Facing the future post covid? Dangers and resilence

The dark cloud of the past year may have silver linings sych as: A recent field trial demonstrated a 77% effective malaria vaccine. Good news! In addition, consider: Three spectacular advances in biological/medical science that either accelerated because of Covid-19 or came to the rescue and may change the future.

Alas, though. This is what I feared. A third of COVID survivors may suffer neurological or mental disorders, according to a recent study.

Of course the most incredible news – scientific or otherwise – from 2020 was the way that the covid emergency hastened introduction of mRNA vaccines and other therapeutics, which were ready for testing within a month of decipherment of the virus’s genetics. You can be sure that old-fashioned, 20^th Century testing and vetting procedures will change after this and miracles will start to flow. There are many more good things on the near horizon.

And worries as well...“Viruses that infect bacteria – fittingly called bacteriophages - and their prey have been at war for eons, each side evolving more devilish tactics to infect or destroy each other. Eventually, some bacteriophages took this arms race to a new level by changing the way they code their DNA.” Some have replaced the “A” in that standard GATC coding with a “Z” nucleobase. Z for zounds.

Moving on. As climate change dries up or destroys arable land all over the globe, science rushes to find solutions to both feed a hungry world and lessen the environmental effects of agriculture. For example, the meat-substitute industry has taken off way earlier than I expected (I thought we’d reach the current level around 2028!) I know some folks in the rising algae industry who are working to combine over-fertilized agricultural runoff (of the sort that killed the Caspian and Black Seas and is harming the Mediterranean and Caribbean) with CO2 from local big-emitters, like cement plants, blending them to grow algae as both animal feed and bioreactors for industrial oils. 

Now comes a joint venture between US and Chinese companies making a new “single-cell protein” substance called FeedKind that is manufactured by fermenting natural gas with naturally occurring bacteria. The resulting pellets are used to feed fish. Used instead of soy, it will free up huge quantities of land and fresh water.

Side note, when you shop at Costco, tilapia and catfish are the farm-raised fish with the lowest environmental footprint. One is vegetarian, feeding on grain, and the other eats… well, catfish recycle. Ocean caught fish should be an exception and the farmed salmon industry needs to continue making big adjustments.

== Dangers and Resilience ==

Pre-Covid I would give speeches annually in DC abut topics like near-future threats and overlooked, needed actions to foster resilience. Some of you have seen my interview on that topic, following my mini-course at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

One of many areas where our civilization could have been far more robust, by now, had earlier small measures been taken, is that of EMP or the potential for crippling damage wrought by either natural or intentional ElectroMagnetic Pulses. This article is not very cheering about the current situation. 

But we can still begin the long haul of securing the future! I would start by imposing a micro-tax… say 0.001%... on every chip set or piece of electronics that doesn’t meet voluntary industry standards for EMP resistance, tested by Underwriters’ Labs. A tiny tax will cause very little resistance, but a small, steady pressure for industry itself to just do it. Just solve it. (Even if our devices had old-fashioned replaceable fuses!)

Okay, this will sound familiar. Is it noteworthy that the state of Louisiana is planning to divert the mighty Mississippi River into new paths, to rebuild protective wetlands and to counter mistakes of the past… an event that I portrayed happening all at once, by terrible accident, in my 1990 novel EARTH? Of course it is better that such things happen in stages, by sapient care, than waiting for nature to have Her revenge on the unsapient.  Still, I think many of you will agree that my depiction of the Father of Waters freed, rampant and un-vexed -- unleashed by an uber-feminist-eco-warrior -- was kinda cool?

== back to origins ==

In an earlier posting about Uplift, I remarked on how a good case is made that the most-rare event or fluke in Earth’s life story was the one-time joining of two separate genetic trees. “It’s the scientific consensus that a primordial eukaryote emerged 1.5 billion years ago when a less complex cell tried to ingest an anaerobic bacterium but was unable to digest it. The stalemate turned into a symbiotic relationship in which the bacterium became the power supply to the host cell, which provided a safe environment for it to thrive in return. Today we refer to the powerhouse of the cell as the Mitochondria.” The resulting eukaryotes proliferated and experimented with multi-cellulatity for 800 million years before suddenly getting the hang of it and bursting forth with the Cambrian explosion of complex forms, including us.  Moreover, if that combination fluke truly was both necessary and hugely rare, well, when we descendants of that marriage forge across the galaxy, we may just find…  life in the form of soup.

