Students Deserve Mentors

The best form of education is personal mentoring. More of our educational and work system should get back to that model.

We learned some important things from the Covid pandemic. One is that fiscal stimulus really works. Another is that mRNA vaccines are highly effective, and their rapid and flexible development cycle makes them a superior platform for future vaccines. And another is that social interaction is deeply important, especially for young people. We all got used to Zoom, but for school children, that was a poor substitute, when it was even possible. Children were left significantly behind both academically and socially.

A recent segment on the PBS NewsHour touched on this in a discussion of adolescent development. Its message was that learning requires challenging opportunities and human relationships. Adolescents are going on a heroic quest to become adults. They thrive on active engagement with the world and need models of successful adulthood to learn from. How to provide these key functions in an optimal way? We know how to do this- by apprenticeship and mentorship. This model has been understood forever, from the schools of Athens to the medieval trade guilds to the graduate schools of contemporary academia. My grandfather was a baker in Germany, and in his turn trained many apprentices and journeymen to be bakers. I went to graduate school, which turned out to be a glorified apprenticeship under a renowned researcher, then went on to a journeyman position (aka post-doc) with another mentor. This model is an education in many dimensions- the technical ingredients of a craft, the management practices that make a successful organization, how to participate in a larger community that pursues socially important goals, and the discipline and moral integrity it takes to be a competent adult, capable of leadership.

Example of a certificate of attainment of mastery, 1927, for a bricklayer, attested by his mentors and examiners.

However, as a society, we are reluctant to make these kinds of investments in children and adolescents. Efficiency demands that class sizes be large, colleges impersonal, and money squeezed out of the system. Companies clamor for fully trained job candidates, expecting students to go into debt in trade schools before being hired into a paying job. Few young people get the kind of lengthy, personal training that they would most benefit from. Mentorship becomes a hazard of chance, if a boss in an early job takes an interest, or a teacher decides to make extra time.

Principally, I fault the corporate system, which has sloughed off its civic responsibilities to train people and propagate cultural knowledge. The economy is full of interesting and important jobs representing exquisite technical knowledge and other expertise. As a culture and economy, we are not going to maintain a high standard if we keep losing these skills and knowledge with every generation. Just look what has happened to the industries we have ceded to China. Innovation hubs like Silicon Valley are successful in part because training becomes a shared enterprise. New companies benefit from a large pool of experienced workers, who can switch between organizations with ease. No individual company carries the whole burden of training, but as companies become larger and more specialized, they have to take on the costs of training a larger proportion of their incoming employees. Yet they still benefit from the cross-fertilization of being in a highly skilled employment ecosystem.

To better serve young people, we need to make integration into corporate skills training more accessible and normal. The idea that students should be battling for unpaid internships is absurd and insulting- all internships should be paid, and they should be longer as well. The German trades system is an example, where companies and government cooperate in providing training to young people. The companies get a much better familiarity with future hires, who are also better trained. Many trades/sectors have a communal "training tax", which all companies pay, and which funds salaries to trainees and other training costs. This is one accomplishment of the union system in Germany, which is much stronger and better integrated into their industries than that in the US.

This model could be made more general in the US as a federal program, crossing all organizations in the public and private sector, funding internships and training for more students than is now done, setting up a more lengthy and regular apprenticeship system. The training/salary costs would grade over the first few years of employment from tax-supported to company-supported. Lowering the burden of a young first hire, both in financial terms and terms of knowing the candidates better, should encourage more hiring and more training by employers. 

Companies are often citadels of hermetic wisdom, when they are not going off the rails as predatory enterprises. Integrating more young people and an additional purpose of training into US corporate culture would counteract both of these problems, while helping the youth and preserving / propagating cultural knowledge more effectively.

• Mentoring, Shanghai style.
• Surrender Dorothy!
• Mini-me and the future of Ukraine.
• Free buses work.
• Crypto, on the other hand, remains a criminal enterprise.
• Biology is not so easy. Really.

The Submission Drive

Humans have a drive for social and intellectual submission, which is extremely dangerous.

There was a time when psychological "drives" were all the rage. The idea that humans have instincts much as other animals do was just entering the scientific consciousness, so finding and classifying them was an important task- the great work of figuring out the human unconscious, or subconscious. Drives for food, security, sex, dominance, and much else were found. Freud even elaborated a "death drive". But our current political epoch suggests another one- a submission drive.

To an independent minded scholar and skeptic, the behavior on the Republican side of the political spectrum is revolting. Falling all over themselves to fawn over a narcissistic megalomaniac? Check. Thinking nothing of flagrant corruption that makes Warren Harding look like a choir boy? Check. Explaining away gross incompetence and pointless cruelty across the entire policy space from economics to foreign policy? Check. What causes people to join and defend what amount to cults? For that matter, what causes people to join religions?

At one level, submission is eminently rational. Groups are always more powerful than individuals. The American archetype of the loner, the Clint Eastwood or John Wayne character riding alone to mete out justice and bucking the system- that is a fantasy. It is powerful precisely because it is so romantic and unrealistic. It is compensatory psychic food for the hemmed-in and submissive. In reality, the system always wins. Militaries win when they can gather up a bigger army than the other guys. Corporations win when they have bought all their competition and become the biggest on the block. Our social instincts lead us to join groups to gain power. 

