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Squid Pro Squall

November 22, 2019

The Donald really meant it when he told his minions “no quid pro quo!”

What he meant by this was what he always means when it comes to contracts of any sort: he considers them unilateral and binding only on the other party. Like mortgages and other loans, or agreements to pay contractors when the work is done.

So, to the Don, “no quid pro quid” translates to “Just because they hold up their end of the deal doesn’t mean I have to. Suckers!”

See he really probably did say it. It’s just that it means something else to those outside the environment.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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John Lithgow on What Isn’t Entertaining

October 17, 2019

Re: John Lithgow’s takedown of Donald Trump, our Reality President, in the New York Times today.

Let me say that it includes a great illustration by the writer, in addition to some fine prose. In the piece, Lithgow concludes that DT (is it pure coincidence that his initials are the same as Delirium Tremens, the post-drunk shakes?) is not only a bad president but a bad entertainer.

As an actor, Lithgow is well-positioned to comment on his subject’s lack of finesse. He is also one of the few to point out a trend: that the convergence of reality and entertainment into the infotainment world in which we now find ourselves can be traced directly to our first Actor-President Ronald Reagan. JL is also the first, as far as I can tell, to refer to Trump’s audiences by the correct term: “claque.” Takes an entertainment industry insider, I guess; and there is comfort in this. As a different kind of Republican at a similarly dangerous time – a time also involving the spirit of Roy Cohn – once said, more or less: their numbers are few and they are stupid. But I digress.

First thought on finishing the article was that we need more like this. Because how things seem is now more important than how they are. So call in a professional to describe what is going on. Robert Redford once said (I paraphrase here from memory) that he didn’t live anywhere near Hollywood because he worked in an industry whose stock in trade was artifice. So distance from that industry was important to mental health. He got the difference between real and fake. We need more actors to describe artifice in a critical way, as a component of our day to day world. My kids used to ask “Is that real?” How about watermarks in the upper right hand corner of our little screens rating credibility of the source on a numeric scale? All that’s needed is an accrediting body, such as already exists for schools.

The conflation of entertainment and reality is less surprising when we consider that a favored means of communication is via a digital slam book created by a college undergrad so that his fellow Cantabs could rate their date, including pictures (MyFace or SpaceBook; can’t recall). Now people get their news from such sources, and are as happy as not to believe that such news is fake, doesn’t matter. Easy come. Easy Go. Little high. Little low. Nothing really matters to them.

What to do?

Let us recall that decades of experts pointing out the health risks of smoking put not so much as a dent in the tobacco industry’s business model. The air of death only made smoking more cool in a dark way. No, we can trace the beginnings of Big Tobacco’s fall from grace to an ad featuring Brooke Shields, in which she said she couldn’t stand the smell of smoke in a guy’s hair. Go on a date? With you? Smokey stink? As if. End of cool tobacco, beginning of better health. So, too, malignant narcissism must be made uncool.

There was once a king of France who famously may have said that he was the state. This has widely been recited as an expression of pure power. However, it is also a leadership model. If Louis was opulent, if Louis was supremely powerful, then France was glorious, France was opulent, France was supremely powerful. After all, he was the state.

In his own sick and small way, The Donald tries to do the above. The Louis example is one which Mr. Trump adopted first as a business model, even before it became his political paradigm. Donald gets Louis the Fourteenth. And he claims to have read Mein Kampf. So he has retained at least two touchstones of Western culture we can attribute to his expensive education. Standing in front of walls of tacky one foot squares of Travertine over Hardy Board, trimmed with gold paint, he states “You gotta paint people a picture!” (Picture: Donald Trump is success. Glitter is success.) Speaking to a crowd of the easily dazzled he says: “The one thing you need to understand about me is that I’m, like, really really rich!” (Picture: Donald Trump is money.) People crave success. People love money. People should therefore want to be Donald Trump. It’s wrong, but it’s right. And it has worked before. But the perceived connection, the transference, is false and dangerous.

Lithgow’s mention of Ronald Reagan brings back a memory. Picture how Reagan used to keep the press at bay. A high wave and a smile from a distance as he walked from the helicopter to the White House. This drove me nuts at the time. After all, we (the People) hired this guy and he won’t even debrief us. He’s a Federal employee, not an emperor.