Let’s dive into this a little deeper. Comments a member of my communities, Peter Hug: “I think a pretty good case can be made that such an endosymbiotic event happened at least three times on Earth - the first being a merger of eubacteria with sulfidogenic archaebacteria to create amitochondriate mastigotes; these then engulfed some proteobacteria which turned into mitochondria and then evolved into the animals and fungi; one of these organisms then endosymbiosed (is that a word?) a cyanobacterium to create a plant lineage containing chloroplasts.

“Additionally, it's certainly possible that such an event could have occurred multiple times deep in the past and have been lost due to competition and eventual loss by the other candidates. I found an interesting article that discusses some aspects of this (linked below); nevertheless, I think it's clear that it's not a common event, at any rate. Endosymbiosis to create a eukaryote that then evolves into multicellular life that develops civilization certainly might not be the only path to a technological culture, if we posit a large number of candidate worlds upon which to test possibilities...” according to this research article.

And finally...

A thought of the day: In a series of experiments published in Science in 2011, Sparrow, Liu and Wegner conclude:

“When people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.”

Um what were we talking about, again?

Dinosaurs and delusions

- Back to the political maelstrom. What a year. Almost 10% as exhausting as 1968. (Gosh, exactly half a century ago. See the special way it ended.) Just remember, we survived that awful year, and got stronger /better. We can do it again.

Let's start with...

== Matters of Mattis ==

I'll not go into huge details about the Mattis resignation. Some liberals are conceding that ending one of our wars - in Syria - might be a good thing. (And the dems need asap to withdraw House consent to the ceding of war powers.) 

But the pundits ignore what those 2000 US troops have been doing. While conducting low-cost reduction missions on ISIS, they were primarily protecting the Kurdish majority of NE Syria... the only Muslim people on Earth who love us. (They won't, after we betray them, the way GHW Bush betrayed the Marsh Arabs in 1993.)

Now Erdogan is free to crush them, cementing his alliance with Trump's controller, V. Putin, who gets an arc from Moscow and Crimea through Ankara, Lataika, Damascus, through Iraq to Iran and Hormuz. A new, much-better Warsaw Pact. Know what you are looking at.

== My warning stands... ==

And yes, in order to fully anchor-in Iran as a Russian protectorate, Putin needs a brief US-Iran "war." Which Trump and the Saudis - and Netanyahu and the Iranian mullahs - all want desperately as distraction from domestic troubles. 

Mattis could have stayed to help block it. Now Trump will have a compliant SecDef and JCS chief, while a valuable and vulnerable tripwire -- a whole US carrier strike group -- has been ordered to steam - completely unnecessarily - into a narrow deathtrap in the straits of Hormuz.

God bless and save and protect the skilled and dedicated men and women of the US Navy.

== Know your pachyderms! ==

Those who are mourning the demise of the Weekly Standard -- a “courageously” anti-Trump version of Republicanism -- seem to forget its roots. But some folks do remember that the editor/publisher, Always-Wrong Bill Kristol, was one of the neoconservatives - or neocons - who helped raise up Dennis “friend to boys” Hastert to lead the GOP and end the practice of adult-negotiated politics in America. They helped concocted the so-called Tea Party, re-igniting the American Civil War.

These fellows gave us G.W. Bush and contrived “WMD” rationalizations for the 2nd Iraq War, destabilizing the world in order to give billions in “emergency” contracts to Cheney-Bush companies. 

Yes, their polysyllabic incantations gave conservatism a faux-intellectual sheen that Trumpists have dropped in favor of cave-grunts. But both were pungent festivals of lies, in service to oligarchy.