But the submission drive seems to go way beyond this, allowing us to swallow alternate realities and even seek domination by others. An interesting form is when whole cultures convert their religion. Many times, such as during the colonial era, during the Christian conquests of Northern Europe, and during the Muslim conquests, the winning power foists its religion on another culture, a culture that grows quite rapidly to accept and adopt it as its own. Was one religion true-er or better than the other? Not at all. The new one is often significantly worse in many dimensions than the old. This is purely a power transaction where those who had submitted themselves to one archetype and narrative of cultural and supernatural power find themselves convinced that social and military coercion is a pretty important form of power too, perhaps signifying a new narrative that they should submit to. But once converted, the same psychic events happen. Leaders are idolized, scriptures are memorized, vestments are accessorized. In return, those who submit seek safety and guidance, buying into a (new) father figure archetype.

Joining a group inserts you into a hierarchy of domination. There are rewards for working your way up the ranks, being able to get others to serve you, having more influence and status. This most obvious in the military, with its obsession with colorful gradations, decorations, and uniforms. But it is true everywhere- in corporations, politics, organized crime, families. Submission is the price of entry, and it seems that to properly submit, one has to take on the a great deal more than just a signed contract. Members of organizations are constantly being tested for their loyalty, their buy-in to the ethics and goals of the organization, and its wider world-view. At IBM, they used to sing the company song. Modern corporate life is a complex compromise where some of the submittee's personal life is allowed to be separated from corporate control, and many boundaries are set by legal regime to prevent the organization from turning into a criminal entity and bar total domination of its employees, customers, business partners. 

However, other organizations are not so limited. Religion and politics are a bit less hemmed-in, and demand sometimes extraordinary kinds of fealty for the rewards on offer. In their variety of styles and cultures, they attract different temperaments of devotee. Overall, one has to say that people more prone to submission and participation in hierarchies tend to go to right-wing political, military, and religious organizations. Contrary to the cultivated image of hard-headedness and independence, conservatives turn out to submit more readily to domination by others. It is notorious that organizing Democrats is like herding cats. Likewise, university faculty tend towards independence and disorganization. Liberal churches are notoriously light on discipline and free with their theology. 

Conversely, Republican and conservative organizations spring up like weeds and have, aside from gobs of funding, remarkable discipline. The MAGA swoon for the current president is just one example of the lengths to which thought patterns can be bent in favor of the dominant leader of the moment. The corollary of greater mental submission by the followers is greater rewards and wider scope of action for the leaders. Making it to the top of such disciplined heap seems to turn psychology on its head, from submission to domination. Napoleon is a case study, working his way up the ranks, literally, to a position of ultimate power. Which promptly went to his head, causing him to veer in a conservative direction, and to wreck half of Europe. Cult leaders have time and again shown how poorly adapted we are to this much-sought after, but rarely successful, psychological transition.

The fascist/authoritarian moment that is glowering around the world has reactivated these extreme domination/submission dynamics, such as between Russia and Ukraine, and within so many far-right movements and the poitical systems they target. Fortunately, there are just fundamental temperamental barriers to the attractiveness of such movements, forcing them to take extra-legal measures if they are truly dedicated to overcome the resistence of the less submissive members of their societies.

• Much of this is drawn from a classic book, "Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War".
• Report card on the courts.
• Waymo is hitting the highway.
• Plastic.

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.
• The Covid vaccine fights cancer!
• Warfare and social growth.
• Voting systems literally owned by Republicans?
• Crypto, crime, corruption.

The Revenge of History

China's cyclical history and the practice of meta-politics.

I have been studying the basics of Chinese history, getting my dynasties straight. And one observation made by everyone is the cyclicity of this history- the way it swings between unity and division, rise and collapse. One might say, however, that the real through-line is that of strong-man rule. Whether during warring states or in a unified empire, there has never been democracy in China. The states may be small or large, but they are always run by the same principle- authoritarianism. Thus the political evolution of China has been more concerned with how to ameliorate authoritarianism, with Confucianism the major (and Taoism and Buddhism the minor) modes of an (aspirational) ethic of rule that is more humane than the legalist school of pure power.

For example, one can ask the question: Why in such an ancient culture with such a lengthy political tradition, could Mao and the communist party turn it all upside down in the 20th century? Clearly it was not quite the revolution that it seemed, bringing not another system, but another emperor to the throne, one of astonishing cruelty, who killed off roughly 1/20 to 1/10 of the population over his career.

China's history is certainly a retort to the "End of History" school of thought, which had hoped to find in Western-style democracy the final refuge of humanity. One that all people and nations would recognize and join after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hopes were nurtured that Russia might find its way to democracy, as they were towards China as well, after we did so much to encourage its capitalist development. Neither were requited, and now we ourselves are slipping into the quicksand of authoritarianism. What is going on?

One can view the American founding as a sort of meta-politics, where the best and the brightest got together, not to wage a war for supremacy, but to conceive a system that would allow continuous political development without bloodshed. Make up a few rules, set a few precedents, and we were launched on a political voyage that only descended into civil war once, and otherwise has maintained a responsive and distributed system of political control. Such meta-politics attempts to evade "real" history, which is made up of naked contests for power. One can say that it "gamified" politics by taking it off the plane of warfare, and onto a more benign plane of electoral and civic argument. It has been a shining example of human efforts to rise above our base nature.

