The First Invasion by the US

History pre-peated itself in our 1775 invasion of Canada.

Rick Atkinson's enormous history of the American Revolutionary war is stuffed with fascinating detail. Some may not be entirely documentary in origin, but his color and flair are undeniable. Having but begun this long read, I was struck by an early episode, the invasion of Canada. The colonies had not quite yet declared independence, nor had they resolved the seige of British-occupied Boston. They were undersupplied, short of manpower, and still on shaky ground politically with a large loyalist population. Yet, they got it into their heads to storm Montreal and then Quebec in the middle of winter, 1775 to 1776, expecting to be greeted by adoring natives as liberators. The fact that our 47th president has once again threatened to invade Canada can be taken as evidence that the expedition did not go as expected.

Within the thirteen colonies, the revolution began in a promising landscape. British governors were hated up and down the Atlantic seaboard, many reduced to bobbing offshore on Navy vessels while they begged for reinforcements that might, in their imaginations, turn the population back in their favor. Rebel congresses were formed, including the Continental Congress, which from Lexongton and Concord onwards realized that it was more than a political body- it was also a military body, responsible for fending off British attempts to cow the colonists with superior naval might, well-trained troops, ability to raise mercenaries all over Europe, and reserves of good will with loyalists and Native Americans. 

But the US is nothing if not a land-greedy society, and the Continental Congress cast its eyes northward, imagining that the recently (fifteen years before) captured colony of New France might want to cast its lot with the American rebels rather than its British overlords. However the way they went about this project spoke volumes. Instead of sending diplomats, rabble-rousers, or writers, they sent an army. In all, about three thousand men tramped north to subjugate the province of Quebec. 

Map of the campaign.

A virtually undefended Montreal was successfully besieged, and surrendered in November, 1775. Quebec, to the north, was another matter, however. It was far more stoutly defended, well supplied, and had competent walls and entrenchments. Conversely, the Americans were farther from their bases, camped in miserable conditions in the middle of winter, beset by disease, and could not make headway against even modest resistance. When the first British relief ship sailed into the harbor after breakup on the St Lawrence, the jig was up, and the Americans fled in disarray.

Transport was awful, with a lot of portaging between rivers.

Meanwhile, the American rule over Montreal hardly won the US any friends either. The governor treated the inhabitants like enemies, even closing Catholic churches. Benjamin Franklin was sent North to awe the natives and save the situation in April 1776, but the time for diplomacy was long past. 

Does all this sound familiar? What starts with high hopes and condescension, looking to win hearts and minds with guns, ends up winning nothing at all. The Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.. one wonders whether the invasion of Quebec was ever taught to US military students, or remembered by its politicians.

• 100 years before, same story.
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Gold Standard

The politics and aesthetics of resentment. Warning: this post contains thought crime.

I can not entirely fathom thinking on the right these days. It used to be that policy disputes occured, intelligent people weighed in from across a reasonable spectrum of politics, and legislation was hammered out to push some policy modestly forward (or backward). This was true for civil rights, environmental protection, deregulation, welfare reform, even gay marriage. That seems to be gone now. Whether it is the atomization of attention and thought brought on by social media, or the mercenary propaganda of organs like FOX news, the new mode of politics appears to be destructive, vindictive spite. A spiral of extremism.

It also has a definite air of resentment, as though policy is not the point, nor is power, entirely, but owning the libtards is the real point- doing anything that would be destructive of liberal accomplishments and ideals. We know that the president is a seething mass of resentments, but how did that transform alchemically into a political movement?

I was reading a book (Deep South) by Paul Theroux that provides some insight. It is generally a sour and dismissive, full of a Yankee's distain for the backwardness of the South. And it portrays the region as more or less third world. Time and again, towns are shadowed by factories closed due to off-shoring.  What little industry the South had prior to NAFTA was eviscerated, leaving agriculture, which is increasingly automated and corporatized. It is an awful story of regression and loss of faith. And the author of this process was, ironically, a Southerner- Bill Clinton. Clinton went off to be a smarty-pants, learned the most advanced economic theories, and concluded that NAFTA was a good deal for the US, as it was for the other countries involved, and for our soft power in the post-world war 2 world. The South, however, and a good deal of the Rust Belt, became sacrifice zones for the cheaper goods coming in from off-shore.

What seemed so hopeful in the post-war era, that America would turn itself into a smart country, leading the world in science, technology, as well as in political and military affairs, has soured into the realization that all the smart kids moved to the coasts, leaving a big hole in the middle of the country. The meritocracy accomplished what it was supposed to, establishing a peerless educational system that raised over half the population into the ranks of college graduates. But it opened eyes in other ways as well, freeing women from the patterns of patriarchy, freeing minorities from reflexive submission, and opening our history to quite contentious re-interpretation. And don't get me started on religion!

So there has been a grand conjunction of resentment, between a population sick of the dividends of the educational meritocracy over a couple of generations, and a man instinctively able to mirror and goad those resentments into a destructive political movement. His aesthetic communicates volumes- garish makeup, obscene ties, and sharing with Vladimir Putin a love of gold-gilded surfaces. To the lower class, it may read expensive and successful, but to the well educated, it reeks of cheapness, focusing on surface over substance, a bullying, mob aesthetic, loudly anti-democratic.

Reading the project 2025 plans for this administration, I had thought we would be looking at a return to the monetary gold standard. But no, gold has come up in many other guises, not that one. Gold crypto coins, Gold immigration card, Oval office gold, golden hair. But most insulting of all was the ordering up of gold standard science. The idea that the current administration is interested in, or capable of, sponsoring high quality personnel, information or policy of any kind has been thoroughly refuted by its first months in office. The resentment it channels is directed against, first and foremost, those with moral integrity. Whether civil servants, diplomats, or scientists, all who fail to bend the knee are enemies of this administration. This may not be what the voters had in mind, but it follows from the deeper currents of frustration with liberal dominance of the meritocracy and culture.

But what is moral integrity? I am naturally, as a scientist, talking about truth. A morality of truth, where people are honest, communicate in truthful fashion, and care about reality, including the reality of other people and their rights / feelings. As the quote has it, reality has a well-known liberal bias. But it quickly becomes apparent that there are other moralities. What we are facing politically could be called a morality of authority. However alien to my view of things, this is not an invalid system, and it is central to the human condition, modeled on the family. Few social systems are viable without some hierarchy and relation of submission and authority. How would a military work without natural respect for authority? And just to make this philosophical and temperamental system complete, one can posit a morality of nurture as well, modeled on mothering, unconditional love, and encouragement.

This triad of moralities is essential to human culture, each component in continual dynamic tension. Our political moment shows how hypertrophy of the morality of authority manifests. Lies and ideology are a major tool, insisting that people take their reality from the leader, not their own thoughts or from experts who hew to a morality of truth. Unity of the culture is valued over free analysis. As one can imagine, over the long run of human history, the moralities of nurture and authority have been dominant by far. They are the poles of the family system. It was the Enlightenment that raised the morality of truth as an independent pole in this system for the culture at large, not just for a few scholars and clerics. Not that truth has not always been an issue in people's lives, with honesty a bedrock principle, and people naturally caring whether predicted events really happen, whether rain really falls, the sun re-appears, etc. But as an organizing cultural principle that powers technological and thus social and cultural progress, it is a somewhat recent phenomenon.

It is notable that scientists, abiding by a morality of truth, tend to have very peaceful cultures. They habitually set up specialized organizations, mentor students, and collaborate nationally and internationally. Scientists may work for the military, but within their own cultures, have little interest in starting wars. It is however a highly competitive culture, with critical reviewing, publishing races, and relentless experimentation designed to prove or disprove models of reality. Authority has its place, as recognized experts get special privileges, and established facts tend to be hard to move. At risk of sounding presumptuous, the morality of truth represents an enormous advance in human culture, not to be lightly dismissed. And the recent decades of science in the US have been a golden age that have produced a steady stream of technological advance and international power, not to mention Nobel prizes and revelations of the beauty of nature. That is a gold standard. 

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Restraint in Foreign Policy

The restraint school of foreign policy wants the US to do less, and spend less, in foreign affairs.

A significant minority of the foreign policy establishment is trying to turn the tables on half a century of global expansion. Calling for restraint and retrenchment, (though shying away from "retreat"), they argue that we are spending too much and are overextended. What made sense in the hot and cold wars of the last century make less sense now, and indeed generates resentment and antagonism. A recent book by Peter Harris tries to make this case, though it has several defects. First, it uses a lot of loaded language like garrison and occupation, where our overseas bases do not function this way at all. Second, he does not really spend much time actually making the case for restraint, but assumes its logic and spends most of the book whining about why no one- not the foreign policy establishment, not the military-industrial complex, not the US congress, and not even the voters(!) are on board with this new and exciting movement in foreign policy. In despair, Harris veers off into domestic policy, the virtues of ranked choice voting, women's empowerment, and multi-party democracy as the golden keys enabling restraint in foreign policy to finally, some day in the future, to get a proper hearing.

The weird thing is how this community has chosen to frame its movement. Doing less, letting China run things for a change... it is not at all clear why retreat, restraint, and retrenchment would be either attractive or wise policy. We need to take a big step back and consider why we have foreign policy at all. Any nation tries to gain and keep as much power as it can. It tries to shape the international landscape in its interests, hopefully in the most far-seeing way possible. Those are the touchstones of any foreign policy. Claiming to want less power and less reach in the world is simply an intuitive non-starter. The US ended World War 2 as the most powerful nation and remains that at least up to the current administration, in all significant metrics- soft power, military power, and economic power. We need to nurture and preserve these powers for our own sake, and also for that of the system which we are the general sponsors of. As Harris points out, the international institutions that we founded after World War 2 were wonderful, but not very powerful. They were not up to the task of serious policing, and the US took on that role, as the global policeman. With a highly intermittent, sometimes irresponsible, and generally very light touch, we have been the only ones who can knock heads with anyone, any time, while also promoting stability, trade, and the expansion of democratic systems. This environment that we have shaped has been beneficial, for us and for many others around the world. The axis arrayed against us today is significant, but not very large, composed mostly of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, plus a few others like Afghanistan, maybe some of the central Asian nations.

An important additional principle of foreign relations is that there are many audiences involved. Other leaders are far from our only target when we show who we are by how we speak and use our power abroad. We seek to promote human rights and democracy to all people, everywhere. We seek to deter aggression from any number of entities, including terrorist organizations of all sizes up to states. The landscape is very complex, so we need to have many tools, and balance those tools carefully. This leads to a totally different framing of the restraint theme in foreign policy.

Take a look at the following diagram. This is a map of the military bases that we have all over the world. Better than all the platitudes those in favor of restraint put out, this one image speaks volumes about how distended one aspect of our foreign policy has become.

This begs belief. At a time when we have technological reach to anywhere and at any time, we have carved out little islands of America in eighty countries. We have over a hundred bases each in Germany and Japan. Maybe in the decade after World War 2 this might have made a little sense. But now, I cannot imagine the point of this gargantuan footprint. There are about 24 bases in sub-Saharan Africa. It is, frankly, unbelievable. None of these are zones of occupation, in the sense that we rule the country they are in. None of them, outside of perhaps South Korea, are garrisons, in the classic sense of guarding that location from harm, particularly from the natives. Our bases are all established on a cooperative basis, in what appears to be a mania for military relations with other countries, to facilitate training, arms sales, a forward footprint for ourselves, and resupply depots. They constitute a sort of international embassy system of the US military.

This is the real problem that the restraint crowd is getting at. They suggest also that another function of these foreign bases is as tripwires, to show our seriousness about each alliance and drag us into any war that the host country experiences. This may be true of our core NATO and East Asian bases, but most others are of a much less momentous, and more transactional nature. At any rate, this vast archipelago, as well as the ~500 bases within the US, is much more fertile ground for policy change in the military-industrial complex than efforts to dis-empower our foreign policy more broadly.

The crux is whether we would be more effective with a smaller footprint. While each of these foreign bases is desired at some level by its host country, (with some arm-twisting from the US), the audience is probably quite narrow- the local military, the local support staff and suppliers, some of the political class. It is hard to imagine that most people in most countries are happy to have foreign military in their backyards. Thus, looking at the larger picture of US influence abroad, it is pretty easy to make the case that the benefits of most foreign bases are outweighed by their costs, regardless of their direct price tag. This is where more humility and wisdom are needed. Retrenchment needs to be evaluated, not in the frame of why we should be retreating from the world at large and letting other great powers run their neighborhoods more freely. No, it should be evaluated on how it would benefit our soft power position, beneficially shaping the international environment and attracting more friends to our side.

All these considerations are redoubled when an actual war looms. Has our world policing and forward basing been effective? One would have to give it middling marks at best when it comes to military interventions. We saved South Korea from communism/Juche, and Kuwait from Iraq. but we failed in Vietnam, then in Afghanistan, and should not have even started the war on Iraq. Given the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, it is not a great record of using military means for foreign policy ends. The question is whether we have turned to military tools too frequently, when other options were available. The answer is definitely yes, in the cases of both Vietnam and the second Iraq war. It isn't just hindsight, but foresight at the time could have counseled the US to pass on these misbegotten wars. The Iraq war in particular was a failure on every conceivable level- strategic, humanitarian, political, and tactical. There could not be a starker lesson in how not to use military means to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Looking to the future, the Ukraine war suggests that a fair portion of our military power is also technically obsolete. Our military ability to project power rests in large part on last-century technology like aircraft carriers, tanks, and logistics (those bases!). But the new cyber and drone warfare landscape is starkly different, and may require a significant re-vamping of our overall conception of military power. The restraint school naturally fears that the normal course of the military industrial complex would be to add spending for added capabilities, while keeping all our old machinery and programs as well. The budget is not really the big question, however. Rather, do all capabilities of the government (diplomatic, economic, and military) work productively and in concert to maximize our long-term power and security? Given that better diplomacy and smarter options and thinking at the top could save so many lives and forestall such wide-ranging tragedies as the Iraq war, it makes sense to beef up those areas of the government that provide those goods. Maybe something like a formalized adversarial process of policy development, where red teams and blue teams have independent resources, and develop policy plans, historical interpretations, and forward predictions, which are then evaluated after five and ten-year time periods to gauge who is giving better advice. Maybe a history department, to go with our military, intelligence, and diplomatic departments. One can guess from such exercises that we could use less military, and more policy and cultural expertise, on the whole, in a movement that might be termed rebalancing. And this, in the end, is surely the real point of the restraint caucus.

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• A good time had by all.
• Movie of the week: Captains Courageous. I have never seen a movie deal with male culture and male role models as directly and insistently as this (if also melodramatically). It is very topical with all the current talk about men, manosphere, and the problems with boys. Not to mention the evident lack of constructive role models in the life of our current president and his circle. I am extremely fortunate to have had several great role models in my own life.

An Uneasy Relationship With the Air

Review of Airborne, by Carl Zimmer. 

The pandemic was tough on everyone. But it had especially damaging effects on the political system, and on its relationship to the scientific community. Now the wingnuts are in charge, blowing up the health and research system, which obviously is not going to end well, whatever its defects and whatever their motivations.

While the scientific community had some astounding wins in this pandemic, in virus testing and vaccine production, there were also appalling misses. The US's first attempt at creating a test failed, at the most critical time. We were asleep at the wheel of public health, again at the earliest time, in controlling travel and quarantining travelers. But worst of all was the groupthink that resisted, tooth and nail, the aerosol nature of viral transmission of Covid. That is, at the core, what Zimmer's book is about, and it is a harrowing story.

He spends most of the book strolling through the long history of "aerobiology", which is to say, the study of microbes in the air. There are the fungal spores, the plant pests, the pollen, the vast amount of oceanic debris. But of most interest to us are the diseases, like tuberculosis, and anthrax. The field took a detour into biowarfare in the mid-20th century, from which it never really recovered, since so much of that science was secret, and in its shadow, the sporadic earlier public studies that looked carefully into disease transmission by aerosols were, sadly, forgotten. 

So it became a commonplace at the CDC and other public health entities, among all the so-called infectious disease specialists, that respiratory viruses like influenza, colds, and coronaviruses spread not by aerosols, but by contact, surfaces, and large droplets. This made infection control easy, (at least in principle), in that keeping a few feet away from sick people would be sufficient for safety, perhaps plus surgical masks in extreme situations. There was a curious disinterest in the older studies that had refuted this concept, and little interest in doing new ones, because "everyone knows" what the virus behavior is.

It is hard to explain all this in purely scientific terms. I think everyone knew at some level that the true nature of respiratory virus transmission was not well-understood, because we clearly had not managed to control it, either in residential or in hospital settings. It is hard to grapple with invisible things, and easy to settle into conventional, even mythical, trains of thought. First there were miasmas, then there were Koch's postulates and contact by fluids. It was hard to come full circle and realize that, yes, miasmas were sort of a thing after all, in the form of aerosols of infectious particles. It was also all too easy to say that little evidence supported aerosol spread, since the work that had been done had been forgotten, and the area was unfashionable for new work, given the conventional wisdom.

Even more significantly, the implications of aerosol spread of viruses are highly unpleasant, even frightening. The air we need every minute of our lives is suspect. It is a bit like the relationship we have with food- deeply conflicted and fraught, with fears, excesses, and rituals. One has to eat, but our food is full of psychological valences, possible poisons, cultural baggage, judgement, libraries full of advice. No one really wanted to go there for air as well. So I think scientists, even those calling themselves infectious disease specialists, (of all things), settled into a comfortable conventional wisdom, that droplets were the only game in town.

But what did this say about the larger research enterprise? What did it mean that, even while medical/bio research community was sequencing genomes and penetrating into obscure and complex regions of molecular biology, we had not done, or at least not appreciated and implemented, the most basic research of public health- how infectious diseases really spread, and how to protect people from them? It constituted gross negligence by the medical research community- no two ways about it. And that appears to have caused the public at large to question what on earth they were funding. A glorious enterprise of discovery, perhaps, but one that was not very focused on actual human health.

A timeline of research/policy

• Sprawling work on airborne infection in 1955. 

• Earliest glimmer in latest pandemic, May 2020. 

• Deeper followup, October 2020.

• Even deeper followup, August 2021. Later, 2023.

• Critics still can not believe aerosol spread, November, 2022.

• Hospital HVAC requirements currently go to MERV 8, not enough.

• Current CDC guidance mentions aerosols only from "procedures", not from people, though masks are recommended.

Aerosol spread of disease requires two things- that aerosols are produced, and that the infectious microbes remain infectious while in those aerosols. The former is clear enough. We sneeze, after all. Even normal breathing creates fine aerosols. The latter is where scientific doubt has been more common, since many viruses are not armored, but have loose coats and membranes derived from our own, delicate cells. Viruses like HIV don't survive in aerosols, and don't spread that way. But it turns out that Covid viruses have a half life of about two hours in aerosols. 

The implications of that are quite stunning. It means that viruses can hang around in the air for many hours. Indoor spaces with poor ventilation- which means practically all indoor spaces- can fill up with infectious particles from one or a few infected people, and be an invisible epidemic cloud. No wonder everyone eventually got Covid. 

What to do about it? Well, the earliest aerobiology experiments on infectious disease went directly to UV light disinfection, which is highly effective, and remains so today. But UV light is dangerous to us as well as microbes, so needs to be well-shielded. As part of an air handling system, though, UV light is an excellent solution. Additional research has found that far-UV, at 222 nm, is both effective against airborne microbes and safe for human eyes and skin, creating an outstanding way to clear the air. Another approach is HEPA filtration of air, either as part of an air handling / exchange system, or as stand-alone appliances. Another is better ventilation overall, bringing in more outside air, though that has high energy costs. Lastly, there are masks, which are only partially effective, and the place no one really wants to go. But given a lack of responsibility by those in charge of our built environment, masks are the lowest common denominator- the one thing we can all do to protect ourselves and others. And not just any mask, but the N95 high-quality filtration mask or respirator.

The pandemic threw some sharp light into our public institutions. We sequenced these viruses in a hurry, but couldn't figure out how they spread. We created vaccines in record time, but wasted untold effort and expense on cleaning surfaces, erecting plexiglass shields, and demanding masking, rather than taking responsibility for guarding and cleaning public air spaces in a more holistic way. It is a disconcerting record, and there remains quite a bit yet to do.

• Poor (and personalized) policy means poor science and poor vaccines.
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• The Japanese ice age.

Donald Trump is no Andrew Jackson

A few notes about the Jacksonian era.

One common historical touchpoint for our current epoch is the Jacksonian era, when a populist president presided over a significant increase in presidential power, carried into the White House by a ragtag rabble. Andrew Jackson stood against the elite power centers of the time, having been denied the presidency earlier by a shady deal that gave John Quincy Adams the office. Nor did he have much more love for the aristocrats of Virginia. He came from the backwoods of Tennessee, and a long career of fighting Indians as well as the English. Once in office, Jackson cleaned house and installed a patronage system that led to decades of increasing corruption, till the civil service was instituted. He also used the veto power, and made his cabinet secretaries subservient, to an unprecedented degree.

Jackson strengthened the party system and cultivated friendly media in a way that people at the time decried as divisive and dangerous. And, perhaps most strikingly, he oversaw the mass expulsion of Native Americans from the South. Jackson was a slaveowner and had no issue with the white supremacy of his day, whether against African Americans or Native Americans. Ironically, when France decided to not honor a treaty with the US, Jackson spared no effort to defend the nation's honor and rights. But when it came to the many treaties the US had signed with indigenous nations, many expressly meant for perpetuity, they were waved away like so much smoke.

On the other hand, Jackson was a successful general and businessman and won all the major battles of his presidency. And he was successful enough to anoint a successor, Martin van Buren. He was surprisingly eloquent and well-written and had a core set of principles that guided him and the nation. One principle was the importance of the constitution and the union. While previous presidents had thought the veto power should be confined to extreme legislative acts they regarded as unconstitutional, Jackson saw nothing in the constitution against using the veto on a policy basis, to weigh in on substantive issues as a popularly elected co-equal branch of government.

More importantly, he guided the nation through a nullification crisis with South Carolina with a sure hand. Always a hotbed of resistance and secession, South Carolina took particular issue with federal tariffs, which were set quite high to favor domestic industry. Industry generally located in the North. Jackson laid the groundwork for federal military intervention, promoted a tariff reduction, and issued a forceful and closely argued denunciation of "nullification" and secession that, in combination, squelched the movement of southern states against federal supremacy. This put off for a generation the crisis that Lincoln was fated to deal with.

One of Jackson's most interesting fights was against the Second Bank of the United States. Congress had chartered, from the Washington administration onwards, a national bank that was the sole interstate financial institution of the US. It was charged with facilitating the finances of the federal government, and with providing credit for internal improvements crossing state lines. But it was in essence a private bank that had only a fraction of its board appointed by the government and otherwise ran its business on a private basis as a commercial bank. In its opening years, it was generally undersized and not well run, and by the time of the second bank, had caused a couple of recessions due to its mismanagement. 

Finally, by the Jackson administration, it had come under competent management and was both expanding in all directions and doing a reasonable job of controlling the money supply and credit in the US, by limiting expansion of the state banks, (a significant source of opposition). It had, indeed, become the largest single financial institution in the world. But to Jackson, these were hardly points in its favor. He viewed it as a dangerous center of power, as though in our day JP Morgan were the only commercial bank allowed to do nation-wide business, with no competitors. The whole idea of a publicly-run central bank had not yet arisen at this time, and the national bank was more or less modeled on the Bank of England, which was a similar hybrid private entity. Unfortunately, instead of seeking reform of the national bank into a more modern and public-interest institution, Jackson pulled the only levers he had, which were to veto the rechartering of the Second National Bank, and then to follow that up with removing all federal deposits and putting them into state banks, effectively killing it. This had the unfortunate effect of dooming the US to almost a century of financial instability and poorly regulated banking. But on the whole, I am quite sympathetic to Jackson's position in killing the bank. It was a nascent form of anti-monopoly policy, which should have been taken up more systematically later in the century.

So, Jackson was very much of his time, not a visionary who could prepare the government for the vast growth in population, social institutions, and technology that were coming. But at the same time, he was not trying to drag the US backwards in time either. He did not cruelly run rampant through federal agencies, or foster international trade wars in search of a happier dream time of mediocre jobs and pay. The economic crisis that happened during his administration was not a tantrum he threw, but rather was caused by the national bank, as it consciously fostered a recession by withdrawing credit in an attempt to turn the people against Jackson. An attempt that failed because everyone knew what was going on, and which indeed showed the kind of power that Jackson was fighting against. Andrew Jackson did not view the federal government as an extortion racket or a throne from which bootlickers could be alternately fawned over and kicked in the teeth. He was thus, despite a few parallels, quite unlike the current occupant.

I am taking most of this material from an enjoyable biography by Jon Meacham. It is based mostly on correspondence, thus is quite chatty and focused on Jackson's domestic affairs. It is, conversely, frustratingly weak on the larger historical and policy issues of his day, particularly when it comes to the bank fight, which was so important for the country's future. 

• Remember the fantastic negotiations with Kim Jong Un? These are going about as well.
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Sugar is the Enemy

Diabetes, cardiovascular health, and blood glucose monitoring.

Christmas brought a book titled "Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity". Great, I thought- something light and quick, in the mode Gweneth Paltrow or Deepak Chopra. I have never been into self-help or health fad and diet books. Much to my surprise, however, it turned out to be a rather rigorous program of preventative medicine, with a side of critical commentary on our current medical system. A system that puts various thresholds, such as blood sugar and blood pressure, at levels that represent serious disease, and cares little about what led up to them. Among the many recommendations and areas of focus, blood glucose levels stand out, both for their pervasive impact on health and aging, and also because there are new technologies and science that can bring its dangers out of the shadows.

Reading: 

• Outlive
• The many facets and forms of damage by high blood sugar, at the level of molecular biology.
• Recent analyses of blood sugar variability, from researchers at Stanford
• ... with tool for anyone with a CGM to upload their own data

Where do cardiovascular problems, the biggest source of mortality, come from? Largely from metabolic problems in the control of blood sugar. Diabetics know that uncontrolled blood sugar is lethal, on both the acute and long-terms. But the rest of us need to realize that the damage done by swings in blood sugar are more insidious and pervasive than commonly appreciated. Both microvascular (what is commonly associated with diabetes, in the form of problems with the small vessels of the kidney, legs, and eyes) and macrovascular (atherosclerosis) are due to high and variable blood sugar. The molecular biology of this was impressively unified in 2005 in the paper above, which argues that excess glucose clogs the mitochondrial respiration mechanisms. Their membrane voltage maxes out, reactive forms of oxygen accumulate, and glucose intermediates pile up in the cell. This leads to at least four different and very damaging consequences for the cell, including glucose modification (glycation) of miscellaneous proteins, a reduction of redox damage repair capacity, inflammation, and increased fatty acid export from adipocytes to endothelial (blood vessel) cells. Not good!

Continuous glucose monitored concentrations from three representative subjects, over one day. These exemplify the low, moderate, and severe variability classes, as defined by the Stanford group. Line segments are individually classed as to whether they fall into those same categories. There were 57 subject in the study, of all ages, none with an existing diagnosis of diabetes. Yet five of them had diabetes by traditional criteria, and fourteen had pre-diabetes by those criteria. By this scheme, 25 had severe variability as their "glucotype", 25 had moderate variability, and only 7 had low variability. As these were otherwise random subjects selected to not have diabetes, this is not great news about our general public health, or the health system.

Additionally, a revolution has occurred in blood glucose monitoring, where anyone can now buy a relatively simple device (called a CGM) that gives continuous blood glucose monitoring to a cell phone, and associated analytical software. This means that the fasting blood glucose level that is the traditional test is obsolete. The recent paper from Stanford (and the literature it cites) suggests, indeed, that it is variability in blood glucose that is damaging to our tissues, more so than sustained high levels.

One might ask why, if blood glucose is such a damaging and important mechanism of aging, hasn't evolution developed tighter control over it. Other ions and metabolites are kept under much tighter ranges. Sodium ranges between 135 to 145 mM, and calcium from 8.8 to 10.7 mM. Well, glucose is our food, and our need for glucose internally is highly variable. Our livers are tiny brains that try very hard to predict what we need, based on our circadian rhythms, our stress levels, our activity both current and expected. It is a difficult job, especially now that stress rarely means physical activity, and nor does travel, in our automobiles. But mainly, this is a problem of old age, so evolution cares little about it. Getting a bigger spurt of energy for a stressful event when we, in our youth, are in crisis may, in the larger scheme of things, outweigh the slow decay of the cardiovascular system in old age. Not to mention that traditional diets were not very generous at all, certainly not in sugar and refined carbohydrates.

• First, Twitter was turned into a dumpster fire, next the US.
• US government to be rebranded as X.
• Truth must die.
• "Not strictly constitutional"
• Let's go there.

To the Stars!

Reviews of "Making it So", by Patrick Stewart, and "The Silent Star" from DEFA films.

When I think about religion, I usually think about how wrong it all is. But at the same time, it has provided a narrative structure for much of humanity and much of human history, for better or worse. It could be regarded as the original science fiction, with its miracles, and reports of supernatural beings and powers. Both testaments of the Bible read like wonder tales of strange happenings and hopeful portents. While theology might take the heavenly beings and weird powers seriously, it is obvious these were mere philosophical gropings after the true gears of the world, while the core of the stories are the human narratives of conflict, adversity, and morality.

In our epoch features a welter of storytelling, typically more commercially desperate than culturally binding. But one story has risen above the rest- the world of Star Trek. From its cold war beginnings, it has blossomed into a rich world of morality tales combined with hopeful adventure and mild drama. The delightful recent autobiography by Patrick Stewart brought this all back in a new way. Looking at the franchise from the inside out, from the perspective of a professional actor who was certainly dedicated to his craft, but hardly a fan of the franchise- someone for whom this was just another role, if one that made him an international, nay galactic, star- was deeply interesting. Even engaging(!)

As a Shakespearean actor, Stewart was used to dealing with beloved, culturally pivotal stories. And this one has become a touchstone in Western culture, supplying some of the models and glue that have gone missing with the increasing irrelevance of religion. It is fascinating how heavily people depend on stories for a sense of what it should, can, and does mean to be human, for models of leadership and community. Star Trek, at least for a certain segment of the population, has provided a hopeful, interesting vision of the future, with well-reasoned moral dramas and judgments. Stewart embodied the kind of leadership style that was influential far beyond the confines of Starfleet. And his deeply engaged acting helped carry the show, as that of Leonard Nimoy had taken the original series beyond its action/adventure roots.

Where the narrative of Christianity is obscurantist, blusteringly uncertain how seriously to take its own story, and focused on the occasional miracles of long-ago, Star Trek values the future, problem solving and science, while it makes little pretense of realism. On the other hand, it is fundamentally a workplace drama, eliding many important facets of humanity, like family and scarcity. Though in the Star Trek world money is worthless and abundance is the rule, posts on starships remain in short supply. There always will be shortages of something, given human greed and narcissism, so there is always going to be something subject to competition, economics, possibly warfare. Christianity hinges on preaching and conversion, based on rather mysterious, if supposedly self-serving, personal convictions. Its vision of the future is, frankly, quite frightening. Star Trek, on the other hand, shows openness to other cultures, diplomacy, and sharing in its eschatological version of the American empire, the Federation. (Even if they get into an inordinate number of fights with un-enlightened cultures.)

The Star Trek story is so strong that it keeps motivating people to make spaceships. Just look at Elon Musk, who, despite the glaringly defective logic of sending humans to Mars, persists in that dream, as does NASA itself. It is a classic case of archetypal yearnings overwhelming common sense, not to mention clear science. But that is a small price to pay for the many other benefits of the Star Trek-style world view- one where different cultures and races get along, where solving problems and seeking knowledge are the highest pursuits, where leadership is judicious and respectful, and humans know what they stand for.

In a similar vein, the Soviets, who led humanity into space, had their own fixations and narratives of space and the future. I recently watched the fascinating movie from the East German DEFA studios, The Silent Star, (1960), which portrays a voyage to Venus. It strikingly prefigures the entire Star Trek oeuvre. There are the scientists on board, the handsome captain, the black communications officer, the international crew from all corners of the earth, the shuttle craft, the talking computer, the communications that keep breaking up, and the space ship that rattles through asteroid fields, jostling the crew. While there are several pointed comments on the American bombing of Hiroshima to set the geopolitical contrast, there is, overall, the absolute optimism that all problems can be solved, and that adventuring to seek the truth is unquestionably the most exciting way to live. One gets the distinct sense that Star Trek was not so original after all.

It was time when technology had pried open the heavens for direct investigation, and what humanity found there was stunningly unlike what had been foretold in the scriptures. It was a vast and empty wasteland, dotted with dead planets and lacking any hint of deities. We had to create an alternative narrative, with warp drive and M-class planets, where humans could recover a sense of agency and engagement with a future that remains tantalizing, even if sober heads know it is as wishful as it is fictional. It is the story, however, that is significant, in its power to give us the fortitude to go forth, not out among the stars, but into a better, more decent community here on earth.

• The long Soviet fixation on Venus.
• The Star Trek that could have been.
• Some atheist cinema is, however, not so great.
• Biden's economic policies have been very good.
• Wrong. Vaccines did the work.
• We could have really stood with Ukraine.

Hubris, Terror, and Disaster in Afghanistan

Review of "The American War in Afghanistan", by Carter Malkasian.

This book is a nightmare to read. It records one bad decision after the next, through two decades of a slow-moving debacle. Should we have invaded at all? Should we have set up a puppet government? Should we have let the mission expand to incredible society-changing scope? Should we have built a sustainable Afghan military? Could any government have stood up to the Taliban? A million questions and pointed fingers follow such a comprehensive loss. Each of the four Presidents who presided over the war made grievous errors, and tried to muddle through the resulting quagmire, until Biden finally threw in the towel.

In the end, even Mullah Omar reportedly considered whether it had been wise to refuse the US demand to turn over or turn against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. It is a poignant coda to a national tragedy. But what could we have done differently? I will divide this question into several areas, including mission creep, Islam and the Taliban, the Afghan army, and the Afghan government. At the very outset there was a sad narcissistic paradox, in the "war on terror". War is terrorism, pure and simple. The idea that others are terrorists, and that we are not when we drop bombs on them, is a curious, but typical bit of American exceptionalism. Our whole adventure in Afghanistan was colored by the vast gulf in how we saw ourselves (righteous, moral, good), and how Afghans saw us (depraved infidels who violated every norm of civilized behavior).

Mission Creep

It is startling to look back at the progression of our goals in Afghanistan. First, we asked them to give up Al Qaeda. Then we overthrew the Taliban government and installed a new one. Then we sought to establish a democracy. Then we sought to hunt down not just Al Qaeda, but also the Taliban- the former government and a significant cultural and Islamic movement. Then we sought to advance women's rights, fight corruption, and set up a competent government and army. All these things were desirable, but replicated what we could not accomplish in either Vietnam or in Iraq, working with similarly bad partners. Contrast this with our occupations of Germany and Japan, where we put a few of the former leaders on trial, policed with a pretty light touch, kept political development local at first, and concentrated on economic reconstruction. While the cultural alignments were obviously much closer, that should have moderated our ambitions in Afghanistan, not, as it happened, stimulated them progressively to "civilize" the Afghans. This is especially true when the national will and funding to deal with Afghanistan was so impaired by the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq, and later by the tortured path of Afghanistan itself. It is somewhat reminiscent of the defeat the Democrats experienced in the recent elections- a party that got a little overextended in its missions to affirm every virtue, identity and interest group, far beyond the core issues.

Islam

That Afghanistan is an Islamic country is and was no mystery, but that did not seem to get through to those setting up our progressively more invasive policies, or the new government. Poll after poll found that the Taliban had continuing support, and if not support, at least respect, because they were seen as truly Islamic, while the government we installed was not. Malkasian points out that as religious scholars, the Taliban tended to not be infected by the fissiparous tribal conflicts of Afghanistan, which Hamid Karzai, in contrast, tended to encourage. This also led the Taliban to nurture a very strong hierarchical structure, (patterned on madrassa practices), also unusual elsewhere in Afghan society. These three properties gave them incredible morale and sway with the population, even as they were terrorizing them with night letters, assassinations, suicide bombings, and other mayhem. As long as the government represented the infidel, and however well-intentioned that infidel was, the population, including the police and army, would be reluctant supporters.

The only way around all this would have been to allow one of the Northern Alliance leaders to take control of the country after they helped defeat the Taliban, and then get the hell out. But this would have invited another civil war, continuing the awful civil war Afghanistan suffered through before the Taliban rose to power. The deep conflict between the Pashtuns and the northern Tajiks, Uzbeks and other groups would never have allowed a stable government to be established under these fluid conditions, not under the Tajiks. So we came up with the magic solution, to appoint a Pashtun as president, over a nominally democratic system, but with US support that, instead of tapering off over time, rose and rose, until we got to the surge, a decade into our occupation, with over a 100,000 US soldiers.

That was never going to win any popularity contests, even if it did put the Taliban on the back foot militarily. Why was the government never seen as truly Islamic? Malkasian does not explain this in detail, but in Afghan eyes, more tuned to the US as foreign infidels than to the formal conditions of Islamic jurisprudence, the question answers itself. Democracy is not inherently un-Islamic. Consultative bodies that advise the leadership are explicitly provided. Whether they promote women's rights, or accept foreign soldiers, night raids, and legal immunity of foreigners is quite a different matter, however. Whatever the form of the government, its obvious dependence on the US, as painfully illustrated by Karzai's incessant and futile complaints about US military transgressions, was the only evidence needed that the Afghan government was, in popular terms, un-Islamic. It was the same conundrum we experienced in Vietnam- how to be a dominant military partner to a government that had at best a tenuous hold on the affections of the populace, which were in turn poisoned by that very dependence? It is an impossible dilemma, unless the occupying power is ruthless enough to terrorize everyone into submission- not our style, at least not after our dalliance in the Philippines.

The Armed Forces

Because the government never managed to get true popular support, its armed forces were hobbled by low morale and corruption. Armies and police forces are only expressions of the political landscape. Afghans are, as the Taliban shows, perfectly capable of fighting, of organizing themselves, and of knowing which way the wind blows. The army dissolved when faced with its true test. The most powerful solution would clearly have been to have a more effective and popular government that either included or sidelined the Taliban. But could there have technical solutions as well?

The air force was emblematic. The US experience in Afghanistan from start to finish showed the immense power of air attacks, when combined with ground forces. So we planned for an Afghan air force. But we seem to have planned for a force that could not maintain its own equipment, relying in perpetuity on Western contractors. Nor was the selection of assets well-organized. The Afghans mostly needed close air support craft, like attack helicopters and A10 gunships. They should have focused on a very few models that they could fully sustain, with financial and parts support from the US. But that assumes that the US, and the Afghan government, had more thoughtful long-range planning than actually existed.

Always a difficult relationship

The Government

Apart from being seen as a puppet and un-Islamic, the government was riven with tribal and regional conflicts. Karzai spent most of his time managing and trying to win tribal contests. Malkasian repeatedly shows how major decisions and mental energy went into these issues, to the exclusion of attention to the armed forces, or the resurgent Taliban, or resolving corruption, among much else. 

Overall, however, the main issue was that the US installed a top-down quasi-democracy without giving the people true power. Unlike the local political reconstruction in the post-WW2 occupations, let alone our own system, the new Afghan government was explicitly centralized, with provincial and district heads appointed by Karzai. Karzai was really the new king of Afghanistan, more or less foisted on the country, though he had a significant amount of national credibility. There was a great deal of effort to sell this to the people as democracy, and foster "communication" and collaboration, and buy-in, but the people were never allowed into a true federal system with full electoral control of their local districts. Perhaps this was done for good reason, both from the monarchical Afghan tradition, and in light of the strong tribal tensions frequently at work. But it sapped the mutual support / accountability between the people and their government.

Karzai himself broached the idea of bringing Taliban into the system early on, but was rebuffed by the US. We went on to lump the Taliban in with the other "terrorists", and they, like Ho Chi Minh, used their natural legitimacy (with enormous helpings of terror, suicide bombings, and other guerilla tactics .. yes, terrorism again!) to eventually get the upper hand. How much better it would have been to have drawn a relatively generous line against allowing the former Taliban top echelon into official capacities, suppress militias and all forms of political violence, and let the rest re-integrate and participate in a truly ground-up federal system? It was those excluded from the system who holed up in Pakistan, seethed with resentment, and organized the return to power that started in earnest in 2005/2006. The Taliban may have been a bad government and in bed with Al Qaeda and the rest of it. They were not particularly popular with people in many areas of the country. But they were also very nationalistic, highly Islamic, and made up a fair slice of Afghanistan's educated demographic. 

A common theme through all these issues is American hubris, and lack of listening / empathy / respect for / understanding of local conditions. We insisted on making the Taliban the enemy, then insisted on rooting them out through night raids, Guantanamo imprisonment, exile to Pakistan, and other degradations. And were frequently getting fraudulent intelligence to base it all on. We thought that more military power, and more money, would get what we wanted. But what we wanted was Afghans to want to work on behalf of their own country in a free, stable, and prosperous system. How could that system be built on our money and blood? It couldn't. I had to be built by the Afghans, in their own way.

• Global leadership is in play.
• Private jets are abominable. Gas taxes, anyone?
• The planet simply can not take it.
• Meritocracy... good or bad? I would offer that is a lot better than the alternative. But can it be improved?
• Drilling for the climate: geothermal power is coming along, at large scale.

Jews Demand Signs and Greeks Look for Wisdom, but We Preach Christ Crucified

Review of God of the Mind, by Rob Haskell

This blog had its start in a religious discussion, pitting a Christian perspective against an atheist one. That discussion never ended because these viewpoints inevitably talk past each other, based as they are on fundamentally different epistemologies and axioms. Is truth facts, or is it a person? Does it have a capital "T", or a little "t"? Does reality come first, or does faith? With this election, this conflict, usually politely ignorable at the cultural sidelines, has come front and center, as half the country has transferred a Christian style of reasoning to politics, with catastrophic consequences.

I very much wish I had had this book by Rob Haskell back in the day. It lays out in a concise and thorough way all (well, let's say many of) the philosophical and psychological deficiencies of god-belief. It is hands-down the best discussion I have ever read on the subject- well-written, with humor and incisive insight. For example, he provides the bible quote that I have used to title this post, in a discussion of Christianity's approach to reason and intellect. While reams of theology support Christianity with reasons, at the end of the day, any honest theologian and Christian thinker will say that reason doesn't get you there. Faith needs to come first. Only then does all else follow. And this "all" is laced with superstition, suspension of normal rules of evidence, submission to authority, and a need to convert the whole world to the same system of belief. It is, implicitly, a preference for unity and power over truth. No wonder they were marks for the charismatic authority of Donald Trump.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the whole debate is the moralism that creeps into what is ostensibly a reasoned discussion of viewpoints and philosophy. If one does not accept god, Christians have been taught to believe that there is a reason. Not a logical reason, but a moral reason. Depravity is a word that comes up. Lack of belief betrays a moral failure, because god is the foundation of all moral law (those twelve commandments!). Those outside the fold merely want their false freedom to enjoy debauchery and crime, without the nagging conscience, which is apparently implanted not by god at birth, (let alone by evolution, or by moral reasoning), but by regular sermons, loudly professed faith, and bible reading. A bible, we might note, that is full of militarism, sexual abuse, deceit, and political authoritarianism. The whole proposition is absurd, from the ground up, unless, of course, you are of the religious tribe, in which case it has an irresistible logic and allure.

No wonder Christians feel good, right, and justified. And feel a birthright to rule over all, to claim that the US is (or should be) a Christian nation. One where resistance to its moral imperatives would, at last, be futile.

But here we are, getting off track! Rob Haskell is a former protestant missionary and minister, graduate of Regent College, and came to his new positions through deep personal engagement and turmoil. He knows intimately of which he speaks. An interesting aspect of his book is that he is almost more focused on psychology than on philosophy. For it is psychology that drives religious conversion, drives people to prostrate themselves before the void, and drives a faith that calls itself truth. Without the indoctrination by families, for example, no religion would amount to much- certainly not Christianity. And indoctrination of the young is obviously a highly irrational process, combining the most powerful psychological forces known- peer pressure, parental pressure, authority, tradition, community, repetition, fancy costumes. Who could resist? And yet Christians have no problem claiming that the result of all this is belief in truth, with a capital T. 

Haskell recounts an educational experience he had inviting Mormon missionaries to an extended discussion of why he should take up Mormonism. They tout the book of Mormon, which Haskell knows very well is a absurd fabric of early nineteenth century prejudices and speculations. They tout the archeological work a few believers have undertaken to prove their scripture, which is highly dubious, to say the least. But at last, when reason fails and argument slackens, Haskell is urged to pray. Pray hard enough, and the light is sure to shine. And for Mormons, brought up with all the pressures and templates ready-made for their belief, such prayer is very likely to work, activating the archetypes and feelings conducive to agreement with their culture. Will the story or the prayer work for others? Rarely, but occasionally it does strike a nerve, especially in the psychologically vulnerable. Haskell recognizes, uncomfortably, that while the stories are different, the psychological methods used by the Mormons and by him as a missionary are eerily similar.

"This points back to what I've already described, namely that in evangelical thinking, and possibly in all religious thinking, the acceptance of certain crucial and non-negotiable ideas comes first. Then, after that acceptance comes the search for evidence that supports it. But that evidence always gets the short end of the stick. Evidence is great when it affirms the things that are accepted by faith. But here isn't a lot of interest in evangelical circles in evidence itself, or in thinking clearly about evidence. And when the evidence falls short, the believer goes back to where it all started: not evidence but faith. So, it's really a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. There's a built-in permission to be sloppy. 'We like evidence!' says the evangelical, 'so long as it proves our point. but when the evidence brings up difficult questions, we reserve the right to toss it out and appeal to faith.' ... How can you have a serious conversation with someone who thinks like this? It's like talking with your teenager."

Rationalization and confirmation bias are fundamental aspects of human psychology. Science has developed an organized and reasonably effective way to address it, but other institutions have not, notably the echo chambers of current news and social media. We do it all the time, (I am certainly doing it here), and it is no wonder that Christians do it too. The problem is the lack of humility, where Christians revel in their fantastical story, impugn anyone so dense (if not evil) as to not get it, and twist the very vocabulary of epistemology in order to declare that "Truth" comes, not out of reality, but precisely out of unreality- a faith that is required to believe in things unseen and tales thrice-told.

• And he writes a blog, too.
• Example of typical religious condescension, by J D Vance's mentor, James Orr.
• The Discovery Institute will try anything...
• Then there is the no true Scotsman defense.
• The Supreme Court lowers itself still further.
• What makes a human brain?
• We continue speeding ever faster to disaster.
• Poisonous propaganda + AI = our future.

Jimmy Carter, on Work

Jimmy Carter's "An Hour Before Daylight".

One marked contrast between the recent political conventions was the presence of former presidents. The Republicans had none, (excepting the candidate), not even the very-much alive George W. Bush, or past candidates such as Mitt Romney. The Democrats had two, plus Hillary Clinton, not to mention the current president, Joe Biden. There was additionally a representative of a fourth, Jimmy Carter, to say that he will be happily voting for Kamala Harris in the fall. It speaks to the extremist journey the Republican party has been on, compared to much more conventional (sorry!) path of the Democrats, with recognizably consistent values and respect for character and institutions, both their own and those of the country at large.

None of these Democratic leaders grew up rich. Each was formed in modest circumstances, before joining the meritocracy and working their way up. The Democratic party is now generally viewed as the party of educated people, government workers, and minorities, against the Republican coalition of the very rich and the very poor. One might summarize it as strivers through the educational system, as opposed to strivers through the capitalist system. For one group, being kind, smart, and hard-working are the annointing signs of god, while for the other, it is being rich. Some (usually Republicans) may think these are equivalent, but the current candidates demonstrate the opposite.

This theme is exemplified by the career of Jimmy Carter, who worked his way through Annapolis and a naval career partly spent in the naval nuclear program under Hyman Rickover, then worked his way to the Georgia governorship, the Presidency, and then kept on working through retirement, churning out books and doing good works. The finest of his books, (which are, frankly, a mixed bag), is apparently his memoir of his early life and environment, "An Hour Before Daylight". The theme, for me, was work- hard work. Carter grew up on a large farm, and worked constantly. The book's title comes, naturally, from when the farm day starts. There are pigs to feed, eggs to collect, cows to milk. There are fields to plow, trees to chop down, fences to mend, products to sell, and supplies to buy. The work was evidently endless, as it is on any family farm, and while Carter tells of many swimming, hunting, amorous, and other expeditions, it is the cycle of chores and worries around the farm that was clearly formative.

Jimmy with family, in his Sunday best.

But he was not the hardest worker. His family owned a lot of land, and in this segregated time during the depression, had numerous sharecropping tenants and employees, all black. Carter comments gingerly about this system, balancing his worship of his father with clear descriptions of the hopelessness of the tenant's position. They worked without dreams of attending Annapolis, or inheriting a large estate. Rather, debt was the typical condition, as the Carters ran the supply store as well as owning the land. Carter looked up to many of these employees and tenants, and recounts very close and formative relations throughout his childhood, with both black children and adults. At least until he was drawn, as the system had designed it, into the segregated churches and schools.

Jimmy at his most intense, a naval graduate.

It is hard to grasp, in our heavily urbanized and regulated existence, where work is a 9-5 job and we dream of weekends, family leave, remote work, and retirement, how much work went into a normal existance like this on a farm. Success depended not only on unstinting work, but on an even temper, shrewd foresight, family support, good community relations (including church attendance), and a lot of luck. The wealth and power of the US was built on this kind of scrabbling for economic survival and advancement. The capitalist system continually applied the screws, lowering prices for cotton when too much was being produced, a particular crisis during the depression. Carter tells of the continual inventiveness that his family devoted to new ventures, like selling flavored milks, roasted pecans, sugar cane syrup, boiled peanuts, and tomato catsup, all from their own crops. Not everything was successful, but there was a continual need, even in this out-pf-the-way rural area, to meet the market and keep coming up with new ideas for making money.

Most of all, Carter speaks with pride of his and his family's work. It provided their sustenance, and their relationships, and was thus intrinsically and automatically meaningful. Headed by a benevolent regime, at least as he understood it under his parents, it was an ideal world- busy, endlessly challenging, stimulating, and productive. This is what we need to think about in these end times of the loneliness epidemic and the plague of homelessness and meaninglessness. Religion was a strong presence, but hearing Carter tell it, it weighed relatively lightly on him and his family, (other than sister Ruth, perhaps, who became a renowned evangelist), being more a solace to the poor than a spur to the well-to-do. Their meaning came more from their community and their many and varied occupations. So when people speak of basic income programs, one has to ask whether that really addresses the problem. Much better might be a guaranteed job program, where everyone is offered basic work if they can not find it in the private sector. Productive work that benefits the community, along the lines of the WPA projects of the depression. Work is critical to meaning and mental health, as well as to our communities and nation.

• Zoning and housing.
• Religious nutters lose their minds.
• Another great use of crypto- pig butchering.
• Unbutchering one candidate's garble.
• It smells like the mob.

Welcome to Lubyanka!

Another case of penal systems illuminating their culture.

Most of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle is a desultory slog, at least if you have already read the Gulag Archipelago. But there are a few glorious set-pieces. One is the mock trial of Prince Igor of Kiev that the prisoners stage in their free time, a bitter satire of the Soviet judicial system. The second is a meticulous description of how prisoners are brought into and introduced to the Lubyanka prison- the central prison of the KGB/FSB/Cheka/GPU/OGPU/NKVD/NKGB, etc.. the frequently renamed, but never-changing organ of the Russian government.

The character is Innokenty Volodin, a Soviet diplomat who has recently had second thoughts about the rightness of the Soviet system, and has placed a call (around which the book's plot, such as it is, mostly revolves) to the Americans to prevent Russia from obtaining certain critical atomic secrets. Solzhenitsyn carefully prepares the way by portraying Volodin's rarified position and luxurious life. As was customary, Volodin is lured into his arrest under false pretenses, and finds himself driven to the prison almost before he knows what has happened. Then, with almost loving detail, Solzhenitsyn describes the not just systematic, but virtuosic process of degradation, step by step, shred by shred, of Volodin's humanity, as he is inducted into Lubyanka.

One cardinal rule is that prisoners must have no contact with other prisoners. Even to see others is forbidden. As they are conducted from one cell to the next, they are shoved into mini phone-booth cells if another prisoner is being conducted in the opposite direction. Their possessions are gradually taken away, down to buttons, belts, and steel shoe shanks. They are shorn. They are sleep deprived. They are relentlessly illuminated by glaring bulbs. They are spied on constantly. They are moved relentlessly from place to place and disoriented. In the middle of the night, the building is abuzz with activity, as though this were the very nerve center of the Soviet empire. 

While the rest of Russian society is mired, or cowed, in mediocrity, this is a shining point of competence. The purest expression of its obsessive leader, and the product of decades of careful study and accumulated wisdom. It is also a deeper expression of the nature of Russian society- its reflexive despotism and its strange infatuation with suffering. The closest thing we have is mafia culture, with its honor codes, brutality, and constant battle for dominance. Chess, the emblematic game of Russia, expresses this view of life as a pitiless contest to crush one's opponent. There may be a lot of historical reasons for this nature, such as the long centuries of Mongol rule, the many invasions, both ancient and modern, and the perceived success of leaders such as Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, but it is a deep and disturbing aspect of the Russian psyche. 

Should we have expected anything else, in the long road of declining relations after the cold war? Should the Russian people give thanks to the ruthlessness of their national leadership and psyche for the current position of relative power they wield in the world, far out of proportion to their population or economic strength? Other countries with larger populations peacefully mind their own business, avoid outside entanglements, and eschew invading their neighbors. It is the bullies, the intransigent, and the cruel, who appear to account for most of the drama in the world. Should we understand them, or fight against them?

• Another way to crush spirits.
• It is good to be outside.
• AI is not helping job seekers.
• On paying the devil his due.
• Why have kids anymore?