It did them little good. By 2005 the same feudal lords who now prop up Trumpism dropped the neocons like a frat king dumping his “nerd friend” after copying the big test. Weekly Standard was a consolation prize to keep the followers of Leo Strauss from realizing the magnitude of that betrayal, but aristos no longer think it worth subsidizing. The rising world mafia feudalism that’s waging war on all fact-professions never trusted its pet intelligencia-parrots and would rather they stop squawking. Just go away now.

Read especially the final paragraphs of this piece, as Kristol’s fellow neocon monster John Podhoretz whines and rationalizes the demise of his species. See these dying dinosaurs writhe in a death-throes spat with a toxic-evil undead zombie-confederate elephant, Steve King, jealous that at least he remains relevant in the "crazy years" America they helped create.

== The foremost human trait: obstinate delusion ==

Each of us was raised on a sanctimonious mythology: 

   “I'm one of the few who see clearly what’s going on, surrounded by sheep who are blindly following the hidden masters.” 

Admit it. That's exactly what you believe, isn’t it? 

Indeed, your own particular narrative may be partly right! There are times when our Suspicion of Authority (SoA) reflex is on target, especially if supported by strong evidence.

And yet, any truly smart person has assigned a brain corner to notice when such a narrative seems too good, too pat, too smugly satisfying to be completely true. 

Here’s an example from the left. Listen to George Carlin railing that the big corporations already own us and we are all sheep-slaves… (except for delighted audience members clapping and paying to see him; you're no sheep!) In fact, everything Carlin says is true, to an extent! He describes the exact failure mode that crushed 99% of our ancestors in 6000 years of feudalism that spanned every continent except Australia. 

But by turning it into an “I’m mad as hell!” exaggeration-gloom rant, Carlin ignores the fact that he and the audience are free to denounce, a freedom that can only be augmented if it is admitted. Rather, he becomes a drug pusher for the modern addiction-high, accomplishing nothing for us at all.

== Even worse on the other side ==

If Carlin exaggerates to a degree that’s more harmful than not, then the lines pushed by today’s mad-right – using identical methods and pressing similar emotional buttons -- are mostly just lies. Take an example:

The right's narrative now is that "flipping" a perp -- by promising a lesser sentence to a crook you can easily get a jury to convict  -- is suddenly a vile trick. When did that happen? 

Oh, right. In fact, the practice always merits scrutiny, and juries have rightfully nullified cases that depend only on flipped testimony. Folks who were convicted solely by jailhouse snitches are being sprung today. But none of that applies here, where mountains of corroboration also pile skyward. When Donald Trump denounces a "rat" it is straight out of mafia lingo. And if Michael Flynn thinks he was entrapped, he is welcome to make that case before a jury of 12 decent fellow citizens. What, Mike? Go ahead and make your case.

What's the underlying beef? The real rage here is that the right never got "flips" against the Clintons or Obamas! 

Hm, why not? After 25 years of relentless grillings, investigations and hearings costing us half a Billion dollars? (That's with a "B.") With Koch/Fox and other huge whistle blower rewards on offer, plus fame and fortune to entice any rats, squealers or woke henchmen? What, no one stepped up with a smoking gun? Nobody in the vast periphery around the Clintons etc. could be coerced or bribed or even coaxed to do their patriotic duty? Wow, such loyalty.

Of course the truth is that the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations were virtually blemish free, with almost nada, zip, zero indictable offenses and absolutely none for malfeasance of office. (Seriously: "email procedures'? What you got is (horror) mistakes in EMAIL procedures?!? Identical procedures to those used by Colin Powell, George W. Bush, Mike Pence, Ivanka and Jared Kushner? Seriously? Aren't you embarrassed?)

Sane people would contrast that with the endless tsunami of Republican turpitude, including almost a dozen outright child-buggering sexual predators. A party now owned and operated by casino moguls. Combine that with the GOP's open war against every single fact-profession, and their devotion to Kremlin/KGB pals raised on Leninist dogma, and chumminess with murderous despots and mafia gangs... and might sane/decent Republicans conclude they are on the wrong side?

No, no. Can't have that. Keep invoking the Clintons! 
What, zero indictments or squealers? 
Well, then.... The Clintons... um... were "good at hiding the bodies! Yeah, that's the ticket! Real slick criminals, the best. Geniuses!" 

But, um then, so-skilled, so-competent compared to the Fox/GOP/Trump clown car? In that case, then, again... maybe you picked the wrong side?

(Added note: the attached illustration-clipping - already way obsolete re Trump -- describes the number of each administration's officials indicted/convicted. First, it ignores shame-resignations. Second, it is also way-soft on the Bushes etc. Ford and Clinton and Obama were rightly criticized for downgrading or pardoning some folks from the previous regime -- in the interests of "political peace and healing." Not that it ever did any good or was remotely appreciated. Hence, the score for Nixon, Bush and Bush would actually be far higher. )

And finally... 

A large fraction of the most-inciting things you see on Twitter, Facebook etc were designed by experts - many in the Kremlin - to get your juices flowing. And yes, even -- especially -- some of the memes you most agreed-with and most-eagerly retweeted or passed along. Ponder that a moment!

Sure, the Putin-led mafia/oligarchy favors the gone-insane American right.  This article explores how jubilant the Kremlin is, over all of this. “Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving,” one analyst said. “Russia can just relax and watch and root for Trump, which Putin does at every TV appearance.” But their top goal is division and disfunction over here. A mighty empire torn apart from within.

(Twenty-five years ago I spoke at CIA, in the glow of the end of the Cold War, predicting that underdogs would innovate and learn lessons from 6000 years of history, when other empires were similarly vulnerable to overconfidence. I got smirks then. The same slides today get gasps.)

So you -- yes you -- need to be careful which memes you choose to spread. Yes, in phase 8 of the American Civil War, we need to be fierce. But not with rudeness or hate that either breaks our Big Tent coalition or drives Republicans back into the mafia's arms.

Have we been here before?  The "Zinoviev letter" was a fraudulent document published by the British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the general election in 1924. It purported to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, the head of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow, to the Communist Party of Great Britain, ordering it to engage in all sorts of seditious activities. It said the resumption of diplomatic relations (by a Labour government) would hasten the radicalisation of the British working class. This would have constituted a non-trivial interference in British politics, and as a result it was deeply offensive to British voters, turning them against the Labour Party. The letter seemed authentic at the time, but historians now agree it was a forgery. The letter aided the Conservative Party, by hastening the collapse of the Liberal Party vote that produced a Conservative landslide.

I said as much 25 years ago. This is standard technique. And we need to get a lot smarter.

Censorship, Indignation, and our Hopes for Freedom

Banned Books Week (September 30 – October 6) celebrates the freedom to read and to express ideas…even those that others might find objectionable. Classics that have been banned or challenged over the years include:

The Jungle, Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Beloved, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, The Satanic Verses, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Just in the last decade, campaigns have been waged against The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, The Giver, and The Golden Compass. And, ironically... Ray Bradbury’s powerfully evocative Fahrenheit 451. 

On a broader scale, censorship is an issue both topical and redolent, given President Obama's recent United Nations address about free speech and global turmoil over an amateurish, but provocative anti-Islam video. That YouTube video, “Innocence of Muslims” that has provoked riots and violence in Libya and 
many other Muslim lands, leading to calls for governments to block access to the website. Meanwhile, YouTube issued a statement, "This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video -- which is widely available on the Web -- is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube." 

No issue better illustrates what I consider to be the real “war” going on, over the future of Planet Earth. And so let me offer an aside: Despite shrill rhetoric from the extremes, it is not about “Islam” at all, any more than the Cold War was about differeng models of economic theory. The great propellant of the Cold War was a personality trait called Russian Paranoia that dominated thinking in the Soviet Union no less – and very little different – than during the era of the Czars, and that only started to fade (somewhat) when a generation of Russians finally rose to power who had never known war. Likewise, it is not Islam, per se, that opposes the Western Enlightenment.

 Rather, it is a deeper worldview or zeitgeist whose core features are machismo, romanticism and the assumption set that’s called the Zero Sum Game.  

In the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." True enough. And opponents of the Western Enlightenment know this. They know that if they can scare us into repressing open information flows, enlightenment processes will wither and fester and fail. 

The top four of those processes – democracy, markets, science and justice – all flourish and succeed in direct proportion to how well most of the participants can know most of what’s going on, most of the time.  This core truth is the reason why I wrote The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? 

Freedom of speech is not a gift from on high. It was not declared by God. It is not holy, or even natural. No other human society ever practiced it. Even we, who are loony enough to consider it sacred, don't practice it very well. Yet, although it runs against every tyrannical impulse of human nature... impulses to suppress whatever that loudmouth fool over there is saying... the fact is that we try to live by it. 

Not because free speech is holy, or natural, but because it works. Because it is pragmatic. Because it allows the rapid generation of a multitude of ideas, most of which are chaff, and then allows those notions to be criticized by other egotistical people, so that a fair percentage of the best ideas rise, and most garbage eventually sinks.

In other words, free speech encourages criticism, like a human body's immune system, to seek out and attack possibly cancerous or fatal ideas. Those which survive open debate are (at least in theory) those which deserve to thrive.

The biggest reasons to support it aren’t idealistic, but practical! Because the processes that brought us vastly more wealth, progress, knowledge, peace and human happiness than all other societies combined can only remain fecund and productive in a transparent, open, freely competitive and egalitarian world. The second part of the irony? That we can only defend freedom of speech with adequate vigor if we treat it as if it were a platonic ideal. And fundamental.

Naturally, any attempt by leaders or public institutions to pre-judge or pre-approve concepts will be self-defeating. Decrees by aristocrats or intellectuals or demagogues will always be less efficient than the free interplay of ideas. If you doubt this, try picking and choosing which antibodies your immune system should produce!

Now, all of this obviously applies to the future of the information network. Like the sun, the earth, and the human body, in the long run, stability is achieved not by laws or rules, but through self-regulating, adaptive systems that allow large forces to balance each other out. In this case, in the World Information Net, this balance will be driven by the power of ten billion voices, ten trillion ideas.

Such a system cannot be designed in detail, but the right mix of basic elements can be planned in advance, to keep it healthy so that this maelstrom of ideas and myths will be fecund in its creation of vast quantities of metaphors, but also sane enough to ultimately reject bad notions in a fair market, clearing the way for new ones to take their place.

One principal element must be openness. In the human body, nutrients must flow, and white blood cells have to reach their targets. In the Net of tomorrow, the light of criticism must shine everywhere, or secrets which lay hidden will fester into new crises, new weapons, new errors.

In an information society, secrecy is the equivalent of cancer.

== The great enemy of reason == 

Some say the foe of thought and reason is fear. You have seen me inveigh that the ancient bane of freedom and markets – (and Adam Smith agreed) -- has always been oligarchy.  

Only when you dig deeper, the clear thing at fault lies deep within human nature. Our propensity for addiction. 

Others are catching on. Gary Longsine and Peter Boghossian, in Indignation is Not Righteous: The Twin Fallacies of Appeal to Righteous Indignation and Appeal to Sanctity ( in Skeptical Inquirer) appraise the difficulty we face, when trying to use evidence or reason in the face of strongly-held and emotionally supported beliefs.  Taken from among the long list of logical fallacies, two in particular stand out as empowering a person to absolutely refuse to consider opposing evidence or arguments: Appeal to righteous indignation (argumentum ad probus indignatio); and Appeal to sanctity (argumentum ad sanctimonia).  

"An Appeal to Righteous Indignation is a logical fallacy in which a person claims to be offended, insulted, or hurt by criticism of a proposition they hold, or by the advancement of a proposition with which they disagree. The expected consequence of the demonstration of the verbal or physical behavior associated with righteous indignation is that no further discussion or criticism is allowed.

An Appeal to Sanctity is a logical fallacy in which a person attempts to deflect criticism of an idea by claiming that the idea or argument is holy, sacred, sacrosanct, or otherwise privileged and immune from critique."

This very interesting appraisal: Indignation is Not Righteous! cites Jonathan Haidt and other major researchers exploring an exciting and promising new field, using fMRI and other methods to follow both logical and illogical thought in real brains.  It even cites my own paper, delivered to the National Institutes on Drugs and Addiction, concerning the way indignation all too often becomes a cycle of self-doping addiction, reinforced by regular "highs" of dopamine and other self-secreted psychotopics. Indeed, it is probably the most abused drug of choice in America today, helping to propel our current, deeply counter-productive civil war.  

The Quagmire War -- the Vietnam of our Era

The Vietnam of our era...

George Friedman, the principal of STRATFOR, a major international strategic consulting firm, has been meticulously dissecting the reasons for - and future prospects of - our nine year quagmire in Afghanistan. Here he gets to a point I have been talking about for years:

"While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States....

"Nietzsche wrote that, “The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda’s evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan…. 

"As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt."

I would go much farther than George.  Because I have no doubt that the principal goal that Osama bin Laden had in mind, in perpetrating the crimes of 9/11, was to lure America into an extended, interminable quagmire of attrition in the "land where empires go to die."  While this may seem a bold statement that cannot be proved, it is consistent with three major facts:

1) American had to react.  It was predictable where we would have to strike.

2) Osama's salad days were spent humbling one superpower in the same mountains.

3) If you were a foe of the United States, you would study which past errors almost destroyed America.  Those two were Civil War and a land war of attrition in Asia.  (In fact, since 9/11, it appears we've been rapidly plunged into both.)

Where we surprised Osama was in the rapidly skillful way by which we allied with local enemies of the Taliban and crushed Osama's allies, in days.  Had we shown the in-and-out agility that we demonstrated in the Balkans Intervention - (and if we had chosen sane and sensible ways to eliminate Saddam Hussein, instead of doing everything there in all the worst possible ways) - America would now be seen as the toughest MF bastards around.  And we would be Three Trillion Dollars richer.

And if the Taliban re-established themselves after we left? Well, we could do it again. An enemy with actual assets, fixed locations an a nation to run is far more vulnerable than a guerilla force.

As George Friedman points out, the 9/11 attacks did not harm America at a deeply structural level. But our clumsy reaction to it has.

George goes on to suggest a solution: The Pakistanization of the War. Or allowing Afghanistan to fall into the Pakistani orbit, with them also taking on the burdens of dealing with the guerilla movements. But there are problems:

"The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country’s economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis’ ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it."

Still, he foresees Pakistan brokering a peace deal... like the Paris Talks that ended the Vietnam War.  Here I think he is making up a bit of a story.  If this actually happens, I'll buy him a dinner.

=== The Faux Equivalence ===

One of the tricks mastered by the Murdochs (envision the Morlochs of HG Wells's The Time Machine!) is to create an impression of false equivalence.  We are seeing this here in California.  Every time GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman is accused of favoring never-ending tax largesse for the uber-rich, she responds by calling her opponent, former governor Jerry Brown, of being in the clutches of Big Unions.

It frustrates me that she is never given the ultimate rebuttal. "Even if this is true, the unions have been plummetting in power, for decades, while the super-rich have been skyrocketing. So which should we fear?"  What social force, in fact, did nearly ALL of our ancestors fear? What group ever came close to oppressing liberty, open competition, social mobility or free markets, more than oligarchy?  Whether they called themselves feudal lords or commie nomenklatura, or captains of the crony-CEO caste?

We older folk grew up in an America with the flattest social strata (for white males) in the history of the world, yet that did not prevent a vibrant capitalism!  In contrast, over the last two decades, the fraction of the total national income going to the top 1% doubled; the fraction going to the top one tenth of a percent tripled; the fraction going to the top 1% of 1% quadrupled - and capitalism is floundering. Can anybody parse cause and effect here?

 Do the Murdochs actually believe they can prevent the chivvied and harassed and cornered middle class from noticing this trend... forever?  How about when this disparity doubles? And doubles again? And again?  Is there a limit where the oligarchs will conceivably say "enough"?  Any limit at all?

 History doubts it.  Insatiable oligarchies are unable to stop, even in their own long term self-interest.  But don't take my word for it.  Pick a random decade and continent. Try reading history.

=== The Lords of Discipline ===

I wrote to my cousin, a speechwriter in the White House, with this suggestion:

Express  grudging (and ironic) admiration for how UNIFORM and DISCIPLINED the Republicans are, hewing absolutely to a rigid party line. In sharp contrast to the democrats' perpetual disorganization. (Many recall the 1930s humorist Will Rogers said: "I'm not a member of an organized political party -- I'm a democrat.")

Heck, this portrays democrats in a way most people find endearing! (Or at least unthreatening.) As eager, well-meaning, a bit scatterbrained and unable to be tyrants, even if they wanted to.  Meanwhile, the image of a tightly disciplined, collectively lockstep-obedient party on the other side is one that most Americans find instinctively chilling.

Note, all of this can be conveyed, without actually dissing anyone openly! Indeed, by praising (in ironic tones) the other side's discipline, you never have to mention other parties that were known for their discipline (e.g.fascists or communists).  Your tone can be amiable and tongue-in-cheek envious!  But the message will get across.

=== And Tidbits ===

With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now employs every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office. With Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee all making moves indicating they may run for president, their common employer is facing a question that hasn’t been asked before: How does a news organization cover White House hopefuls when so many are on the payroll?  (C-SPAN Political Editor Steve Scully said that when C-SPAN tried to have Palin on for an interview, he was told he had to first get Fox’s permission — which the network, citing her contract, ultimately denied. Producers at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC all report similar experiences.)

I mean, what on Earth would some Bizarro Anti-Fox make of such suspicious goings-on?  Okay, there's MSNBC. But their viewers tend to be the wishy-washy types who THINK about attending Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity... and who shrug aside conspiracy theories (and probably don't wind up going, after all!) So don't say "MSNBC" at me.

For example: Why is Rupert Murdoch buying and promoting games made by the despotic government of North Korea? Dang!

Meanwhile, those darned academics and scientists are at it again:   "In this paper, we use the Moody’s Analytics model of the U.S. economy—adjusted to accommodate some recent financial-market policies—to simulate the macroeconomic effects of the government’s total policy response. We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government’s response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8 million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation."

It would be an interesting item worthy of cautious consideration and engagement in the politics of the day.  If today's politics had anything, whatsoever, to do with evidence, or even intelligent speculation.

=== and finally... ===

Kent Pitman writes: "There was discussion just this evening by someone on MSNBC about the fact (I think they said it was a fact—I think the alluded to some study or another—but what do I know?) that there is lately a trend toward people admiring people who don’t compromise. But that the trend is biased, with more republicans admiring this than democrats. Then they noted that if you get a bunch of compromisers together with a bunch of non-compromisers, it’s little wonder things drift in the direction of the non-compromisers. Alas. What a dilemma—to become stubborn as a self-defense against being rolled over?"

I don't think it is fundamentally about "compromise." The root is deeper... it is addiction. I have been trying to draw attention to this matter for years.  I even was invited to speak about it at the National Institutes on Drugs and Addiction. See my paper: An Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry, and Social Psychology.

I believe the most powerful act of social politics that could take place, today, would be to scientifically verify and publicize the fact that self-righteous indignation is as powerful a self-doped addictive state as gambling, thrill-seeking or rage.   And much of our culture war would start to dissipate, if the indignantly outraged were viewed the way we do the pitiable (and contemptible) people who wallow in heroin and cocaine.

THIS is what Obama should be saying, right now.  It should be shouted at Jon Stewart's rally.  And I would be happy to do so, in tones of ringing (if ironic) righteousness.