But there is a problem, which is that it is still a contest for power, and the more serious the participants, the more tempted they are to change the rules of the game, back to the naked forms of yore. It is only the revulsion of the public against defectors that can confine power to those willing to play by the game's rules. And that revulsion has steadily eroded over the recent decades. I would place the start of this process at Newt Gingrich, who first whipped his caucus into shape with a discipline that eliminated individual conscience, and who sharpened propaganda and flamethrowing into political art. The FOX-based media ecosystem has eviscerated truth and principle as political concepts, not to mention empathy, and now celebrates political criminality as a matter of course. We are at war.

Again, China has never known democracy, so its political culture vacillates merely between more or less benign autocracies. From the astonishingly brutal rule of the Qin, to the cosmopolitan states of the Tang and Song. The "mandate of heaven", which is to say, popular opinion, is important, but is usually expressed through the ability of a revolutionary strong man to gather support. Muslim political culture is similar, having few suggestions about how a ruler should be chosen, but assuming always that there will be a ruler. The overall theme is that, especially by the "realist" school of foreign policy, history and the normal course of events are composed of naked contests for power, won by the most ruthless, shameless, and cruel. The ideas of the enlightenment offered an end to this state of affairs, by making politics about what they should be about- the opinions of the governed- systematically and peacefully. But to do that, the opinions of the governed also need to be enlightened, capable of sanctioning a politician for breaching the rules of the game, even if that politician is on their side. And that is what is so clearly missing today, as we gradually slip back into history.

• A letter from China.
• How do they make it with so many losses? Tax fraud.
• Bill Mitchell on crypto.
• Russia's attitude towards peace.

The Problem of Desire, Part 2

What is the future of capitalism?

Last week, I discussed how capitalism is a natural way for many of our desires to organize economic activities, though leaving important other desires out in the cold. The philosophical work to come up with alternatives to capitalism appeared, in the end, to be a practical dead end, however appealing to idealists. But what comes next? Once we have settled on the mixed political / economic system that is the rule over most of the modern world, how can we envision it serving humanity into the future? Is it sustainable?

The answer to that is: obviously not. We have far higher population, and use far more resources than the earth can supply sustainably. We might blame capitalism, but that is just the ugly packaging covering our own desires. There was a nice article in the NYRB recently about "degrowth communism", promoting the ideas of Kohei Saito, another provocative self-labeled Marxist. It makes of Marx some kind of prophet of green, which frankly could hardly be farther from the truth. Marx wanted workers to own the means of production so that they could all share in the fruits of modern technology, not to make them return to the idiocy of rural life. So, while degrowth is an important idea, its connection with Marxism is specious, other than the catastrophic degrowth unintentionally induced by the various implementations of Marxism through the last century.

If we excercised our wisdom, we would desire, first and foremost, a sustainable form of life. Unfortunately, our technologies and forms of pillaging the earth have ranged so widely by this point that we hardly have any idea of the harms we are causing and the shortages that are building up. Who would have predicted that plastics and forever chemicals would turn into a growing plague? Who has the answer to climate change? The key thing to realize, however, is that we have the power. We do not need a revolution overturning capitalism, because we have the state. The state can regulate, it can nationalize, it can utility-ize, it can crush companies or create them. It can make the rules and change the rules. It is through the state that we can express our larger desires for sustainable and decent living. 

For example, states can (and have) set up a carbon tax to move the transition away from fossil fuels. California has done so, as have many other countries. Just because we in the US are at a corrupt and mean political moment where short-term (at best) thinking rules the roost does not mean that people's deeper and longer-term interests will forever remain submerged. Indeed, this moment has provided an instructive (if appalling) window into how powerful the state can be. 

The article cited above also maintains that growth is inherently tied to capitalism, and that degrowth requires a revolution of some kind. Again, I beg to differ. Capitalism simply is a way to satisfy our desires. If we want to live simply, it will still serve us. Whether growing or contracting, capitalism marches on doing its best to satisfy our desires. Companies compete for business and growth, but there are plenty who have stable business models, such as, to take one example, the toothpaste business. 

More interesting is the popular revolt against growth that is expressed in declining birth rates. All over the modern economies, people are having fewer children, and causing a great deal of head-scratching and alarm. Is this due to the death of patriarchy? A fear of the future? The death of boredom? I think it has a lot to do with the fundamental contraction of our frontiers and a sense of limits. After a couple of centuries of breakneck growth, when large families were common and there were always new territories to occupy, we in the US hit the ceiling in the 1970s. Cities stopped growing, housing construction slowed, zoning enforced stasis. The expense and complexity of raising children in this environment grew as well, becoming subtly more competitive than cooperative. 

So, growth is slowing already, but not enough to save us from extreme ecological harms. We do need a more conscious degrowth strategy, encompassing accommodation of lower population, slowing down of lifestyles in some regards, strong movement through the sustainable energy transition, expanding natural habitats instead of degrading them. In all these issues, capitalism is not the problem. The problem is figuring out what we really want. In Europe over the centuries, there was a gradual transition from building with wood to building with stone. Which is to say, the value of sustainability gradually won out over wasteful short-term solutions. We need to start building in stone, metaphorically, thinking of the next hundred and thousand years, not just our own brief lifetimes.