A colleague at work felt exactly the opposite about Ronnie’s style. I asked him why he preferred regal aloofness and a demonstrable lack of accountability in the president. His response was: “Because if I were President, that’s how I would be.” He liked the imagery, the lifestyle. He projected his being onto the President.

Transference can be OK so long as it doesn’t port over to Reality. Even actors have their idols and are wannabes in regards to somebody. But the President of the United States makes actual decisions that actually affect actual lives. For this reason, it is important to pick someone for the job with a reasonable chance of doing the job right. As a nation, we are blessed with good basic governmental systems. All that is necessary to avoid disaster is for a competent functionary to operate the controls in a steady and competent manner. Did I say competent? We had that for eight years prior to 2016, over which we recovered from the 2008 fiasco, which had ended the prior eight years of not having it.

The difference between the two positions is whether you see the president as someone who works for you, or see yourself as the President. Can you distinguish the state being France from the state being Louis? Are you prone to hang around the back door of theaters and hiss at the person who played the villain? Can you tell real from fake?

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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The President can be arrested. Right?

October 10, 2019

We now move into uncharted territory, with a president claiming that impeachment proceedings – one of the things spelled out more explicitly than most in the US Constitution – are “unconstitutional.” Unconstitutional mainly, and for lack of any better cogent explanation, because they are being brought against him and not someone else.

Pundits now speak of the “oversight” function of Congress, turning a strongly worded Power into a weakly understood function. Some commentators talk of “coequal” (how does that differ from “equal” except to diminish it? Equal already carries its own symmetric properties) branches of government, implying that Congress might be on a par with the executive branch.

A review of some basics:

It is clear from the Constitution that Congress was intended to be the most equal branch, the highest and ultimate law of the land. The Constitution created Congress first. It gives Congress the right to remove the President. It does not give the President the right to remove Congress. It requires the President from time to time to report to Congress; and not the other way around. It thereby establishes a clear pecking order.

Congress was also given a little fiefdom called the District of Columbia, known more popularly as Washington, D.C. , over which Congress has exclusive jurisdiction.

In an era of increasingly imperial views of the Presidency, the attitude of the Executive toward the Legislative branch has been more and more dismissive – “go legislate” – implying that all action is entirely the purview of the former and that they can effectively ignore the latter, even its subpoenas. How would Congress enforce its will? Would it send its Sergeant at Arms to Pennsylvania Avenue, as some have snidely suggested?

No, it wouldn’t need to. It could send the Metro Police, who, ultimately, work for Congress. The White House might then move camp to Escondito, or some other town not established as the Capital of the United States. Good luck to y’all. Warrants will be issued to wherever that might end up being.

Degraded to personal lawyers, the President’s Roy Cohn if you will, the Justice Department, having opined that a sitting president cannot even be indicted, has now raised the Barr to cannot even be investigated. So great are his powers as the Chosen One. Possessed of Great and Unmatched Wisdom. And more than a little madness.

The President can be arrested. Right? I mean, if he had actually, as he once boasted, shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he would be arrested. Right? Probably found cowering in Trump Tower like Saruman under attack by the Ents. The people who would arrest him would be the NYPD, since that is their job when crimes occur in that city.

The President can be arrested. Right? If someone were stabbed on Pennsylvania Avenue and a blood trail led to the Oval Office, where the President was sitting, cackling, knife in hand, he would be arrested. Right? The people who would arrest him would be the DC Metro Police. Because that is their job in that city which, as noted, also happens to be run by Congress, not the Executive, as a founding principle. The Secret Service would be unwise to risk a shootout under the circumstances.

The Constitution is clear about the process of Impeachment, which it refers to as a “Power” with a capital P, not as an “oversight function.” Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 5, gives the House the sole Power of Impeachment. Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 6, gives the Senate the sole Power to try all Impeachments. And by “all” they didn’t mean just Presidents (more on this below). The Constitution gives Congress broad housekeeping power to remove criminals from the Executive branch.

