Capital Obsessions

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff writes some things concerning the obsessions of former President Trump and Speaker Pelosi that I want to share with you. To me they tend to ring true.

Apparently, Trump wants more attention on the election. Pelosi wants more attention on January 6, 2021 and the period leading up to it.

Most Americans want more attention on the present and future, and most rational Republicans want more attention on Joe Biden’s presidency. But Trump can’t get past the 2020 election and Pelosi wants to divert attention from Biden.

My hunch is that both obsessions are losing propositions. Pelosi and her caucus won’t be able to avoid defeat in 2022 by harping on early January 2021. And if Trump seeks the GOP nomination in 2024, harping on the 2020 election, assuming he’s still doing so, will hinder his campaign.

Both Trump and Pelosi have made their points, Trump's that the election was somewhat hinky, and Pelosi's that folks shouldn't mob the capitol. Continuing to harp on these points makes the 'harpists' look bad, makes them boring.

Both should be focused on our national future, what we need and what should be done. Neither seems to want to do that, suggesting both are people of the past who need to step aside.

5 Bug Out Destinations

Where to go to survive a collapse of human civilization, or alternatively where you are most likely to survive one if already there. The Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) looked at these related questions and identified five places - all islands - where you have a better chance of surviving. See the article at ZME Science, hat tip to RealClearScience for the link.

If you guessed New Zealand was their number one choice, you'd be correct. It is essentially at the end of the earth, has a variety of climates, a first world level civilization, somewhat socialist politics (no plus), and isn't overpopulated. 

I suspect New Zealand's primary advantages are that (a) it is too far away to be successfully invaded by low tech post-apocalyptic folk sailing repurposed, ramshackle cargo ships and (b) there are no targets there anyone would waste a nuke on. Don't knock it, both are huge advantages. 

The problem with New Zealand is getting there after the balloon goes up. Ocean-spanning flights will probably be the first to end when their pilots refuse to leave NZ and fly back home to chaos.

The other four locations are Iceland, Ireland, the U.K., and the southern Australian island of Tasmania. I see real problems with the U.K. and Ireland being too close to the European mainland. Both, however, have well-established first world infrastructure and industry plus reasonably stable governments. 

Tasmania shares many characteristics with New Zealand, but may have too little manufacturing capability to independently maintain a civilized lifestyle. That leaves Iceland, which has the distinct advantages of distance, geothermal heating and darn good fishing grounds, but little manufacturing and a climate not conducive to growing crops.

I'm not clear how the scholars figure these civilizations can sustain themselves minus imported petroleum. Only the U.K. has an indigenous (offshore) oil supply. Going back to coal, wood and steam isn't impossible, and peat one supposes, but no modern society can function without motor vehicles and aircraft, neither of which runs on solid fuel. 

A Partially Baked Idea

Instapundit links to a The College Fix article with this headline:

‘Health misinformation’ should be a federal crime, First Amendment law professor says

I love it when somebody proposes a regulation or law that will have obvious unintended consequences, like this one. Let's imagine this had become law prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, what would have happened differently.

For starters people like Fauci, Birx and Walensky would have made many fewer pronouncements, and those made would have been so hedged around with qualifications and caveats as to make them essentially useless. How would people have dealt with "We don't know yet, we'll have to see what happens" answers? Would this have been preferable to what occurred? I'm sure, after the fact, many would say "yes."

When the pandemic first started people were scared and needed reassurance, even if they weren't always correct answers as seen in the merciless gaze of hindsight. For people like me, and I hope my readers, who are comfortable with "what we know so far," it would have been fine. 

I'm not certain that qualified answers would have worked for most folks. Had the proposed law been in place, there would have been no "this is the truth" responses from government or academic sources. Do we really want to make it a crime to sound positive and reassuring?

Science is always finding new answers, which often modify or contradict the old answers. How would statements about health issues be known to be "misinformation?" Imagine convicting someone who is later exonerated by later, better research findings. Or the reverse, where someone is not convicted and later findings show they were wrong and should have been guilty?

The geologist who first proposed the continental drift hypothesis was viewed as a total crackpot for decades; plate tectonics as it's now called is today's mainstream belief. I conclude there is no practical way to make "health misinformation" a federal crime, it is another in a long series of partially-baked ideas.

Saturday Snark

This chart courtesy of Steve Hayward's The Week in Pictures, at Power Line.

Intentional Exaggeration?

Close to half of Americans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, roughly 150 million of us. We vaccinated folk are now being urged to wear masks, mostly because it protects those who are not vaccinated from any virus we spew.

It appears those making policy believe, with some reason, that many of the vaccinated don’t much care about protecting those who have chosen to be not vaccinated. Which means the policy makers have an incentive to try to convince us that we vaccinated folk can still catch Covid-19, so we’ll mask up.

Bottom line - I suspect the CDC and others in government of intentionally exaggerating the frequency of so-called “break-through” symptomatic infections among the vaccinated. It seems the most parsimonious explanation of the very mixed messages that we’ve gotten from Fauci, Biden, and Walensky.

On the other hand, the decision by the Israeli government to begin giving booster third shots to their elderly, and perhaps to others, suggests maybe the danger is real. Claims and counterclaims, it is hard to know what to believe.

Let me be clear, I don’t have “truth,” whatever that turns out to be. These are hunches, guesses made from incomplete information and some insight into human motivation.

Colonial Nostalgia

Instapundit links to an article in The Gleaner, Jamaica's newspaper, written by a local pastor. He reports that almost twice as many Jamaicans wish the island was still a British colony, rather than the independent nation that it is. Some 49% preferred colonial status vs. 27% who like the current status best, according to a poll commissioned by the paper. Apparently 24% had no opinion.

It appears the article's author is both surprised and appalled at these numbers. I am neither. Actually I suspect such feelings are relatively widespread among the citizens of former colonies which became independent following World War II.

Colonial governments in the 1800s were no prize, often corrupt, racist and brutal. By the time the Second World War started, most colonial administrators had become no worse than the European governments they represented, genuinely trying to help the colonies function and prosper. 

At the time European governments gave their Third World colonies independence in the late 1940s, most were better governed than the typical now-independent former colony is governed today. No wonder the citizens of former colonies remember that things were once better than they are now, mostly that is an accurate appraisal.

Is it likely independent Haiti, for example, is better governed or happier than French Martinique or Guadeloupe? Few would agree.

A Policy Suggestion

I was reading an article at The New Republic, a lefty source I seldom check, because it had an intriguing premise. It was that what’s happening with our military presence in Iraq is truly not an end to our “combat" role there but merely a rebranding of that role to one of “training and advising.” 

The author argues that the number of our troops there won’t diminish, but their role will be differently described, while changing almost not at all in terms of day-to-day activities. Probably true, and not especially important.

This led me to think about our role in Afghanistan and places like it, places that are now, and for the foreseeable future will be, essentially ungovernable hotbeds of angry tribal folk - people likely to harbor violent anti-Americanism. 

Both Trump and Biden have wanted to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan because they believed correctly that “we couldn’t win.” Win being defined as establishing a stable representative government of non-troublemakers. 

I ask you to consider that winning is the wrong U.S. goal in such places. How various tribal peoples (mis)govern themselves isn’t our problem, and we’ve proved we are not adept at nation-building. 

The correct U.S. goal is to maintain conditions in these locales such that the locals cannot meaningfully organize to make trouble for the U.S. homeland. This will often involve covertly helping tribes battle each other to a standstill, it’s a balancing act like that Britain played across the Channel in Europe for many decades. 

Indeed it is the role the U.S. played in Afghanistan when the Soviets were there in force. Our mistake was to then replace the Russians as occupiers, to try to make a modern nation of it.

We could model the CIA’s activities in these backwaters like those of the British “politicals” in the Indian subcontinent pre-1948. British agents would work behind the scenes with rajahs, warlords and satraps to keep the locals focused on fighting each other, instead of fighting the Brits. 

This is a cynical, brutal business, best done in the shadows with no publicity. Probably the best current practitioner of this arcane intervention is the ISI in Pakistan. It is the Pakistani version of the CIA/DIA, and could give Machiavelli lessons in playing both sides against the middle.

A Reasonable Question

This is the cover of today's New York Post. The statistics - well presented there graphically - resemble the numbers I've seen elsewhere and reported here. Doesn't it make you wonder why those of us who are vaccinated should worry?

Blame the G.I. Bill

Kay Heimowitz writes about degree inflation for City Journal, and does a mostly thorough job. A key quote is this pithy observation.

Degree inflation widens the nation’s class divide.

Oddly, in an otherwise comprehensive discussion going back to the days when a high school diploma was somewhat rare, she leaves out a major force in degree inflation - the G.I. Bill. Perhaps she thought criticizing it was a bridge too far, it can be a bit of a sacred cow in our society. Let me remedy her omission.

As World War II drew toward an end, politicians and economists began to worry about the nearly inevitable recession/depression that tended to follow wars. They pictured literally hundreds of thousands of young men, and a few women, swapping their uniforms for civvies and looking for jobs. 

Their concern was that the job vacancies would not increase as quickly as would the supply of people needing them. What could be done to slow the near-avalanche of job seekers following war's end as the military shrank back to peacetime staffing levels and ex-soldiers and sailors became unemployed.

The answer they came up with was the G.I. Bill, let's send 'em to college and by the time they get out the economy will have caught up, the politicians thought. Incidentally, they were right, it worked but had an unintended consequence.

Meantime the young men in the military had spent something like 1-4 years growing up, experiencing a blue-collar job called "enlisted man," and many jumped at the chance to do something better.

The new college graduates began flooding the job market in 1947-50. Personnel Departments (as Human Resources was then known) began to raise the bar for entry level jobs. 

Why would they do this? They faced a tall stack of job applications, and a need to winnow these down to a manageable number to consider seriously. Tossing out everyone without a college degree was not only practical, it could be justified to top management as hiring a smarter, more educated work force. 

New high school graduates looked at the competition, a raft of ex-GIs with degrees, and decided they too needed to go to college just to be competitive in the job market. And that was the beginning of how we got to where we are today, where you basically need a masters degree (or higher) to have any edge.

About the Vaccines

Let’s think about why the Covid-19 vaccines are still called “experimental.” It is clear that a switch to “approved” status would help many reluctant holdouts get vaccinated and that would be a good thing.

So why is the FDA dragging its feet? Why has the approval process for vaccines normally taken quite a few years? It isn’t my field of expertise, but I presume the reason is that there is concern unfortunate sequelae will show up after several years (or decades?) have passed. 

Millions have taken the new-tech mRNA vaccines, but because of their newness nobody took them long enough ago to answer the question of long-term unintended consequences. And the people at FDA who declare approval are unwilling to get out ahead of the data and potentially be shown to be horribly wrong several years from now.

The other DrC and I took the vaccines knowing there could be nasty surprises lurking somewhere in the future. Why would we do this? Because we’re old and therefore two things were true: (a) the old are most at risk from Covid-19, and (b) we’re less likely to live long enough to experience “long term” consequences. 

It is estimated something like 89% of the elderly have had the shots. From where we oldsters sit, surviving the corona virus and living a healthy 5-10 more years is our best bet. We aren’t going to have babies, we aren’t worrying about how we’ll fare 30 years from now. And we understand the cost-benefit equation looks different to the young who have to consider both of those eventualities.

Capitol Police

The Capitol Police are currently testifying before the Jan. 6 House committee, which committee is made up entirely of Trump haters. The 'Cap cops' claim they were terrified on Jan. 6. Are these officers real police or are they uniformed rent-a-cops, resembling mall security? 

Do they investigate gang shootings and gristly murders and rapes? Are they often in physical confrontations with repeat offenders who've decided to avoid going back to jail or die trying? Do they often deal with drug overdoses? No, no, and no.

It is unlikely they encounter any of these unpleasant, potentially dangerous situations. I'd argue they are basically building security with badges who on Jan. 6 suddenly found themselves dealing with unruly and angry people and were scared spit-less because they aren't accustomed to real tac-squad police work. They were scared of a rowdy crowd with no guns.

If they have any self-awareness, they ought to be embarrassed and ashamed. And what was going on with them holding open doors for the demonstrators?

Afterthought: To be fair, the Capitol Police didn’t know the demonstrators had no guns, and perhaps assuming they had them was prudent.

For What It's Worth

Futurists' prognostications of what the world will look like a decade or more in advance are always fun to look at, think about, and evaluate. While they are virtually always wrong in major ways, and we should be happy that is so, they are still intriguing. 

I think of them as plotless science fiction. Effectively they are imagined documentaries whereas sci. fi. is short stories and novels set in an imagined future.

All of the above by way of introducing a link to a projection of what the world will resemble geopolitically in the year 2040, some 19 years from now. It comes to us courtesy of Geopolitical Futures where George Friedman often publishes good insights.

GPF predicts a Japan stronger than China, a smaller and weaker EU, and a resurgence of Poland and Turkey. And the U.S.?

One fact that will not change is the United States’ position as the sole global power. Over the next 19 years, it will adopt a new strategy to maintain power at the lowest possible cost. This strategy will resemble isolationism, in that the U.S. will not be drawn into regional military conflicts in any significant capacity.

That right there is some sunny optimism. I sure hope GPF is correct. 

Vaccination Is Successful

ABC News has obtained an internal CDC document which shows how rare so-called “breakthrough” cases of Covid-19 infection among the fully vaccinated are. They report the following:

With more than 156 million Americans fully vaccinated, nationwide, approximately 153,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases are estimated to have occurred as of last week, representing approximately 0.098% of those fully vaccinated, according to an unpublished internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document obtained by ABC News. These estimates reflect only the adult population and do not include asymptomatic breakthrough infections.

Translation: If you are fully vaccinated against it, your likelihood of actually getting sick from Covid-19 is roughly 1 in 1000. And hospitalization is much more rare still, something like 6 in 100,000.

If you accept these figures as accurate, being vaccinated certainly looks like a bet you should take. If you believe the government is lying, as it sometimes does, or is wrong, as it sometimes is, I understand your skepticism even if I don’t share it. With nearly half the population fully vaccinated, if those were dying left and right we’d certainly know about it, it couldn’t be covered up.

Reading between the lines, some number of the fully vaccinated apparently “get” Covid-19 but have few or no symptoms. These are only rarely diagnosed if they are, for some extraneous reason, tested. Presumably they could still transmit the disease to others without suffering its effects themselves. This will be used as a justification for requiring us to wear masks even though vaccinated.

Benefits Prolong Unemployment

Daily Wire website reports the findings of a Morning Consult poll seeking to determine how many of those on enhanced unemployment compensation had turned down jobs to stay unemployed.

13% — roughly one in eight — said that they had refused job offers while unemployed because they “receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work.” Others said that child care obligations, worries over COVID-19, and a lack of job flexibility limited their willingness to take new positions.

Because 14.1 million adults were collecting benefits at the time of the survey, Morning Consult calculated that roughly 1.8 million Americans turned down jobs due to the handouts.

Isn't it odd no Democrats believe these findings are even possible? One supposes Ds believe everyone on the dole is a for-sure Democrat voter, and they may be correct. Hat tip to Stephen Green at Instapundit for the link.

Trend Line Downslope

Byron York, a frequent panelist on Bret Baier's Fox News show, writes for the Washington Examiner about recent Gallup poll numbers which show President Biden's popularity declining rather abruptly in the last three months, especially with Independents. York also cites an ABC/Ipsos poll which finds pessimism about the nation's future is up a significant amount. York concludes:

Many Democrats (are) urging Biden to hurry up and push his agenda through Congress as quickly as possible, before his ratings decline more. The president is politically weaker today than he was three months ago, and he will likely be weaker still three months from now.

If Mitch McConnell can hold the fort for a few months more, the worst then could be behind us. Imagine if you were a Democrat concerned whether POTUS can keep it together for 3.5 more years. "Worried" wouldn't begin to describe your feelings. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.

Expatriates

RealClearWorld links to a Financial Times column by a rascal named Janan Ganesh. He writes about the few places in the world where one can be an expatriate and leave behind various ... um ... shortcomings in one's past life. If you know expats, or have been one yourself however briefly, you'll enjoy what he's written.

The chance to forget oneself, to disappear in plain sight, is a freedom too. The mystery is where to find it in future.

The sun is setting, for now, on a certain kind of nomad’s idyll. In Hong Kong, reabsorption into China is the issue. In Singapore, it is the pandemic and a new commitment to the nation’s “core”. Even the United Arab Emirates, facing disease and domestic unemployment, has shooed out legion expats.

The year the DrsC spent teaching on Guam, a very multicultural U.S. territory, we encountered plenty of the expat breed. I remember us both remarking how many of them would have trouble fitting in back in the States. 

The local Chamorros' and other Asians' partial understanding of stateside norms was loose enough to permit expats a degree of "eccentric" behavior. We're talking behavior that, in the mid-1980s, would not have passed muster in Des Moines or Denver.

Ganesh needn't worry, new expat havens will open up on the fringes of the Third World. I suspect some are already operating in Mexico and Costa Rica, Belize and the French Caribbean.

Dissing the Illusions

RealClearPolitics links to a column at Medium by a John Ellis where he takes up four illusions many hold about today's U.S. politics. He sets out to demolish each of the four and does a reasonable job.

What are the four political views Ellis believes are illusions? 

1. Biden is not too old.
2. Harris "has what it takes."
3. Trump is done.
4. Trump can't win.

He adds that beyond Biden and Harris, the Democrats have no "bench," no obvious candidate. I find myself largely in agreement with his negative characterizations. Ellis is a former columnist for the Boston Globe and a long-time political analyst. 

Poll: We Are Pessimistic

An ABC/Ipsos poll of Americans' attitudes toward the direction of the country and its future has just been redone, a similar one was done about 3 months ago. John Hinderaker of Power Line quotes the Ipsos poll report.

A majority — 55% — of the public say they are pessimistic about the direction of the country, a marked change from the roughly one-third (36%) that said the same in an ABC News/Ipsos poll published May 2. In the early May survey, Americans were more optimistic than pessimistic by a 28-percentage point margin. Optimism is now under water by 10 points. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, fewer than half — 45% — now report feeling optimistic about the way things are going, a significant drop from about two-thirds (64%) in the May poll.

As Hinderaker notes, Republicans should be able to weaponize this pessimism to their advantage in the 2022 midterm elections. 

Memories

I’m not much interested in pro football, rooting for one’s town or city doesn’t excite me. I have enjoyed college football, especially the three years I lived in Eugene, OR, and could watch PAC 10 ball for free as a student. However none of those U of O games etched itself into my memory like a game my undergrad alma mater played against Stanford. 

My undergrad college was San Jose State, and if you know South Bay geography, Stanford is 20 miles north of the SJSU campus off US101. In those long-ago days Stanford would schedule what amounted to a warm-up game with San Jose, played in their stadium, and normally clobber us. 

Stanford was in the PAC 10 and we played as independents. However, during my time at SJS there was one beautiful October afternoon in 1960 when we beat Stanford on their home field, and tore down their goalposts. 

I remember vividly a battered and bloody fraternity boy staggering up our side of the bleachers clutching a 4 foot length of broken goalpost to his chest and grinning like a madman. I wonder whatever happened to that trophy? I imagine it ended up mounted over the fireplace in a fraternity house that no longer exists.

What got me thinking about San Jose State football was I looked at a pre-season ranking some college football fan compiled and he ranked SJS 43rd in the nation, higher than Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley. Can this be right? If so, things have sure changed since I was an undergraduate there. Go, Spartans! 

Floods in Germany

This photo is from Steven Hayward's The Week in Pictures at Power Line. You can ignore the caption, it is accurate enough but most of it doesn't relate to the flooding.

When people tell you Germany never floods, they're dead wrong. The locals have kept track of flood high water marks more or less forever, labeled with the year. 

Don't let people tell you this flooding is climate change. Check out those dates going back at least 200 years. The other DrC and I have seen these marks on buildings in little towns all along the Rhine and Main rivers, they're no joke. 

In the years before trains and cars, it was handy to be right by the river for water borne transport. In recent decades it is also valuable for tourism as river cruises are quite popular - we've done several. 

Germans live with the occasional flood, clean up the mess, rebuild if necessary, and continue to live by the river. It's like the attitude Floridians have about hurricanes, they're a hassle but tolerable.