• Bearing witness to the unconstitutional court.
• Krugman points out that Brazil is way ahead in crypto... specifically their central bank coin, Pix. In the US, banks, crypto, and Republicans are ideoidiotically opposed.
• Continuously unconstitutional.
• Is nothing sacred?

The Problem of Desire

We got what we want... are we happy now?

I have been enjoying a podcast on philosophy, which as is typical for the field, dances around big questions and then pats itself on the back for thinking clearly. What really got to me was a discussion of why Zizek, who calls himself a communist, couldn't be bothered to frame a positive system for how the world should be run. No, he is merely the philosopher and critic of the screwed up system we are in. Plenty of hard work there! Asking for a way forward, well, that would be like making the visionary have to build the rockets and recruit the astronauts to build the new world. That is someone else's work ... grubby details!

Whoa! The thinker who is just a critic is leaving the job almost wholly undone. Everyone is a critic, after all. The paying work should be in thinking up better worlds and solutions, and standing behind them in the face of the inevitable, yes, criticism. A major obsession of the show and these philosophers (around the 200 episode mark) is capitalism- why it is so terrible, the many critiques and complaints about it, and throwing some love at the anarchists, communists, and other outré comrades ... on the highest philosophical plane, of course. 

But what it all boils down to for me is the problem of desire. The capitalist system is one natural and highly refined way to get what we want. We pay into the system with our toil, and get back the products of everyone else's toil. Fair and square, right? The system is wholly shaped by desire. What the consumer wants out of the system, what the worker knows they need to do in order to be that consumer, and what the capitalist and managerial classes need to do to put the two together, and make a killing for themselves in the bargain. This system is a wonder of labor allocation, providing the most varied and productive forms of work, and of products, ever known.

A still from Chaplin's Modern Times.

And yet... and yet, this system doesn't really give us everything we want, because, well, there are other desires that aren't met in the capitalist market. Desires for love, for community, for a virtuous and just political system, for a wholesome environment. There are a lot of other desires, and letting capitalism gobble everything up and sell itself as the end-all of social organizing principles is obviously not a healthy way to go. Though we have surely tried! Not to mention the warped psychology of pitting everyone against each other in the many competitive planes of capitalism- the labor market, the exploitation by capitalists, assaults of marketing and advertising, and the resulting inequality of income and wealth. There is plenty to complain about here.

The problem is that we have many desires, of which many conflict with the desires of others, and many conflict with each other. Even for the individual person, prioritizing one's own many desires is an excruciating exercise of tradeoffs and negotiation. Imagine what that is like for a whole society. That is why figuring out what is "good" is such a chestnut in philosophy. We all know what is good at some very abstract level, but the variety and relationship of goods is what does us in. 

So it is easy enough to say that the capitalist system is evil, and we would like a new and better system, please. Much more difficult to frame a replacement. Following our desires makes it clear that capitalism is an element of the good life, but far from the only element. Even something as simple as providing toothpaste can not be left entirely to the capitalist system. Our desire for effective toothpaste can easily conjure up fraudulent business "models", where the fluoride is left out, or lead contamination gets in. The government has a role in this most humdrum of capitalist goods, to provide a legal framework for liability, perhaps direct regulation of medical / food products, not to mention guarding against monopolies other forms of business regulation. 

We end up, as we have in practice, with a mixed system where natural capitalist motivations are fostered to provide as much organization as they can, but our many other, often much more lofty and significant, desires lead us to regulate that system extensively. To put a larger frame around this, consider what the good life is in general terms. It is a life where each person is educated to the extent they wish, and contributes in turn to society in some useful way, building a life of mutual respect with others in their community. It aligns very strongly with the American dream of work, striving, and self-reliance, at least once the genocidal clearance of the original inhabitants was taken care of. The Civil war was premised on the abhorrence of slavery, not only on behalf of the abused Blacks, but also as a philosophical system of life where people thought it their right to live parasitically by the sweat of other people's brows. 

This has strong implications for our current moment, where inequality is higher than ever. A well-organized society would reward work with the kind of pay that supports a respectable life. It would not tolerate immiseration and abuse in the labor market. At the same time, it would not allow the incredible concentration of wealth we see today. And especially, it would not allow the intergenerational transfer of that wealth, nor the complexity and laxity of a tax system that provides the majority of work that the rich appear to engage in- that of avoiding taxes. In order for everyone to live a good life, children should neither be born to so much money that they fritter their lives away, nor to so little that their whole futures are immediately wiped away. All this requires a strong and moral state, working in collaboration with a strongly regulated capitalist system.

It has been abundantly proven that neither anarchism, nor communism, nor libertarianism provide the basis for practical societies. No amount of reframing, or consciousness raising, or struggle sessions, will bring such systems to pass. Only theocracies and autocracies have shown a comparably durable basis, though of a distinctly unpleasant kind. Therefore, philosophies that dabble in such utopianism should recognize that they are dealing in abstractions that can be instructive as extreme ends of a spectrum, as well as object lessons in failure. It is simply malpractice to tease people with glimmering alternatives to our communal realities, rather than doing the gritty work of reform within them.