The large amount of space devoted in the Constitution to impeachment suggests that its writers anticipated the process might be used often – not unwise in an early republic where candidates emerged from the wild and woolly frontier with God knows what kind of baggage in tow. The presence of the Chief Justice is in place to ensure that the process not become overly political, or a beauty contest, when impeaching the President, the most solemn case. And all cases require a two-thirds majority. But, we reiterate, it was anticipated that the unfit could be fairly routinely removed. Although it is unclear whether the Oval Office is now occupied by the Unfit or by the Incubus, it certainly appears to be one, the other, or both. The best we can hope for is just manifestly Unfit. Any employer would have long ago called the Unfit into his office and said “Don, this is just not working out. You’re not who you said you were on your application.” In the Constitution, the country’s by-laws, that little conversation falls under the heading of Impeachment.

Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 7 makes clear that Impeachment speaks only to removal from office, no more or less, and that the impeached is still subject to all the laws of the land (“…the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to law.”) One could, I suppose, for the sake of argument, take the position that the use of the (sort of) past tense “convicted” (which is in this case a noun, not a verb) implies a certain order of events. No debater steeped in any logic would chose to defend that position. As noted, a noun, “the convicted” refers to the one removed from office, but that isn’t, from the language itself, necessarily exclusive to impeachment, or a required precedent. The Framers were, if nothing else, good with words. If they had meant “only after conviction shall the Party convicted be liable…” or, perhaps, “upon Conviction by the Senate the Party shall be liable…”, they could very easily have done so. But they didn’t say that; so they didn’t mean that. A better explanation is that they meant impeachment and removal from office, should it come first, is not a basis for a double jeopardy defense.

A good place to have said the above would have been Article II , Section 4 where it is made clear that impeachment is not just for the President, but also for “…the Vice President and all civil officers of the United States…” Would those who claim absolute immunity for the President, except after impeachment and removal, also claim it for all civil officers of the United States? Have any civil officers been found guilty of anything but not impeached before it? I suspect they have.

So, it is clear that impeachment is not reserved for the President. “…And no Person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.” The only distinction the Constitution seems to draw between impeachment of the President, which would of course be the most momentous, and other civil officers is that the former gets the benefit of having the Chief Justice preside. (Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 7). This would have been another good place for the Framers to define further procedural items which applied to the special case of the President, if it were indeed a special case. But they declined to do so. The President is to be treated essentially like anybody else.

But the above begs the obvious question. How would the House know that high crimes and misdemeanors had been committed if the laws of the land had not already been brought to bear on the issue. The current administration now insists that a sitting president cannot even be investigated. Even by Congress! Wouldn’t want to have to play that hand. (Note to the file and the DOJ: is there any other kind of president that matters? I mean other than sitting? Drop the unnecessary modifier. Removal from office isn’t that vital an issue for people not in office. Piling on adjectives only shows that you find your own argument thin and want to use goo to thicken it).

No, the above would fly in the face of the concept of a Citizen President, so central to the country’s founding and reinforced by the First President when he asked to be called “Mister” President, not Excellency, or Your Majesty.

But beyond that, the Impeachment process implies that the high crimes and misdemeanors before the House for its consideration are already in some way manifest, obvious. Surely Congress should remove a president from office who was in jail, or standing trial somewhere outside Washington. How could he do his job?

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Who would self-identify as a Republican?

October 9, 2019

Consternation abounds. Why do polls show Mr. Trump’s approval rating among his base remaining so high?

No mystery, really. Given the behavior of the buffoon in the White House (not to mention Moscow Mitch) who would self identify as a Republican these days? Better to own up to being a serial killer; not as embarrassing; less stigma attached.

If someone approaches you at the mall with a clipboard, whatcha gonna say? Who me? No, I’m an independent. I think those people over there are Republicans.

Of course there will still be a few die hard fans. But the math is simple. When there’s only one left, Mr. Trump’s approval rating will rise to one hundred percent.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Delete? Sure? Really Sure?

October 9, 2019

October 31st is rolling around as we all knew it would. And the EU still hasn’t capitulated. A rare Saturday seating has been called for Parliament.

Deal. No deal. Soft Brexit. Hard Brexit. Who cares? What should be the topic of discussion is a second referendum, now that more facts are on the table and the British people have some idea of what they may be getting themselves into.

