflict is the degree to which it's being waged in the Court of Public Opinion in the United States and other Western nations. This has lead to a number of people being at pains to demonstrate that they're on one side or the other, and that neutrality is not an option. (As an aside, I'm apparently complicit in the bad acts that both sides have committed as a result of being unwilling to select a hill to unnecessarily die on.)

Whether it's a cause or an effect, I'm not sure, but related to this is what plays out as a competition by partisans of each side to show that they are the most victimized group in the conflict. The two sides go about this by a single-minded focus on the bad things that people have done to them to the exclusion of all else. Pointing out that there are far more than enough instances of both anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian/Arab/Moslem sentiment to go around can easily trigger a charge of false equivalency.

Domestic American politics does nothing to help, as politicians, never being a bunch that would allow a potential advantage get away from them, have started using the conflict as a signalling device to voters, hoping to gain support from those who might have a favorable partisan lean while convincing those with an unfavorable lean that the other party isn't worth voting for. This, as might be expected, leads to a fairly disingenuous public discourse; nuance interferes with the political point-scoring that is the point of modern politics, and as such, is to be avoided.

It also creates yet another situation where people quickly come to pride themselves on their lack of empathy for others. The recognition that the Palestinians have received a raw deal is seen as being soft on terrorism; understanding that Israelis are legitimately attached to areas that are not part of Israeli is viewed as supporting colonialism and occupation. But here, as in most conflicts, there is no war between peoples, but between governments. (And yes, I'll grant Hamas the status of a de-facto government.)

To the degree that there are factions with both Israel and Palestine who understand that the whole of what was once Mandatory Palestine should belong to them, and them alone, this is a fight between two mutually-incompatible sets of interests. But, like most fights, it's taken on the mantle of a conflict over Right and Wrong. And that's largely what people here in the United States tend to argue over; who's right and who's wrong. But while wars can make people accept certain facts on the ground as existing, wars can't make a new status quo legitimate. And neither can bickering about it at a safe distance from the actual fighting.

Wordy

I believe in creating a country where anyone can do anything and achieve their own American dream.
Nikki Haley

Given that Ambassador Haley is a Republican, I would expect her to frame things this way. But I did notice that she spoke of "creating" such a country. One can take this as a de-facto admission that it does not exist in the present. I'm curious as to what she thinks is missing.

Of course, there is also the small matter of just what "a country where anyone can do anything" looks like in practice. Part of the reason why this is such a popular platitude is that it's easy for people to simply layer what they want to understand the world to be like over it, and call it good. But the real world, as it were, has a habit of not conforming itself to what people might want it to look like. In my conversations with conservatives, I've noticed a belief in what could be called Infinite Demand. One can think of this as what allows Supply-Side economics to work; government policies lower the cost of production, and businesses respond by increasing Aggregate Supply (basically, the sum total of the goods and services available for people to purchase in the economy). As Aggregate Supply expands, prices come down, which, in turn, increases demand, presumably to the degree that company revenues increase, even though unit prices are lower. (Did you follow all of that?) In any event, this where the concept of Infinite Demand comes into play, because the idea that "anyone can do anything" and be successful at it presupposes that the increased supply of whatever good or service that "anyone" creates will be absorbed by the market at a price point that allows it to be profitable. And therein tends to lie the rub. Because for anyone to be able to do anything on the way to achieving their own understanding of the American Dream, the demand for goods and services has to track with the supply; otherwise, it's likely that some number of people are going to pursue careers for which there won't be enough demand to allow them to sustain themselves.

Of course, it's possible to read Ambassador Haley's statement in a way that presumes that training in skills will always be available, so that people can quickly transfer to jobs where labor is scarce, and fund their American Dream in that way. But it's doubtful that even as President, that Ambassador Haley would have enough pull with Congressional Republicans to be able to fund that sort of initiative.

I'm aware that paying very much attention to platitudes is always a fools errand. But people do form opinions of candidates around them. And even though Ambassador Haley has pretty much no chance of securing the Republican nomination this time around, it's a safe bet that she'll make an attempt in 2028.

And Going, and Going...

Back when I first started Nobody In Particular, nearly 17 years ago, my first real post was about some activists who met in Lake Forest Park, Washington, and their idea that the modern United States was, or was on the verge of becoming, a police state. At the time I chalked up their attitude to a combination of paranoia, wishful thinking and a certain freedom to not have to consider that political stands that they took might have consequences.

But after more than a decade and a half of encountering any number of other people who like to tell themselves that the United States has become a genuine police state, I've come to realize that a certain level of narcissism can also play into the mix. I noted back in 2006 that "I don't understand what they are doing that would make the Federal government think them enough of a threat to actually do something to silence them." I suspect that I just should have asked them; they likely would have told me. I suspect that I wouldn't have agreed with their assessment that whatever actions they were taking were really that much of a threat to the status quo, but that's beside the point. The fact is that the activists themselves see their actions as a threat to the wealthy and powerful. There are times, I think where people cast themselves as the "scrappy underdog" out of ego as much as anything else.

Recently, I came across a post on LinkedIn from The Epoch Times, pitching their latest media project, a movie by Dinesh D'Sousa (who else?) that claims (wait for it...) that the modern United States has become a police state. Part of the rationale seems to be a bit of revisionist history and selective understanding of the law. People sent to prison after the rioting in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021 are apparently "political prisoners," rather than people who committed some fairly obvious felonies.

In any event, a number of people were quick to cosign The Epoch Times' assessment of the situation; mainly, I suspect, because the anti-communist Times tends to see the American Left as only one step away from being the next iteration of a communist dictatorship. This gives them common cause with movement Conservatives (such as Mr. D'Sousa) who see any social program that benefits someone other than themselves (or those they favor) as a death knell for Truth, Justice and the American Way. (Not to mention their own cultural and financial interests.) And like other people who see a police state where it's hard to otherwise conclude that one exists, they see their agitation as some sort of existential threat to a power structure that, in all likelihood, barely pays any attention to them. And in that sense, warnings of a creeping police state are self-congratulatory, calling on people to pat themselves on the back for being able to push the current system into wrongdoing in order to save itself.

Proxy Fight

One James Easton has been arrested in connection with the shootings of three young Palestinian men who were headed to one of their grandparents' home in Vermont for dinner.

According to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad, "in this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime." I, however, would beg to differ. It's not particularly difficult to look at what went down, and conclude that Mr. Easton (presuming that he is, in fact, the assailant) was not motivated by hatred of Palestinians. Given the frequency with which Americans turn to violence as a means of dealing with things, the shooting can just as easily be interpreted as a show of support of Israel. After all, if Israel doesn't do a particularly good job of making the distinction between Palestinian resistance and Hamas terrorism, why should the American public necessarily be any better about it? And while vigilante action is sometimes viewed as a hate crime (especially in cases where there is a difference in race), it isn't always, and there's nothing inherently hateful about people taking the law (or their own morality) into their own hands.

As much as both Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians see themselves as the victims of hate crimes, it may be more accurate to say that this is simply how a certain subset of the American public takes sides in this conflict. It's simply another problem where violence is seen as a solution.

Storytime

Last week, I was visiting family in the rural South, and this gave me the opportunity to talk to people that I wouldn't otherwise rub shoulders with, like some of my family members' neighbors. What's interesting about conversations like that is understanding a perspective on the world that one might not otherwise be exposed to. Even short talks can give perspective.

While we were talking to one of the neighbors, the subject of a local store came up. (Judging from the number of people who'd mentioned this particular place in conversation, it must have been fairly popular.) Apparently, it had recently been sold to new owners, apparently Indian immigrants. The money for the sale had, we were told, come from "the government." And not in the form of a small business loan, or anything like that. The neighbor told us, with all of the conviction of someone who'd read the paperwork themselves, that "the government" simply gave money, no strings attached and no questions asked, to Indian immigrants, specifically so that they could purchase local businesses that were for sale, and thus displace the locals from the area business community.

The line of reasoning appeared to go something like this: Since everyone in India is poor, immigrants to the United States simply couldn't have enough money to buy a business. And people in Washington, D.C. don't care about what happens to rural Americans. 2 + 2 = 4.

I didn't bother to mention that I was dubious about the math. The neighbor clearly saw their logic as not only impeccable, but self-evident, and I hadn't spent more hours than I would have liked getting all the way down there just to argue with the locals. Besides, in the end, the logic, faulty or not, wasn't relevant. It was simply an article of faith that explained a change in the local environment that didn't make sense otherwise. It speaks to an emotional reality whose power is unconnected from a broader picture of the world.

In that reality can be seen the tripartite structure of Populism that's become associated with the American Right; there are "The People," the corrupt "Élite" and those Others who have something they shouldn't, because the Élites gave them what rightfully belonged to the People. It's an explanation of why what Is differs from what the person understands Ought to be. And it offers up villains locally and at a remove.

It's an expression of suffering and anxiety that is ignored because the story that it's attached to is too ridiculous to be paid any attention to. And so, when someone does pay attention, when they do take the time to notice how people are feeling, they earn a loyalty seems difficult to fathom.

MWWS: The Game

Not long ago, I was in a Barnes and Noble, and noticed that they had three different versions of the Unsolved Case Files game. These are games in which the players attempt to solve fictional crimes by examining the evidence given. It can be seen as a variation on How to Host a Murder and similar games; except that in this case, the players are not themselves the suspects.

The company makes a number of different cases, including one of a rabbit so that young children can try their hands at detective work, but the three games in the photo above are the only ones I've ever seen offered at physical retail outlets. The cases with male and/or non-White "victims"? Nowhere to be seen.

This creates an interesting variation on "Missing White Woman Syndrome," as it's often called. But it also raises an interesting, but not new, question: Whose preferences are driving this? There's no reason why Barnes and Noble, or Target, or a holiday pop-up store couldn't put the Buddy Edmunds or Sandra Ivey cases on sale. But I've never seen them offered in a physical store, and I've started looking to see what cases are offered when I come across these. So why are they apparently only available from online retailers? Are the retail buyers acting on their own preferences? Or are they presuming that they understand that the target audience would mainly be interested only in these three cases?

The opening to pass the buck that this creates is one of the things that stands in the way of further progress on "race relations" in the United States. No-one really has to take any responsibility for anything. Companies can blame the public at large, and the public at large can blame companies.

To be sure, this is a minor concern. Given limited shelf space, companies have to make choices as to what products they're going to sell, if there are a number of them in a line. And it's not like people are exactly clamoring to have the other cases made more widely available. It's just one of those things that caught my attention.

In A Barrel

I just came back from doing a little traveling, and flew to Seattle from Chicago O'Hare airport. And was reminded of something that first occurred to me in 2004, when I was flying out of London Heathrow. Namely that airport security is, in a lot of cases, set up to protect airplanes and, to a lesser degree, airports, more that it is to protect travelers. And, in so dong, shows that terrorism might not be the threat that it's been made out to be.

Whether it was due to the layout of the terminal, to renovation or something else, I don't know, but the lines for the security checkpoint wound up cramming a lot of people into a fairly small space.

The line continues around the corner to the right...

The point behind terrorism is to bring about some sort political change. Violence is a means to that end. Accordingly, it doesn't necessarily matter what sort of violence is used. If the goal is to protect people from acts of mass violence, packing them into a relatively enclosed space like this seems to defeat that purpose, because anyone who can show that they have a boarding pass can get to this point in the airport. The security checkpoint, the destination of these snaking lines, is out of the frame to the right. So it wouldn't be particularly difficult for someone to enter this space with the bomb or a gun.

So the fact that no-one has chosen to attack the security lines of airports can be said to demonstrate that terrorism is pretty difficult to pull off in many societies where the tools of terrorism are decently controlled, and/or that there isn't a lot of motivation for such attacks.

Because while the security apparatus of the airport would prevent a person with a gun or a bomb from getting to one of the gates or on to an aircraft, this setup does little to protect the people actually flying. This is morbid, but a person with a weapon, standing at the point where I took this picture, would be capable of doing a lot of damage, pretty quickly. A few people could coordinate even more mayhem.

And I suspect that I'm not the first person that this has occurred to. It's possible that for most airports, there simply isn't anything to be done about it; the design and layouts of spaces that pre-date the War on Terror weren't put in place with this consideration in mind. So I'm not contending that this is proof that The Powers That Be are prosecuting the War on Terror in bad faith, or that it's indicative of deliberate Security Theater. But this sort of bottleneck, one that places a lot of people into a small area, seems counterproductive if the goal is to protect those people, rather than the travel infrastructure.

6 o'clock Oracle

I've been spending time with my mother recently, and that means doing something that I haven't done in some time; watching network television news. My general gripe with the news is that it engages in what seems like a lot of fearmongering, mainly in the service of driving viewership; mildly frightening stories draw in viewers.

But it also gives at least some of those viewers the idea that the world is in terrible shape. My mother's view of the world is fairly dark, as it's beset by violent crime, warfare and ecological disasters on all sides. In short, she no longer sees the stories that are presented on the news as a curated view of local and world events, but as an accurate reflection of the current state of things. Even though, on an intellectual level, she understands that television newscasts are not capable of presenting the whole of current world events with any level of completeness or nuance.

I doubt that the news has enough of an influence on people for the generally negative tone to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, mainly because the actions that people take in response to what they learn from news media rarely rises to the level of something that would catch the interest of the news media. But it can be hard to shake the feeling that the worse people feel about the world, the less likely they are to take actions that will make it feel better to them. 

Missed A Step

I was watching television with my mother when a story came on about car thieves using "relay attacks" to steal cars. The basic idea is fairly simple; an antenna is used to amplify and relay the signal from a key fob inside a a home. A receiver is brought close to the car; since the car is receiving a signal, it believes the key fob is close, and allows the car to be entered and started. The story was a stereotypically dramatic one, including a woman calling for more police presence in her neighborhood to combat the problem.

Of course, my mother was worried. Her car, after all, has a keyless entry and ignition system.

But things weren't as simple, or as dangerous, as presented. Mom is a tea drinker, so I asked her if she had a tea tin in the house. She did. So I used it to demonstrate that with her key fob closed inside the tin, the signal was blocked, and the car couldn't be opened or started, even with the tin sitting on, or in, the car. Problem solved.

The idea of a Faraday cage is an old one. Faraday bags and boxes are readily available. Not to mention tea tins. Accordingly, there was no reason to present this as a clear and present danger. But the story as presented seemed calibrated for the scare factor. Not all journalism should be, or can be, solutions journalism. But when the solution is simple, there seems to be no real reason to omit it.

Touched Up

I am somewhat forgetful. Although that's not really the correct way to put it. It's likely more accurate to say that I can be inattentive, and thus liable to forget things that I would otherwise remember. It's a trait that I've lived with for  I am also, it turns out, something of a perfectionist, and that makes it difficult to leave well enough alone.

These paired traits prompt me, from time to time, to go back through Nobody In Particular and see what I have written in the past. And when I find errors, to update them. Even to the point of deleting posts.

Other than the fact that I'm bad about proofreading posts before I publish them, this exercise has shown me that I have a tendency to be verbose when I have the time to really work on a post. That was part of the rationale behind The Short Form; to not pontificate at length about a topic that I'd put enough thought into that I was able to distill it down into a sentence or two. Especially when all that I would otherwise be doing is complaining about something or someone. (Despite the fact that I'm not all that happy with the generally negative tone of Nobody In Particular, I know myself well enough to realize that it's not going anywhere; in part due to my personality, and in part due to the media that I take in.)

While posts that are condensed down enough to qualify for The Short Form strike me as more sophisticated, my longer (or over-long) posts strike me as being more thoughtful. I suspect that this is due to seeing long-form journalism as being less click-bait than short-form journalism, which sometimes seems to be little more than factoids wrapped in bits of superfluous verbiage. In any event, since this exercise has yet to make me into an amazing writer, I'm going to keep going back and making long after the fact edits to posts, and catching glimpses of the self gone by in so doing.

Milestone

The United States is a strange place. I'm not particularly well-traveled, but overseas trips would routinely feature requests for explanation of this or that phenomenon that had come to be associated with America. Generally for the worse. (When a conversation opens with "what's up with" or "why on Earth does," it's pretty evident that one's going to have some explaining to do.) The great thing about answering these sorts of questions was that they forced me to understand what I thought about the topic. And I suspect that it's the best thing about this blog.

Because the United States isn't necessarily any less weird from the inside than it is from the outside. It's simply somewhat more explicable, due to some insider knowledge. But only somewhat.

For instance, I still don't understand the media's habit of portraying Donald Trump as having done something newsworthy every time he's simply being a jackass to people he (and by extension, his voter base) doesn't like. He referred to people as "living like vermin" in the United States, and pledged to prosecute members of Joe Biden's family and persecute people not authorized to be in the country? Why is this at all noteworthy? Democrats responding with outrage? You don't say... This story has become so shopworn that you could write it in advance. Yet it always seems to make it into the headlines. I have no idea why.

While we're on the topic, I don't claim to have any understanding of many Americans' seeming addiction to "outrage." I'm not going to claim to have been raised a Stoic, but I was always taught that public emotionality simply wasn't useful in reaching a goal. People on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict have been expressing outrage over everything from the actions of the side they disfavor to the fact that other people favor that side, and it hasn't moved the needle. The warring parties have other things to worry about than dueling protest marches in the United States, and the United States government had already decided whose side their on. So I'm never clear on what people hope to accomplish, other than being seen to be outraged.

This is the three-thousandth post here at Nobody In Particular, and for all that I've turned these things over in my head, and spend time typing them out for this site, I don't feel that I have any greater understanding of these (and several other) aspects of the modern United States. And, honestly, I doubt I'll gain any more insight going forward. But the intellectual exercise of "thinking out loud" about them may at least help me understand, and hopefully explain, other parts of this odd patchwork of a nation.

Save For Later

In the wake of Ohio voters deciding that they wanted abortion rights to be part of their state constitution, Republican Senator from Ohio J.D. Vance took to X to lay out five insights that he felt explained the outcome. Part of insight Four is that the pro-life side needs to do a better job of persuading people to see things (and then vote) their way.

And I'm not just talking about 30 second TV commercials--I'm talking about sustained, years long efforts to show the heart of the pro life movement.

Fair enough. This is, after all, one of the facets of participatory government; enough of the participants have to be persuaded to structure things in the way one would like. But then, as part of his conclusion, Senator Vance notes:

There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children.

So... about that "much better job of persuasion." When was that going to start, exactly? Because as near as I can tell, "the heart of the pro life movement" is currently about looking down on people who have concluded that being pregnant is bad enough for them in one way or another that they feel the need to do something about it.

This strikes me as one of the problems with the way people talk politics in the United States; they make public statements, with the presumption that they people they're making statements about are somehow incapable of encountering or understanding those statements. Why would anyone want to give someone who thinks of them as having been tricked by sociopaths into being a child murderer the time of day? Especially when those supposed sociopaths are working for something that the person thinks is in their best interests?

Senator Vance is far from the only person who tends to see the present as being a time to insult the people that they claim they need to persuade of something in the future. The question becomes: When does this future actually arrive? Yes, Senator Vance was speaking to fellow supporters of the pro-life movement. But did he really need to remind them that they consider pro-choice messaging lies, obfuscation and propaganda? Or that they consider the practice of abortion to be morally bankrupt? Who in the pro-life movement hadn't received that particular memo yet?

Persuasion relies on the person one is attempting to persuade seeing one as being on their side, or at least understanding their problems and interests. Public statements portraying people as dupes of the dangerously mentally ill work directly against that, because it betrays a lack of trust. I use this analogy a lot, but I'll come back to it because I think it's apt. When I pull up to a automobile showroom, the salesperson who greets me may very well be convinced that I'm driving the wrong car. But their first move is almost always to complement me on my current automobile, and from there, find out what needs it doesn't meet that a car they can sell me will fulfill. If they think poorly of me for my previous choice, the last thing that they're going to do is say so anywhere that I'm going to find out about it. Good salespeople don't disparage their customers where their customers can hear them.

American political discourse is often too suffused with moral certainty for its own good. Morality doesn't care what someone's interests or needs are; it simply demands obedience. No need for persuasion. It's part of the reason why Republican lawmakers in the Ohio legislature attempted to change the threshold for ballot measures to succeed. But moral stands also sanction looking down on others; after all, they have to be unintelligent, gullible or immoral to have done wrong, correct? So why have any respect for them?

Because persuasion requires seeing the other person as having a right to do as they are doing; it requires seeing that persuasion carries the burden of proof. It's burden that a lot of political speech in the United States simply refuses to shoulder. Because "sustained, years long efforts?" There will be time for that tomorrow. Today is best spent reminding the righteous of their superiority, lest they forget.

Emformation

The problem that I often have with media is that I look to it for information, not emotion. "Here's something to know about the world," is different from "here's how you should feel about this aspect of the world." Of course, given that, I should have known better than to read "Behind the Curtain: What AI architects fear most (in 2024)" when I saw it on Axios this morning. I suspected what was coming; vague warnings of an immanent threat, and nothing in the way of workable solutions that the reader could implement.

Actually, let me take part of that back. I deliberately read articles that I suspect will engage in fearmongering because I do find them somewhat informative; they tell me about what media outlets, and their sources, understand their incentives to be. And Axios was pretty clear about their incentives in this article. The conclusion of the column is a mix of anxiety triggers and flattery, directed at the reader. It's open about the idea that "realize a new problem is coming," while subtly insinuating that a large part of that problem will be the credulity of other people. Axios readers, it hints, are alert and know when someone is trying to trick them... even if "one leading AI architect" finds that they themselves "no longer can distinguish fake from real."

That "one leading AI architect" is one of five people that the Axios journalists spoke to for the column. The others were a "a former top national security official," who warned that Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin was up to no good, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who claimed that open-source "AI" models couldn't be trusted because only closed models were capable of self-policing, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, whose main contribution was a platitude concerning industry collaboration, and finally, "a senior White House official," who sounded the alarm over disinformation, fraud and cyberattacks.

The obligatory mention of the "sick use" of AI for revenge pornography was apparently thrown in by the authors of the column themselves. Maybe they couldn't find anyone else willing to invoke that particular hobgoblin.

In any event, no-one was saying anything particularly noteworthy or sensitive. So why were three of the column's five sources anonymous? The whole of the AI industry refuses to acknowledge advances in text, image or video generation? No one in the national security establishment would put their name to speculation that Vladimir Putin is looking to sow discord in the United States? In the entirely of the Biden Administration, there wasn't a single person authorized to say publicly that generative "artificial intelligence" could potentially make it easier for people to mislead people or mount cyberattacks? Sure, they likely wouldn't have been names that I, or most other members of the general public, would recognize. But at least then there would have been an avenue for some follow-up via Internet search.

To be sure, articles like this also give me insight into a another group of interest: the readership of these publications. This goes beyond Dahlia Lithwick's observation to Stephen Dubner that  "If you scare people’s face off, they will click." The reason why the commodification of people's anxieties works is that people don't see news coverage as playing on their fears. Instead, they see it as providing valuable information... that just happens to coincide with their existing anxieties, which are mainly about other people. In other words, the world is a terrible place because of the unintelligent, credulous or unethical among the populace (a group of people that, of course, excludes the reader), and there are people who seek out items that remind them of that, because they are also reminders of their own exceptionalism. To be sure, I don't know how large a group of people this is, in the end. All things considered, it doesn't have to be very large to keep any one publication afloat, so I'm going to go out on something of a limb and conjecture that it's not a majority. It's just large enough to keep the wheel spinning. Which, really, is all the wheel needs.

Felling The Pull

"The Israel-Hamas war is creating tensions at work" is a reasonable enough headline. It gets to the point, and deals with the subject at hand. Well, actually, part of the subject at hand. It might not be readily apparent, but the current fighting in Gaza is not the only conflict going on in the world. Humanity has always been something of a combative bunch, and there are fights going on across the globe. What differentiates the current fighting between Israel and Hamas from the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Somali Civil War or the border dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan is twofold, a) the current level of attention paid to it by media outlets here in the United States (and elsewhere for that matter) and b) the lack of agreement on who is the aggressor and who is the victim. Although there is a third point, that lines up with both a) and b), both sides have large domestic constituencies who are making the case that they are in the right, and are deserving of support from both the public and the government of the United States. In the section of the Puget Sound region where I reside, backers of Israel have been making their case. Signs and flyers calling on people to call politicians on behalf of Israel or to donate money to Israeli causes or organizations have popped up in several areas. If there are people doing the same thing for the Palestinians, I haven't come across any yet. (Although it's possible that I've simply been unable to pick them out of the campaign signs as easily.)

Backers of both sides feel that each party has the right to be acknowledged as the single wronged party in this case, and for their own feelings as to who is correct to be validated by those around them. This isn't something that is unique to this particular conflict. What makes it different is the fact that the fighting between Israel and Hamas is happening overseas. There are any number of domestic disagreements that cause workplace (and other place) tensions, because the backers of various sides feel a sense of entitlement to the support of people who would rather be doing something else. It's one of the main drivers of what is now called "cancel culture," which goes way back in American history. The tendency is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon, but if it is going to be addressed, it's likely better to deal with the phenomenon as a whole, rather than speaking of each of its discreet incarnations as if they were unrelated to one another.

No Problem

What gets you re-elected and what solves problems are sometimes like oil and water. And solving problems makes people mad. Nobody wants to make anybody mad because that's not how you get re-elected. But were going to have to do that if were going to fix this.

Senator Claire McCaskill. February 2011.

I was reminded of this statement from Senator McCaskill while I was on my way to drop off a ballot yesterday. While driving, I came across this campaign sign:

I don't live in Bothell at this point (although I used to), so I hadn't really been following the city council race there. But Bothell has been the site for a good amount of apartment construction. After all, it's how one creates housing for a number of people in a relatively small footprint. Given that even a relatively small single family residence can run more than $800,000 in the vicinity, for many people, apartments are going to be their only way into to living in the area.

The greater Seattle area has a homelessness problem in large part to the relative dearth of a apartment, and other multiple-family, homes in the area, which has resulted in very high housing costs. But for the people who own the housing stock, that's not their problem. The lowering of their valuations that would result from increases in housing availability is their problem. And that's where people like Mr. Swanson come into the picture.

The "apartment explosion" is barely making a dent in the local supply of housing, given the number of people who want to live in the area. And so while I won't solve the lack of housing that's driving the high homelessness numbers, it can at least reduce the upward pressure on prices. Really solving the problem would require a lot more apartments, condominiums and townhouses than are currently under construction. But for local homeowners, at least when I've been present for the conversations, the answer to homelessness is basically to force people who live on local streets to live on distant streets, so that they'll be in someone else's cities and neighborhoods.

Fixing the housing supply in the Puget Sound area is going to make people mad. An adequate supply of housing, will, more or less by definition, lower housing prices locally. And people don't like solutions to problems that come with costs for them. Especially not when there's always someone who will run for office on a platform that says that it's only other people who should pay costs.

Something For Everyone

Recently, Elon Musk met with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak. And, being Elon Musk, said some things that drew people's attention. I'm going to briefly touch on a couple of them.

"We are seeing the most disruptive force in history here," Mr. Musk said, before speculating: "There will come a point where no job is needed - you can have a job if you want one for personal satisfaction but AI will do everything.

"It's both good and bad - one of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life."

Most people picked up on the "but AI will do everything" part, and, no surprise, that tended to cause worry.

Musk had a potential answer for that problem during Thursday's conversation with Sunak. "We won't have universal basic income, we'll have universal high income," he argued. "So, in some sense it will be some sort of level up, or an equalizer, because everyone will have access to this [technology]."

And that's the second thing that I wanted to touch on. What Mr. Musk is saying here is that new technology will render human labor obsolete; but that won't be a problem, because it will also create post-scarcity.

I'm dubious about the first part of that formulation, and have no belief at all in the second. Generative "Artificial Intelligence" will render a number of jobs more efficient than they are today. In practice, given the way businesses operate, this means that it will render some number of them obsolete. Sure, it might create a number of new jobs, but there are unlikely to be anywhere near as many prompt engineers as there were formerly, writers, technical support specialists and other roles where a sophisticated auto-complete function can manage the workload. But despite the broad portfolio of things that Generative "A.I." can handle, it can't do everything, given that, by definition, Large Language Models don't create novel solutions when there's already an answer in the database, and don't understand the world in a way that allows them to understand when they've auto-completed their way into erroneous statements. Accordingly, the very natures of the systems involved leave gaps that will have to be closed by people. And this leaves open the idea that new jobs could come along that only humans could do. Artificial General Intelligence, code that can handle any cognitive task a human could perform as well (or better) than a human could perform it likely could, on the other hand, would carry a substantial risk of rendering human labor obsolete; because it wouldn't leave any gaps that it would be unable to close, outside of simply preferences.

But decades of predictions notwithstanding, Artificial General Intelligence doesn't appear to be on the horizon, and there's no current indication, that I'm aware of, that Generative A.I. is bringing it closer. I admit to not being an expert on the topic, but given that AGI would render GAI completely obsolete in short order, one would expect that were it close, people would be talking about it.

The subject of post-scarcity is a little different, because it's not really about how much stuff there is to go around. Not in the end, anyway. What creates a post-scarcity society is the fact that any given individual has the ability to access any resources they need to sustain themselves, without needing to trade for them; people aren't directly in a position of needing to rely on other people to give them necessary resources. It doesn't matter if there's enough food to feed a group of people if that food is in the hands of someone who a) has an enforceable property right over it and b) isn't interested in parting with it. Ubiquitous access to automation and artificial intelligence isn't going to suddenly gift people with access to the raw materials needed to guarantee themselves access to food, clothing and shelter, nor would it suddenly make private ownership of property obsolete in places like the United States.

And this leaves a number of people with a gnawing anxiety that advances in automation, and an expansion of the types and numbers of jobs that will be automatable, will leave them without access to resources, and nothing of sufficient subjective value to trade for them. And Mr. Musk's utopian vision is not going to be enough to assuage those concerns.

And Effect

While there is a lot of chatter about how wrong economists (as if economists were some sort of collective intelligence) were about recession predictions, there are a fair number of people who believe that the United States is, in fact, in a recession. And they could be right; after all, the beginning of a recession is always declared after the fact.

And one could be forgiven for thinking that a recession is still in the cards for the near future, given the steady trickle of news about layoffs in company after company. I've spent a decent amount of time on LinkedIn recently, and my feed has been something of a downer recently. There have been a number of notifications of layoffs (and even company closings) recently. To be sure, there have also been people celebrating their new roles, but those are individual events, and they don't manage to balance the news of groups of people losing their jobs. I wondered what this would mean for confidence numbers, so I hopped over to The Conference Board's website, and, sure enough, Consumer Confidence in the United States is down by 1.7 points.

I'm curious as to the degree that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because sometimes, there's no better way to be ahead of an event than to be part of its cause. One company's employees are another company's customers, and each round of layoffs makes other companies that rely on the public's discretionary income think that maybe they should start cutting production, costs or both, in order to not be caught flat-footed when demand takes a dive. And the snowball simply grows from there.

To be fair to businesses, they're simply following their incentives. After all, they have a responsibility to look after their stockholders' investments, and no real responsibility to the public at large, or their employees; at least not in the same way. And positioning themselves for a recession that doesn't come is considered more responsible than not being prepared for one that does. And labor costs are seen as something to be done away with, rather than a necessity for the economy at large to function.

It's also worth pointing out that government has it's own part to play in all of this. The United States government, being unwilling to tailor either spending or taxation to prevailing economic conditions, is unable to respond to those conditions without creating more problems down the road. Although, given that the United States does have a representative government, most of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of various constituencies, especially those that have the wherewithal to fund campaigns, and those that prefer to be the passive audiences of those campaigns, rather than seeking out information themselves. (Representative governments punish the non-participatory, regardless of the reasons for non-participation.)

In any event, there seem to be a lot of forces conspiring to ensure that a recession occurs late, rather than never. The business community is simply more open about its plans.

Admixture

One day, while at the drugstore, I came across a flyer on "navigating sexual wellness." Ho, hum. What interested me about it was the photograph of a twenty-something couple on the front of the flyer. It was a mixed-race couple; he was Black, she was White.

I always find it interesting when businesses (in this case, a national pharmacy chain) prominently feature mixed race couples in their advertising and other materials. Mainly because I'm old enough to remember when this sort of thing was somewhere between vanishingly rare and completely unheard of. The implication that two people of different racial backgrounds were a couple, let alone having sex, came across as something of a taboo when I was a child. (Keep in mind that Loving v. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws, was decided only the year before I was born.) Of course, it wasn't an ironclad social prohibition; there was the occasional mixed couple on television when I was growing up. But even after I was out of college, mixed marriages had yet to gain full acceptance.

Nearly I'm well into middle-age, and mixed couples with a Black man and a White woman have become something of a diversity cliché. This is, I suppose, because they're one of the more common visibly mixed-race couples that one is likely to encounter, despite the fact that there are still undercurrents of disapproval to that specific pairing in both the Black and White communities. I don't pretend to understand all of the reasons why, but matters of identity and presence seem to play a leading role when people push back.

I do find myself curious as to how other people see mixed-race couples in advertising. They stand out for me, because for much of my life, they simply weren't present. I don't expect to see such portrayals, and so they catch my attention. I would presume that for people younger than myself, "Gen Z" and perhaps Millennials, they might simply fade into the background, as unremarkable as any other advertisement. If that's the case, I suspect that the number, and types, of mixed-race couples in advertising will grow. As long as the practice stays out of the Culture Wars, that is. And who knows what the thing to be sucked into that teapot tempest will be.

In the End

I was listening to a podcast about free will the other day, and one of the speakers used a very interesting turn of phrase; describing free human volition and intent as "an uncaused cause." Which is a very good way of contrasting it with Determinism, which tends to view the human will as an effect, when then goes on to cause other effects.

It was interesting, because whether or not human volition is viewed as uncaused by outside events or circumstances is one of those things that is rarely viewed consistently. As I see it, it tends to be linked to whom someone wants to give the credit or the blame to. And that tends to be the crux of debates around free will; whether or not humans are blame and/or praiseworthy for their actions, in the sense that many debates tend to have at least one participant who comes down on the side of free will specifically due their attachment to blame or praise.

Of course, a lot of arguments work this way, especially when lay people debate philosophy; there are a number of arguments against relativism that effectively come down to: "If relativism, then X is not objectively wrong, but X must be objectively wrong, therefore relativism must be wrong." It's that self-serving bias that makes philosophy difficult, and I wonder if philosophers will ever find a good way around it.

In Difference

There is, I have learned, a trick to being a serene member of a community or identity. And it mostly comes down to understanding that there will be people who, for reasons of their own, have a problem with it. And the point to remember is the "for reasons of their own" part.

I recently discovered a website called "Only Sky." While it doesn't appear to outright say so, I suspect that the name is a direct reference to that Beatles song, "Imagine." I've been looking for some philosophy to add to my Internet diet, so I read a few articles, and then came across this one: "A philosopher’s bigoted views on atheists." It's a diatribe of the author's problems with the online writings of one "Eve Keneinan." Not long into the piece I found myself thinking that for all that this Eve Keneinan person had taken up residence in the author's head, he may as well be charging her rent.

There's a part of me that gets it. I remember when I felt the need to hit back at people whom I felt were denigrating me and what I believed (or disbelieved, as the case may be). And Ms. Keneinan very much denigrates atheists and atheism. At one point, on X, she notes the following:

We have decided, against all reason and tradition, to attempt to tolerate all manner of vices and evils.
It won't end well for us.
It isn't going well for us.
First, rebellion, and then judgment. That's the way of things.

I understand why people are put out by this, but I'm not sure what else one would expect. A person who understands that the Universe itself demands obedience, and metes out punishments to show its displeasure is not going to be happy with people who openly flout the rules they find to be important (especially if they believe in a Universe that indulges is collective sanctions). This was something that I came to understand when I was still in grade school.

Deists who believe that sins are a form of deliberate harm, either to the individual, the community or to the Universe itself, are likely going to be angry about that. And if that also induces fear in them, their complaints are apt to be public, and loud. This makes them people who are never going to approve of those who who don't follow the rules that the deist believes have been set in place. Once I realized this, I stopped looking for their approval. And for ways to get them to seek mine. Sure, people who understand the life one leads to be a direct threat to them can be bad news. But so can a lot of other people.

Ms. Keneinan appears to believe that tolerating behaviors that depart from her own accepted brand of Christianity is dangerous, and therefore, is irrational, at best. Understood, but why care about that? As much as I understand the point that tolerating intolerance is a bad idea, one's intolerance has to be worth something, or it's just noise. Freedom of religion means that some people are going to be members of religions that teach them to be afraid of the beliefs of others. And freedom of speech means that they're going to be allowed to give vent to their fears. By the same token, freedom of thought means that everyone is free to be concerned about the way other people see the world. But it tends to be a freedom that brings little, if anything, positive with it.

I'm sure that if I met Ms. Keneinan, she'd consider me odious, damned, detestable and vicious. She wouldn't be alone or even particularly noteworthy in that. So why not simply let her rave impotently against my deciding that her deity is mythological? The alternative sure doesn't bring anyone anything, or make the world a better place.

The author notes, at the end of their column on Ms. Keneinan: "When you want a world full of decent people—kind and generous of heart—I can’t help but think, sometimes, that we’ve still got a long way to go." Of course there is a long way to go, because the path is infinite. Kind and generous of heart are not objective terms. Each person is going to fulfill them in their own way, and they don't need permission from others to see themselves as having achieved them.

Playing With Mismatches

Economist Melissa Kearney has a new book out, and so she's been giving interviews and writing articles in an attempt to get her name out there, and drum up some sales. She's hitting the publicity circuit, which is something that a lot of authors do. To Mary Harris at Slate magazine, however, this has the makings of a moral panic over marriage rates, with Conservative thinkers and pundits looking to roll back women's rights by trapping them in bad marriages in the name of helping children.

But over the past month, this conservative panic burst into the mainstream. You might have noticed one article after another—in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic—arguing that marriage is good for you, makes you richer, makes your kids more successful. Some took this a little further, arguing marriage should be a policy goal.
Marriage Won’t Fix All of America’s Problems

The problem, as I see it, is stated somewhat succinctly in the NPR article on Ms. Kearney's work (which post-dates Ms Harris' breathless Slate article): "[Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas'] book suggests that many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability. They appear to have a higher bar for a potential spouse than their partners, or the fathers of their children, have met." This is not a new concern; at least, not for the nation at large. Low educational attainment, leading in turn to a lack of good employment prospects, has been a problem in America's lower-income Black community for at least as long as my lifetime. It's part of the reason why only a minority of Black adults are married. Black men are married at low rates because they're not considered good prospects, and Black women are married at low rates because they don't consider many Black men good prospects and won't typically look to other communities for partners. People like Melissa Kearney have become involved because the pattern has become widespread enough in the non-college-educated White population that people are starting to take notice.

The general Liberal critique (and/or fear) of books like Ms. Kearney's is that it will be taken as a reason to enact policy that makes it more difficult for unmarried women to get along in society, the assumption being that this will force them to marry whomever they can, even if that person is a poor partner for one or more of any number of reasons. And it's not completely unfounded; finding self-described Conservatives who believe that women's rights should be rolled back in the service of forcing them back into the role of men's domestic partners isn't particularly difficult. And that leads to a perception that people like Ms. Kearney are useful idiots for reactionaries who want a return to the relationship mores of the past. Casting the whole enterprise as revanchist, however, doesn't actually deal with the underlying problem; namely that a woman who declines to marry someone who will be either unable to add anything to the household, or, in a worst-case scenario, need to be actively supported by her (along with any children the couple might have) is a perfectly rational choice. Not wanting to marry someone who is incapable of routinely contributing anything is much different than an insistence on "marrying up."

I do think the government should increase income assistance to economically struggling individuals and families, both married and single. But no government check—even one much larger than what’s politically feasible in the U.S. today—is going to make up for the absence of a supportive, loving, employed second parent in the home.
Melissa Kearney “A Driver of Inequality That Not Enough People Are Talking About”

Not having read Ms. Kearney's book, I don't know if she's outlined any plans for dealing with that lack. I wouldn't be the first person to point out that no-one has figured out how to legislate the presence of a supportive, loving and employed second parent. And a number of women have clearly decided that they're not in the business of gambling that a man who doesn't fit the bill when she isn't married to him will find a way to meet those criteria if she is. And, as often as people would point out that all children deserved a father and a mother, no-one was, or is, in the business of finding single people who would make good second parents and enticing, or coercing, them into taking on the role. Of course, Ms. Kearney isn't the only person who is at a loss. When I touched on this topic more than a decade ago, I was coming at it from the other direction, that is was unrealistic to expect single people to avoid having children until they'd found a suitable marriage partner. I noted:

There is no viable method of ensuring that only those people who are financially (or physically, or emotionally) capable become parents. So we're better off working to broaden the population of capable people.

That struck me as a tall order then, and it strikes me as one now. Both reducing the costs of having children or helping the low-income become less low-income so as to make them both more secure parents and better partners are likely simply off the table. And maybe that's why so many people fear that Melissa Kearney is enabling bad ideas; there seems to be a distinct lack of good ones.