• Case in point... jeans in the DDR.
• Bill Mitchell on the commodification of leisure.
• The Supreme court continues abetting clearly illegal activities.
• Science, schmientz
• Gullible prove resistant to further gulling.
• Yes, this gullible.

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.

• What the hell is it with ivermectin?
• Christian is as Christian does.
• Code red on vaccines.
• 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.

Party Of The Future

Not the past ... what the Democrats can do to succeed.

The Democratic party has gotten a little lost, perhaps led a bit too well by Joe Biden, who wandered out of a more civilized and decent time. But focusing on personalities would be wrong- there are much deeper currents at work. While it remains hard to believe that billionaires have successfully hijacked the US government on the back of demogogic appeals to the uneducated, resentful, and bigoted, that is pretty much where we are. Those billionaires are dismantling the US government as fast as humanly possible, so it is imperative for the Democratic party to regain its grip on reality, and on a winning coalition.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the new administration is just how retrograde it is. Its obsession with tariffs comes out of economics at least a century out of date. There was the weird fetishization of William McKinley, and of a replay of our colonial interlude from the late 1800's vs Greenland, maybe even Canada. There is the rollback of the regulatory state, the literal gilding of the oval office, and blithe dismissal of the last hundred years of public health advances. Rather than making America great again, it is making America backwards again, waging a bitter war against the universities and any elites not bending the knee. At this rate, we are heading backwards by the week, to perhaps before the Revolution and onwards to the depths of the royal prerogatives of Henry VIII. Who everyone says was a very great king, by the way!

It is fine to complain, (while we still can), but the more important task is to come up with a better message and coalition, so that the US can get back to looking forward, instead of backward. One way to look at the electorate is in very broad thirds- one elite third, rich and business-centric, another elite third, college educated and liberal, and one third working class. 61% of the population have some college, and 45% have a college degree of some sort. The Democratic party has increasingly moved from its base in the working class to this educated portion of the electorate, and we should own up to what is in essence a battle between two elites- the business elite and the educated elite. These have very different ethics, at least at this late phase of capitalism, when business leaders (if we can call the president that) seem just as interested in business models of grift and fraud (subprime loans, lying about fossil fuels, crypto) as those that build the country. 

Face the past

This diametric difference in ethics is why the divisiveness is at such a fever pitch now. But Democrats made a lot of mistakes as well, of which I can mention four. First, immigration. The utter loss of control at the southern border was highly unpopular. It was unfair to everyone who participated in the (highly unfair, and punishing) legal immigration system. It showed scenes of chaos and lawlessness. And it was an economic threat to everyone on the lower end of the economic spectrum- exactly those demographics the Republicans were aiming at. Second, extreme woke. With the best of intentions, liberal elites set up increasingly abstruse and extreme theaters of correctness, demanding oaths of DEI adherence from faculty, celebrating every deviance from tradition- in the political sphere, in children's literature, and the ever-extending letters of the LGBT... etc. community. All this strenuous virtue signaling was highly distracting and estranging from the bedrock of political coalition-building: unity and common sense. Third was foreign policy, principally the disastrous Afghan withdrawal. For all of the Biden administration's competence in policy over a vast gamut, this was handled very poorly. Granted, it was a cake that was baked by the Trump administration's bad deal with the Taliban, and the management on the ground was run by the military, not the White House, but whatever the cause, it looked bad to catastrophic for US standing the world. And fourth is regulatory gridlock, sapping our ability to build anything, driving up housing costs specifically.

Democrats can not just wait out the madness in Washington, and expect to be elected as the default governing party. They have to face up to ways they have strayed from a winning coalition, and think deeply about fixing it and offering a narrative and program that is both responsible and welcoming to most Americans. 

Face the future

The basic problem of US politics is that we have some unpleasant truths to face. The frontier is gone, the climate is rapidly heating up, US international power is declining. We have rapidly switched from a rising, expansive, and optimistic power to a conservative and somewhat crabby power. Our last tango with a new frontier, that of space, ended up cruelly fruitless. Robotic scientific missions have been spectacularly productive, but manned spaceflight has gone from the height of optimism to another rote exercise in great power sclerosis. There is no there there, in terms of any economic, let alone demographic, frontier. And on top of that, the planet we are thus stuck on is becoming increasingly uncomfortable, even hostile. The future is looking a bit constricted, and more so because the rich elites have lost any sense of collective dedication, and devote themselves to screwing everyone else.

Republicans have addressed these issues by lying, denial, and fantasy, powered by their rabid media sphere. Obviously, Democrats have done and will do better. The current administration makes it clearer than ever what the regulatory state is about, and it is about helping people and restraining the powerful. Democrats need to keep beating the drum that financial protection, drug regulation, food inspection, securities fraud investigation.. these are all aimed at keeping the system fair for the regular citizen. They are not "the deep state", they are not very expensive, either. They are hated only by their antagonists- fraudulent businesspeople. More broadly, inequality is culturally corrosive and calls for taxing the rich more, not less. It is insulting to working people that income from capital gains (let alone carried interest) is taxed less than labor. Everything should be taxed the same- investments, labor, estates, changes in trust membership ... everything.

Build the future

At the same time, practicality has to take a front seat. Democrats need to alter course to promise that regulators keep their eye on the ball of efficiency- fulfilling their mission without tying the economy in knots. This applies particularly to building and zoning. The most liberal areas of the country are also the most conservative, in terms of real estate. The dread of "sprawl" has excused total stasis and lack of building, even as immigrants are allowed to flood in. The result is predictable enough. 

Next, the environment. Democrats did the responsible and foresighted thing with climate bills of the Biden administration. And that helped to build up the green transition. Too little, too late, but these were broadly popular, and need to be continued. The problem is that we are still facing a difficult transition, particularly from gas cars, and on a wide spectrum of other harms such as plastics, habitat loss, resource scarcity. Democrats need to take the long view here that sustainability is the ultimate goal. Everyone can see that our current practices are not fundamentally sustainable. Catastrophes ramp up in frequency and intensity. Democrats have to be the truth-tellers here, while pointing out that building green is beneficial across the board.

Lastly, education. Our education system lays the golden eggs, powering the future of better living standards and international competitiveness. It should be easy for Democrats to make the case against the war on education being carried out by the current administration. Yet, some rebalancing is needed. We have neglected the working class end of the system, and should strengthen community colleges to provide more low-cost trades education. It is appalling that the poor are preyed upon by fly-by-night trade schools in a rich country that supposedly has high standards of education and workmanship. 

Additionally, Democrats might address the deeper malaise among the young and in the culture at large by calling for national service. Two years for young people spent on serving others would be highly beneficial. Choices could range from military to conservation corps, and medical assistance. The main condition would be that these would be non-specialized, mixed groups so that participants work with people from all walks of life in the US, (or in the Peace Corps), broadening their experience and vision of what it means to be part of this country. Call this a form of civic education, essential to a democratic society.

Democrats have the tools, and need to reach out a bit to form a bigger coalition. The right wingosphere has successfully demonized learning, knowledge, and regulation, and it is all coming home to roost in the current administration. But the regulatory state was built originally not out of a college educated coalition, but a progressive working class movement, revolted by the corruption and inequality of the gilded age. Republicans can't help themselves but serve the rich and powerful. Democrats can re-align with their natural coalition.

• In many cases, going backwards requires lying.
• A brief history of environmental law.
• Wingnuts and lies in Poland.
• Thune and the utter dereliction of congress.
• Trampling all over whatever is left of the constitution.
• Hospice, or tax cuts?
• We are leaving the global stage.
• And carrying water for Russia.
• The next frontier, after zero carbon.
• FDA as a fully captured regulator.
• Another reason why crypto is so great.

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.
• Department of injustice and thought crime.
• Who needs new music?
• Putin and money.
• Another argument for public schools.
• Another biological thing that didn't exist, until it did- lymph drainage in the brain.
• No wonder no one wants to become a primary care physician.
• 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.
• Worst way possible.
• Love-bombing, Tump-style.
• A problem of meaning. And relationships.
• Whither the model train industry?

Making America Great: First Quarter Report Card

Are we great yet? I give some grades.

Enhancing the rule of law, and adhering to the constitution: F

This administration is characterized by contempt. A juvenile contempt for its enemies, and thorough contempt for the law, separation of powers, and the constitution. In asserting its royal prerogative to eviscerate legislatively created agencies, it is taking more power from congress, as if congress weren't sufficiently neutered and ineffective already. We are watching a replay of the transition of Rome from a republic to a monarchy, though in much more ham-fisted fashion, as its senate was sidelined. So far, the Republicans in congress do not see the danger, as they cheer on the mayhem. But it will come for them more directly in due time, maybe in Trump's third term, as he grooms Eric to be next in line.

Economic growth: F

The markets have given their verdict, which is thumbs down. The trade war this administration has started, in royal fashion, is bad for us and bad for everyone else. Even putting aside the short-term insanity, the long-term implications are lower living standards and lower growth. To take one example, what is going to happen if people in the US are effectively confined to buying US-built cars? We will be going back to the 60's and 70's, when cars were poorly built, and the captive market meant that US car makers did not have to innovate. We should focus on strategic industries, to preserve base-line capacity to build things, but otherwise let foreign trade work its economic magic.

Peace on earth: F

The new administration is siding with aggressors all over the world now, especially Russia and Israel. China is the only exception, though its support for Taiwan is quite a bit more tepid than that of the last administration. Siding with aggressors is a recipe for more war. More broadly, the US has lost its moral high ground, such as it was, and is losing friends at a rapid clip. I mean, how can one alienate Canada? That really takes some serious stupidity. Trump was angling for a Nobel Peace Prize, by ending the Ukraine war. But predictably, Putin plays him for the fool he is, and keeps on doing what he wants to. The instability and madness of the current administration is another factor all by itself, leading to international instability and higher risk for war, not to mention driving countries around the world into the arms of the truly stable genius... China.

Education and innovation: F

Of all the things that make our country great, it is education that has the greatest long-term implications. That is where the human capital comes from, and the technological innovation. We can grant that Republicans rely on less educated voters, so logic dictates that they make voters less educated. And that is what this administration has been doing with determination, eviscerating the department of education, cancelling and slashing funding for research, and ultimately promoting the destruction of public schools, through vouchers and other long-standing hobbyhorses of the right. This may make a country more amenable to royal rule, but is unlikely to make the US anything other than a diminished and declining power with lower living standards, less attractive to foreign students and foreign investment. China will shortly be the leading nation in high-level scholarly research.

Health and Safety, Pro-worker Policy: F

Here as well, the administration has spoken loudly through its actions and appointments. Putting an anti-science vaccine denier in charge of HHS, and slashing personnel throughout the health agencies, and OSHA, and immediately kneecapping the labor relations board. Medicaid is slated to lose a trillion dollars, in favor of tax cuts for the rich. It all says that business and the rich are the true constituency of this administration, not people, let alone workers. Workers, indeed, are the evident enemy. How different this is from the campaign rhetoric! But that is how grifters work. And they will be gone before the real costs sink in.

Safeguarding democracy: F

Honestly, is this even a subject?

Culture and style: F

White Potus. Also, the Zelensky meeting. 

Drain the swamp: F

The inauguration set the tone, as Trump introduced an eponymous meme-coin, which his friends and insiders stocked up on before the public offering, in a naked pump and dump, even if the dump part of the operation has been delayed. Much bigger, however, is the tariff-palooza, which has the world "kissing my ass". No possibility of corruption there! If there were a lower grade than F, it would be awarded here.

Clear and elevated rhetoric: F

Again, the Zelensky meeting. I recently watched a documentary series on John F. Kennedy, which demonstrated that one needn't go back to the 19th century to encounter well-written, coherent, and civil political discourse in America. While admitting that the Biden administration was hardly a high point of forceful communication, at least it was civil- domestically and to our friends and partners abroad. Trump and his toadies compete for juvenile putdowns, unthinking meanness, and large helpings of lies. When actual policy is needed, elliptical "the weave" expressions clear the field of coherent thought, to make room for more chaos and cons.

OK, other than in these areas, things are going great. If your metric is owning the libs, destroying the government, giving away the store to the rich and to Russia, and having people line up to kiss the president's ass, then everything is going very well. 

It is important to understand that, generally speaking, the government exists to protect people from each other, especially protect the little people. The rich can take care of themselves, at least until things get really bad. It is the little people who need the Bill of Rights, the consumer protection bureau, the SEC, the FDA, the VA, OSHA, and all the other regulatory agencies that keep the rapacious wolves of capitalism on their leashes. Everyone benefits from civil service protections, transparency, rules, and law. But the little people benefit the most, because they are beset the worst in the capitalist system. All men are created equal, but not really. The insanity of giving up our government to the people with the most money is truly astounding, and we are seeing the fruits daily.

• Gary Kasparov gives some advice.
• Law, schmaw.
• The three-toed sloth posits AI is not intelligent, but another cultural technology, maybe a regurgitation machine. Or a feral card catalog. But does it help us think better?
• The barriers to knowing thyself.
• Making China great again.
• Gosh, if RFK wanted to get to the bottom of autism, did he attend this talk downstairs?

What Causes Cancer? What is Cancer?

There is some frustration in the literature.

Fifty years into the war on cancer, what have we learned and gained? We do not have a general cure, though we have a few cures and a lot of treatments. We have a lot of understanding, but no comprehensive theory or guide to practice. While some treatments are pin-point specific to certain proteins and even certain mutated forms of those proteins, most treatments remain empirical, even crude, and few provide more than a temporary respite. Cancer remains an enormous challenge, clinically and intellectually.

Recently, a prominent journal ran a provocative commentary about the origins of cancer, trashing the reigning model of "Somatic Mutation Theory", or SMT. Which is the proposition that cancer is caused by mutations that "drive" cell proliferation, and thus tumor growth. I was surprised at the cavalier insinuations being thrown around by these authors, their level of trash talk, and the lack of either compelling evidence or coherent alternative model. Some of their critiques have a fair basis, as discussed below, but to say, as the title does, that this is "The End of the Genetic Paradigm of Cancer" is simply wrong.

"It is said that the wise only believe in what they can see, and the fools only see what they can believe in. The latter attitude cements paradigms, and paradigms are amplified by any new-looking glass that puts one’s way of seeing the world on steroids. In cancer research, such a self-fulfilling prophecy has been fueled by next-generation DNA sequencing."

"However, in the quest for predictive biomarkers and molecular targets, the cancer research community has abandoned deep thinking for deep sequencing, interpreting data through the lens of clinical translation detached from fundamental biology."

Whew!

The main critique, once the gratuitous insults and obligatory references to Kuhn and Feynman are cleared away, is that cancer does not resemble other truly clonal disease / population processes, like viral or bacterial infections. In such processes, (which have become widely familiar after the COVID and HIV pandemics), a founder genotype can be identified, and its descendants clearly derive from that founder, while accumulating additional mutations that may respond to the Darwinian pressures, such as the immune system and other host defenses. While many cancers are clearly driven by some founding mutation, when treatments against that particular "driver" protein are given, resistance emerges, indicating that the cancer is a more diverse population with a very active mutation and adaptation process. 

Additionally, tumors are not just clones fo the driving cell, but have complex structure and genetic variety. Part of this is due to the mutator phenotypes that arise during carcinogenesis, that blow up the genome and cause large numbers of additional mutations- many deleterious, but some carrying advantages. More significantly, tumors arise from and continue to exist in the context of organs and tissues. They can not just grow wildly as though they were on a petri plate, but must generate, for example, vascular structures and a "microenvironment" including other cells that facilitate their life. Similarly, metastasis is highly context-dependent and selective- only very few of the cells released by a tumor land in a place they find conducive to new growth. This indicates, again, that the organ setting of cancer cells is critically important, and accounts in large part for this overall difference between cancers and more straightforward clonal processes. 

Schematic of cancer development, from a much more conventional and thorough review of the field.

Cancer cells need to work with the developmental paradigms of the organism. For instance, the notorious "EMT", or epithelial-mesenchymal transition is a hallmark of de-differentiation of many cancer cells. They frequently regress in developmental terms to recover some of the proliferative and self-repair potential of stem cells. What developmental program is available or allowed in a particular tissue will vary tremendously. Thus cancer is not caused by each and every oncogenic mutation, and each organ has particular and distinct mutations that tend to cause cancers within it. Indeed, some organs hardly foster any cancers at all, while other organs with more active (and perhaps evolutionarily recent) patterns of proliferation (such as breast tissue, or prostate tissue) show high rates of cancer. Given the organ setting, cancer "driver" mutations need not only unleash the cell's own proliferation, but re-engineer its relations with other cells to remove their inhibition of its over-growth, and pursuade them to provide the environment it needs- nutritionally, by direct contact, by growth factors, vascular formation, immune interactions, etc., in a sort of para-organ formation process. It is a complicated job, and one mutation is, empirically, rarely enough.

"Instead, cancer can be broadly understood as “development gone awry”. Within this perspective, the tissue organization field theory is based on two principles that unite phylogenesis and ontogenesis."

"The organicist perspective is based on the interdependency of the organism and its organs. It recognizes a circular causal regimen by closure of constraints that makes parts interdependent, wherein these constraints are not only molecules, but also biophysical force."

As an argument or alternative theory, this leaves quite a bit to be desired, and does not obviate the role of  initiating mutations in the process.

It remains, however, that oncogenic mutations cause cancer, and treatments that address those root causes have time and again shown themselves to be effective cancer treatments, if tragically incomplete. The rise of shockingly effective immunotherapies for cancer have shown, however, that the immune system takes a more holistic approach to attacking disease than such "precision" single-target therapies, and can make up for the vagaries of the tissue environment and the inflammatory, developmental, and mutational derangements that happen later in cancer development. 

In one egregious citation, the authors hail an observation that certain cancers need both a mutation and a chemical treatment to get started, and that the order of these events is not set in stone. Traditionally, the mutation is induced first, and then the chemical treatment, which causes inflammation, comes second. They state: 

"The qualitative dichotomy between a mutagenic initiator that creates ’cancer cells’ and the non-genetic, tissue-perturbing promoter that expands them may not be as clear-cut. Indeed, the reverse experiment (first treatment with the promoter followed by the initiator) equally produces tumors. This result refutes the classical model that requires that the mutagenic (alleged) initiator must act first."

The citation is to a paper entitled "The reverse experiment in two-stage skin carcinogenesis. It cannot be genuinely performed, but when approximated, it is not innocuous". This paper dates from 1993, long before sequencing was capable of evaluating the mutation profiles of cancer cells. Additionally, the authors of this paper themselves point out (in the quote below) a significant assymetry in the treatments. Their results are not "equal":

"The two substances showed a reciprocal enhancing effect, which was sometimes weak, sometimes additive, and sometimes even synergistic, and was statistically most significant when the results were assessed from the time of DMBA application. Although the reverse experiment was not in any way innocuous it always resulted in a lower tumor crop than the classical sequence of DMBA followed by a course of TPA treatment. 

However, the lower tumor crop in the reverse experiment cannot be used to prove a qualitative difference between initiators and promoters."

(DMBA is the mutagen, while TPA is the inflammatory accelerant.)

So chemical treatment can prepare the ground for subsequent mutant generation in forming cancers in this system, while being much less efficient than the traditional order of events. This is not a surprise, given that this chemical (TPA) treatment causes relatively long-term inflammation and cell proliferation on its own.

"An epistemic shift towards a biological theory of cancer may still be an uphill battle in the current climate of thought created by the ease of data collection and a culture of research that discourages ’disruptive science’. Here, we have made an argument for dropping the SMT and its epicycles. We presented new and old but sidelined theoretical alternatives to the SMT that embrace theory and organismal biology and can guide experiments and data interpretation. We expect that the diminishing returns from the ceaselessly growing databases of somatic mutations, the equivalent to Darwin’s gravel pit, may soon reach a pivot point."

One rarely reads such grandiloquent summaries (or mixed metaphors) in scientific papers! But here they are truly beating up on straw men. In the end, it is true that cancer is quite unlike clonal infectious diseases, and for this, as for many other reasons, has had scientists scratching their heads for decades, if not centuries. But rest assured that this chest-thumping condescension is quite unnecessary, since those in the field are quite aware of these difficulties. The various nebulous alternatives these authors offer, whether the "epigenetic landscape", the "tissue organization field theory", or the "biological theory of cancer" all have kernels of logic, but the SMT remains the foundation-stone of cancer study and treatment, while being, for all the reasons enumerated above and by these authors, only part of the edifice, not the whole truth.

• Some more thoughts about crypto.
• Resistance is up to congress, ultimately.
• China takes purges quite a bit more seriously than we do.
• But we are getting there.