After all, when you try to click on “rename” but hit “delete” by mistake, your computer will ask you “Sure?”, then “Really sure?” before it actually carries out the command. The position that the first referendum, supposedly non-binding and by no means a landslide, amounts to a mandate, and that not implementing a self-inflicted wound amounts to a betrayal of the public will, or even treason, makes no sense. A second referendum, if it supported a no-deal Brexit, would be a mandate and then politicians could act accordingly, no matter what the economic and social consequences. The UK should seek a one year extension with the provision that a second referendum be held to confirm the first. If it doesn’t, best two out of three.

MOE

M.I.C.H – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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What Is Up With The Russians?

October 8, 2019

Not all that long ago, the Soviet Union had the world’s second largest economy. Now Russia ranks around 12th, comparable in size to Spain. Even adding back all the former Soviet states doesn’t change much. Within the EU, as currently constituted, Germany, France, Britain and Italy all have larger economies (although England is thinking of shrinking its economy with some outside help from, ahem). Canada has a larger economy. Mexico has about as many people.

So, by all rights, we shouldn’t be talking all that much about Russia. But still we are. In a negative way. Mainly because the Mother Country cannot seem to kick the national penchant for schadenfreude, and for being spoilers. When the “jackass” type of videos (e.g. laughing at people who nearly kill themselves in stunts gone wrong) became ubiquitous, I was surprised at how many seemed to come from Russia. Someone stupid! Very stupid! Har! Har! Har! Really hurt self! Almost die! Har! Har!

We see the same thing on the geopolitical stage. As if destabilizing everybody else somehow floats the Russian boat.

Come on, Russia, the world needs you, but not that way. Get hold of all that brain power we know you have and use it to help – instead of trying to feel better about yourself by bringing everybody else down.

M.O.E.

M.I.C.H. Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Information Intolerant

September 14, 2019

Barbara Tversky was a guest on the Sam Harris podcast this week. Some thoughts come to mind.

First, I’m going to buy her book Mind In Motion: How Action Shapes Thought. (It’s a book, so I tried to underline it, but that would make it a hyperlink, wouldn’t it? Therefore not a button on the toolbar. But I digress.) Fascinating topic and looks/smells/seems like a probably right take. More on this some other time.

Second, the comments below the podcast, always a minefield since Sam gets political, were particularly appalling in that multiple trolls found fit to opine that they could not follow Barbara’s reasoning because of her voice. Could not finish the podcast, so annoying was it. The specific issue was “up-talking,” which I take to mean a lift on last syllables. Apparently some people read this as turning statements into questions. In a Valley Girl way. And it drives them crazy.

Didn’t really notice this myself, and I don’t think it would have dampened my interest in what the woman, a recognized world-class source on the subject, was saying. I think the real issue, truth be told, is that the commenters in question can’t process, or perhaps even recognize as such, non-trivial information coming from a woman’s mouth. The sound of it interferes with their acceptance of the content as even potentially meaningful. And this woman graduated from college in 1963, so there are multiple levels of potential prejudice. They need to look inside their own minds on that and ask themselves if they have been discounting good information all their lives only because of the sound with which it was delivered.

Like me, they could of course simply go out and buy the book. Which brings up case in point/example-from-life one.

Example One. It may have been Molly Ivins who said something to the effect that, when people hear your Texas accent, they immediately knock twenty points off their estimate of your IQ. Conditioned at a northern boarding school that routinely attracted scions of southern families, I recall the occasional snickers in class when the suchlike scions answered questions out loud. You had to teach yourself to fight this urge because, after reading what they wrote and seeing the grade on it, you came to realize that Gomer Pyle was probably smarter than you were. This brings us to case in point two, further up the road, where someone gonna do you like they done me.

Example Two. In a large lecture hall at a famous university on a huge blackboard an eminent professor was writing out a giant formula which explained every little thing about something or other. We scribbled it down as received truth. A hand went up.

Picture two hundred eyes turning sneeringly toward an idiot. And these were piercing eyes, mostly male, the sneers privileged and haughty. This was, after all, the place where the likes of Einstein and Von Neumann took walks and smoked pipes together. Who you? Who you, …..girl?

It did not help that the raised arm was attached to someone academically cursed with the outward appearance of a full-size Barbie doll. True California. Aphrodite in the bloom of freshman youth. Legally Blond, the movie, but in real life. And, no, this was not the cab-driving, hands-in-her-back-pockets-Betty-Davis-style supermodel who recently won a Nobel. Back in those days that one was similarly incognito; just John Wheeler’s assistant – match you pitcher for pitcher at the pub.

Sneers widened to grins of anticipation. What idiocy might possibly emanate from Barbie’s lips? How harshly, or better yet condescendingly and knowingly, but still harshly, will it be dealt with? What emanated follows.

According to Barbie, the third term in the lengthy equation appeared to have been incorrectly stated. Visible grins turned to audible snickers. All eyes, and the professor, turned toward the blackboard. Oops. Heads turned back to scribbling received truth, but now knowing that all or parts of it might have been incorrectly stated. This brings us to case in point/example three, which is more maxim than example.

Example Three. In a boiler room the steamfitter-philosopher Ten-Ply held court daily. His most famous maxim? Consider the source. Ten-Ply never commented on any issue brought before him until he had considered the source. This cuts in two directions. If we do the same, we filter out nonsense from sources such as Alex Jones and we avoid discounting valid information simply because we have a prejudice against the delivery vehicle. Either way, it’s a necessary first step.

This brings us full circle back to the Sam Harris podcast (no it doesn’t, but gotta wrap up somewhere). It never ceases to amaze that Sam’s comments section, which I read as one of several barometers of the national level of vitriol and for no other good reason, always seems to contain a few calls for the podcast to include video. (Much in the way ASMR has been turning into soft-core porn. The “A” stands for Audio, people. Audio can convey little information about cleavage. I think I just answered my own question.) Sam, are you unaware, they seem to ask, that we now have moving pictures? The better and more quickly to tune out the content, I suppose. Gray hair? Hit the dislike button. Wrong color skin? Hit the dislike button. Wrong gender? You get the picture. Or maybe you don’t. Since it’s not a picture.

information intolerance – the great crippler of would-be-modern societies – motion toward an inverse relationship between the purity of information and the ability of many to accept it. A poison refined in advertising. How do I know the product is great? Why, they say it is. And they couldn’t say it if it weren’t true. Could they? I mean, somebody would stop them. Right? Surely they would. As in how come they can put a man on the Moon but they can’t make a decaffeinated coffee that tastes good?

Consider the source. Consider Complexity. Not everything can be dumbed down. The medium is not always the message.

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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One Statement and Two Questions

August 31, 2019

From 1960 through 1985, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy in the world. Russia’s economy in 2019 ranks 12th, sandwiched between Spain and South Korea. Even adding back the other former Soviet states wouldn’t cause it to break the top 10. The past thirty years in the former Soviet Union have seen the greatest transfer, or disappearance, of wealth in human history.

Question 1: Where did the money go?

Question 2: Why are so many leaders in the West behaving like puppets with a hand up their back when asked simply to do what’s best for their countries and the planet?

MOE

Mi.I.C.H – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Tory Negotiating Strategy

August 31, 2019

Having sold Brexit to the public on the basis that the slimy continentals have been eating the British lunch for decades, the best thing to do now is nothing. Simply wait until they come crawling back to the table with exactly the deal 10 Downing Street wants: all the benefits of membership with none of the costs or obligations.

After all, the EU wouldn’t let their chief benefactor, prime mark and choicest victim slip away. Would they?

Clock is ticking down, Tusk. Better hurry. Say Uncle!

MOE

M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity

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Dissolve the Senate!

August 31, 2019

BoJo = Genius. We don’t need no stinking Parliaments.

Minor miscalculation. The UK, it turns out, is not entirely an island. This complicates casting off lines and steaming away from the continent as planned. There is a land border with another EU member country. Who knew?

The solution is simple. Dig a moat between Northern Ireland and Ireland to make the geography more the way its was imagined by Nigel, Boris and company. Deep thinkers all.

MOE

M.I.C.H – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity