E.J. Dionne suggested in his opinion piece today that because this must be Donald Trump's last term, the Senate, and the GOP more broadly, will not be quite as comploientt as Trump might have wanted. That's wishful thinking. Trump doesn't play by the old rules, rules that tended to restrict political leverage to the political sphere. He is quite prepared to use any means possible to get his way, whether it be whipping up public fervor against his enemies or using the legal system to harass them. Neither are likely to diminish in potency any time soon. In his campaign, he clearly signalled intent to use the Department of Justice to harass his political opponents. And as the undisputed and charismatic leader of the MAGA movement, his power to apply pressure and ultimately to incite violence against his enemies doesn't depend exclusively on being president, as he ably demonstrated on January 6th 2021. He has plenty of time to threaten and if needed punish anyone who gets in his way; and as he has said so, explicitly, there can be little doubt that he will.
This week Donald Trump picked John F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense and Gabbard for director of National Intelligence.
It was always on the cards that none of his pick would be made on the basis of fit or competence, but in these four at least that may be two other motivating factors. The first is to create an early loyalty test for those that require Senate confirmation which these four do. Not only do not of these candidate have the qualifications or relevant experience for the posts, they are also known public figures that are lightning rods for public support from the MAGA movement, and ire and angst from liberals. Their notoriety creates pressure on the Sante as they decide which way to vote. Those who chose not to support Trump's picks will be marked 'personae non grata' and the consequences for their futures should not be underestimated.
The second is to create a straw man for subsequent picks should his fist be rejected. By nominating the most extreme candidates first Trump may be offering them as sacrifices to garner an obligation from the Senate to confirm subsequent appointments.
Whoever finally takes up theses posts, one thing is clear; they will not be the political insiders or career civil servants one would normally expect.
In one of the many immediate post-election opinion pieces someone compared Trump's policies to the "gales of creative destruction", a term coined by the Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter in his 1934 book "The Theory of Economic Development"[1]. It's an interesting but ultimately flawed analogy.
While social media can bee seen as the technological shift that has created the context for innovation in the political area, there are two critical differences.
First in business there are clear outcomes that determine which experiments fail and which succeed. The process of variation, selection and retention (which the strategy literature borrowed from evolutionary biology) relies on the selection of the more fit experiments to be retained; but it's unclear that in politics there is a strong relation between measurable outcomes and retention. (While James March argued in Exploration and Exploitation"[2] that too swift a convergence on one solution precluded experimentation that could 1) lead to a more advantageous position on a hilly (rugged) landscape and 2) prevented adaptation to a slowly changing context, abandoning any connection between the quality of outcomes and retention is more even problematic).
Second, Schumpeter envisioned a large number of entrepreneurial experiments from which one might emerge as a winner, and has Tushman and Anderson[3] have suggested, would for a period become the dominant paradigm. The analogy to the political arena is that at any point in time there is generally only one experiment, not many, and there can be no cross-sectional comparisons by which to select a more fit approach. This analogy becomes more disturbing when one realizes that 99% of new ventures fail. That's why logical incrementalism[4,5] is a safer course.
[1] Schumpeter, J. A. (1934). The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
[2] March, J. G. (1991). "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning." Organization Science 2(1): 71-87.
[3] Tushman, M. and P. Anderson (1986). "Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments." Administrative Science Quarterly 31: 439-465.
[4] Lindblom, C. E. (1952). "The Science of Muddling Through." Public Administration Review 19(2): 77-88.
[5] Quinn, J. B. (1980). Strategies for Change; Logical Incrementalism, Richard D. Irwin.
Just as it did in 2016, Democrats are "going to have to do some soul searching" to understand why their candidate lost to someone who none in their party thought should be electable; but he was - elected.
In the 16 hours since the presidential race was called for Donald Trump by the AP, major print media platforms have generated page after page of analysis, reflection and recrimination. And just like 8 years ago, there's an almost unanimous call to fundamentally rethink the Democratic party's messaging and policy priorities; but the party is no more likely to turn back the tide of disillusion that is now so clearly sweeping the country than it was then.
Was is Biden's fault for seeking a second term? Was it the shortness of Harris' campaign? Or the tactical errors in favoring the "ground game" over social and digital media? The answer certainly includes "all of the above". Yet that seems to ignore the larger question: how is it that Trump's messaging resonated with more voters than Harris' ?
Decades ago, the Democrats were the party of the working (in the US 'middle') class while the Republicans were the party of business. But that's changed. Now the Republicans claim to speak for the working stiff, while while Democrats spend their time in identitarian classification. What they have overlooked to their cost is just as now all white people are racist and reactionary, not all people of color are progressives.
I was stuck by this the cartoon from the Washington Post. The one thing that might help is missing from the suggested "coping mechanisms" - Listening to those you think you disagree with. It's something we all need to do more if but most of all its something the political class need to start doing. Without becoming more responsive to people's everyday concerns the tide will not turn.
I didn't watch the election results as they came in yesterday; they wouldn't have changed had I done so. This morning I got up as usual a little after seven. The sun had risen, Jack, Puggles and Louis were asleep on my legs and the litter boxes needed cleaning. The world was much as I'd left it yesterday: the leak in the spare bathroom was still dripping as was the one on the patio and my to-do list was no longer (or shorter).
All that had changed with Trump's reelection was definitive confirmation of what I had long suspected: that "this is not who we are" is complete bollocks. For whatever reason over half the country doesn't seem to have a problem with the lies, the racism, the misogyny, the bullying and threats that Trump so proudly displays. For me, it's is a sad reflection on our collective values but it is who the majority of Americans really are, despite the coastal elites wishing it were not.
And when Trump leaves the White House in four and a bit years, his values (or rather his lack thereof) will endure; others will replace him in his image. Like trust, trampling norms and discarding values in a race to a more primitive, visceral, primal bottom is far easier, and happens far faster, than collectively developing and maintaining them.
The only positive aspect of the outcome is that Trump won the popular vote and the race decisively so we are spared the two months of bickering, uncertainty and ultimately violence to which he subjected us four years ago. I am thankful for that very small mercy.
Have you heard of a time that will help get it together again? Have you heard of the word that will stop us going wrong?"
These are Jon Anderson's lyrics from "Time and a World" (both the 1970 "Yes" song and eponymous album). They seem apropos today, November 5th, 2024, as we finish voting in the what feels like the most consequential (and nail-biting) election in my lifetime.
The moment seems surreal. Donald Trump announced his intention to run again almost two years ago to the day. Some (and I was one) thought that after his failed attempt to overturn the results the 2020 election, not to mention his various other legal woes, he wouldn't run again. But whether it was because he needed to to avoid criminal prosecution, or whether he could not admit defeat, or whether he couldn't bear to step away from being the center of attention, he did.
Perhaps it's not entirely her fault, but Kamala Harris isn't an inspiring candidate. She makes much the same kinds of silly promises politicians often make, appealing sounds-bites but without any details to let you make any assessment as to their practicality. "I'm going to bring down the price of groceries". Seriously? How exactly are you going to do that Madam Vice President? It's more specific than Trump's "I will fix everything on day one" but no less patronising in its own way. Certainly, hers has been a short campaign, but she appeared quite unprepared in terms of messaging and that's not altogether comforting.
So why did I vote for her? My answer is "consider the alternative". It's a tragic reflection of the terrible state of politics in this country that this is exactly the same "lesser of two evils" justification as motivated my choice to pull the lever for Joe Biden four years ago.
Last night Seth Meyer listed all the seemingly disqualifying events and characteristics any one of which in normal times would have ended Trump's second run. The list is long, too long to enumerate here, so I'll try a thirty thousand foot view (hopefully not from from a Boeing 737 with a missing door).
Let me start by admitting there are some things I think he did get right. China is a threat to the US, both geo-politically and economically. And his focus on illegal immigration, however abhorrently articulated, has brought overde attention to a festering problem that Congress has ignored for decades. He called out Europe for its over-reliance on America to protect the world order. And despite promoting Ivermectin and bleach as cures for covid, he deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed which got the vaccine into circulation remarkably quickly. Kamala, in contrast, seems to stand only for pro-choice and "I'm not Trump".
So why not give him a second chance? For me it boils down to four things: competence, character and motivation, governance and lastly tone. While he does have clear broad goals, he has shown no interest in the nuance of different policy choices. A CEO who can't be bothered with the details doesn't seem like a good idea. Many of those in his first administration who worked with him make the same point.
Second there is a question of motivation. He sought office (I think) to garner the attention he seems to crave, because people told him it wasn't possible, because he saw it as a way to enrich himself and his family, and because he likes to wield power. Now, like Bibi Netanyahu, he wants the office to avoid criminal prosecution. And that's not good.
His plan to politicise the civil service and his promises to use the levers of power to pursue his political enemies is deeply worrying. We've already seen, in the Washington Post's decision not to endorse Kamala Harris, how just the threat of retaliation has changed the political landscape.
Finally there is tone. While not entirely alone in this, he has coursened and debased political discourse, reducing it to childish insults that make some feel good and others angry; but they do not inspire, or elevate, educate or inform. They set an example of uncivilised behavior that reduces us to our most primitive, visceral, primal instincts. He is in short an uncivilised and un-civilizing influence on society.
I appreciated the eight years of calm under Obama, the feeling that the president was someone who was smart, engaged and who cared deeply about the country. And as John Oliver noted yesterday on the Late Show, we've lived with Trump's omni-presence since 2015; nine years of bluster, lies, disparagement, childish insults and threats. To me, it feels like some ghoulish zombie who continues to lumber on, crawling out of the muck, the cesspool of its cruel, vindictive mind, every time it appears to triped itself up with yet another self-inflicted wound.
Today seems surreal because only in my worst nightmares could I have envisioned electing someone like Trump to any office, let alone the presidency, not just once but twice. Yet here we are; and there is a real chance (50/50 according to the polling) that he will be.
But the problem in American politics isn't only Trump; it's a more fundamental failure of the system that with some exceptions (Obama being one) provides us with unappealing choices.
So whoever wins this cycle, this seems to be where we're headed.
Finally Max Verstappen has been disciplined for his chronic recklessness. In today's Mexico GP, he (yet again) forced another driver off the track. It's a move he's perfected over the last few years. He late-brakes into the corner taking the inside line towards the apex. The problem with the manoeuvre is that with the angle of the car and its velocity he will inevitably leave nowhere for the car outside him to go, except off the track.
The driver being overtaken is already turning in but has to either back off or course-correct away from the apex; but since he is already on the outside there's nowhere to go. So the Verstappen overtake manoeuvre inevitable leads to his rival being forced off the track (often incurring a track limits violation which is ridiculous). But this afternoon, in forcing Lando Norris off the track, Verstappen was finally penalised.
Here is a sequence of images that clearly show the problem. It's slightly different here in that Norris is passing Verstappen, but Verstappen's "response" is the same as when he's lunging down the inside for the overtake.
Coming into the corner, Norris is ahead of Verstappen.
Muguet left us yesterday morning after a short illness. She was probably 8 years old, though we don't know exactly, and Judith's clear favorite. Almost a year ago I presented a probability decision tree (minus any explicit probability estimates) showing the different outcomes in Trump's attempt to avoid accountability for his involvement in the January 6th insurrection. Thanks to several Trump appointed and likely Trump loyalist judges, in his trial and on the Supreme Court, Trump's January 6th trial will not take place before the election and, in all likelihood, will never take place. So the bottom half of the full decision tree disappears.
Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation initiative and a road-map for remaking US government, has been getting a lot more attention recently; and much of the reporting is far from complimentary. Worried that it might hurt his election, Trump tried to distance himself from it with this post: "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal".
If, as he claims, he knows "nothing about Project 2025" and has "no idea who is behind it", how is he able to "disagree with some of the things they're saying "?
The story of January 6th, as told by the left, is that of a groups of fascist vigilantes were goaded into storming the Capitol by Donald Trump, a mendacious, self-serving President trying by any means to remain in power. Trump had tried through both legal and illegal means to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election - and thankfully for democracy - failed.
The right seems to see things differently. There is a sense that the system is rigged. Elected representatives use their office to enrich themselves and have been utterly corrupted by the need to raise money for their campaigns.
One aspect of that corruption is the implied threat that without actively furthering the interests of those who financed their campaigns the funding would not continue at the next election. And the ludicrously narrow definition of corruption established by the Supreme Court precludes this devil's bargain from falling under our anti-corruption laws.
The second and related aspect of corruption is the outsourcing of drafting of legislation to lobbyists. Once representatives have agreed to support their donors' causes, it is a short step to agreeing that they should draft the legislation.
The end result is that a majority on the right (and probably many on the left, though they might not freely admit it) see our system of government as broken. If the system is corrupt and not working for those it is supposed to represent then actions to dismantle a system they consider to be illegitimate are therefore legitimate.
There are naturally numerous contradictions here; the right claims to be about supporting law and order yet is happy to break the law when it appears not to align with their goals. And the conservative Supreme Court which they installed is only weakening the guard rails that might keep government "honest". But the left's view that the right is a threat to democracy is only one perspective - the right does not consider what we have a democracy, so tearing it down is a necessary step in regaining accountability.
That may seem strange to many outside the USA, but might be attributed to three main factors. First is the relentless undermining of trust in national institutions from the political right, a campaign that has been waged for decades. Second is the effect of the fragmentation of the media, both the traditional television and now social, into almost completely isolated echo chambers. Finally, and perhaps most notably for Biden, is his age. Although Biden is only three years Trump's senior, he has for several years been showing signs of aging; Trump by contrast remains vital and vigorous.
The crushing weight of Biden's age on his poll numbers only worsened at last week's presidential debate. Trump's goal was simply not to appear like the childish bully he is, surprisingly, something he managed to accomplish. Biden's only goal by contrast was not to appear a doddering old fool: and in that he failed dismally. He came across as a demented old man no longer in command of his faculties; he appeared incapable of thinking clearly and seemed physically very frail. Anyone bar die-hard Democrats who watched his performance must, if they are being honest with themselves, have serious doubts about his ability to do his job now, let alone for the next four years. In a strange way that makes them as guilty as the MAGA Republicans, in being prepared to overlook their preferred candidates obvious and disqualifying flaws.
So here we are. Unless something unexpected happens (such as Biden becoming ill or, less likely still, stepping down as the Democrat's nominee) American voters will be faced with a terrible choice in November between a corrupt venal vengeful old man with no interest in policy other than that which enriches himself, and a frail confused octogenarian who will be lucky to live long enough to make it though his second term and seems incapable of dealing with the issues that will certainly confront him.
Biden's enablers will (and already are) arguing that in private he is much more coherent, more in command of his faculties than he appeared at the debate. That may be true (although I wonder if that's just spin) but is largely irrelevant. What mattered was how Biden appeared to some sixty million Americans last week - and that ship has decidedly sailed. No amount of spin or briefings or ad campaigns can undo the damage his appearance last week did to broad public perception. If Biden is serious about saving the country from another Trump term and a further decline into autocracy, he must make way for a younger, more vigorous and more capable nominee.
Many, myself included, are concerned that Trump will not hesitate to pervert the powers of the presidency to exact revenge on his political enemies.
While that threat remains, another more dangerous and insidious possibility exists: that he will have a volunteer army of many millions, devoted acolytes, ready to commit illegal violence at his beck and call.
He need only suggest indirectly that his enemies should be silenced and many in his personal private army will happily oblige. "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest"? and with plausible deniability, his enemies are threatened or killed.
That in turn will have a chilling effect on all but his most determined critics, and will effectively quash any opposition in his party, ending any hope that his excesses will be moderated from within.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Initially, it seemed clear to me as "a man on the Clapham omnibus" that the 14th amendment barred anyone involved in an insurrection from becoming president. However, having read several opinion pieces by people more knowledgeable of the law and its interpretation that me, that clarity is becoming a little hazier.
Doing the easier bits first, as my accounting prof used to say, is the question as to whether the people or the courts should decide whether in insurrectionist may hold the highest office in the country. First, the courts so far seem to agree that an insurrection did occur, that there was a concerted effort by a group, orchestrated by one individual in particular to subvert the orderly transition of power, and overturn the results of a free and fair election. The courts and the Congressional Inquiry into the events of January 6th 2021 do seem to agree that what happened in the weeks leading up to the formal ratification by Congress of the results of the 2020 general election meets the standard of an insurrection.
Second, the Supreme Court had already weighed in on issues that determine who will become president in Bush vs. Gore, establishing that to do so is not without precedent. Second, particularly from an originalist and non-interventionists perspective, the societal consequences, while salient, should not take precedent over the interpretation of the law, when the law is clear. Moreover, it has been pointed out that if the people's representatives consider that an exception need be made to the court's ruling, that is an option explicitly set out in the last sentence which gives Congress the power to do so.
Next is the issue of the wording with respect to the highest office of all, that of the presidency. It has been suggested that there is a clear hierarchy in terms of importance, starting with senators, members of congress, the electors for the two "top jobs" and ending with "or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State". The implication is that in naming certain offices in order of importance, the presidency cannot reasonably be considered to be subsumed in the catch-all of "or hold any office". Furthermore, one writer maintains that "under the United States" means under the United States government and that since the presidency is the highest office it cannot be said to be "under" anything. This last argument seems rather week; the might better be seen as in institution under which all elected officials including the president, work.
My final thought, which is not one that I've seen written about, concerns the question of primary ballots. The cases making their way through the courts are about whether an insurrectionist can appear on a primary ballot. But being listed as a candidate on a primary does not mean that if the insurrectionist were to win he would be holding any federal or state office. It only means he would be listed, unless barred from running, in the general election. So the 14th Amendment cannot apply to a primary election since these elections are not for "offices", state or federal. If the case is about the general election, which does determine who holds an office, the question is as yet a hypothetical one, since an insurrectionist has not yet won in any primary. Surely then, a decision about an insurrectionist being barred from the general election should wait until that hypothetical becomes a reality?
This year will be an inflection point in many ways: the election itself, the decisions of SCOTUS, artificial intelligence, the wars in Ukraine and Israel's battle with the Palestinian terrorists. We are living in "interesting times".
Obviously, FTX is (or rather was) in a very different line of business than Theranos. But the crypto currency exchange and the diagnostic company shared several characteristics that led to their very high profile implosion.
First both were operating on a relatively new technology space that very few people understood. That made it much easier for their founders to spin a wildly over-optimistic yarn without fear of contradiction. Those yarns may well had strayed into falsehoods in both cases too.
Second, both had young, apparently brilliant founders that may wanted to believe in. America is plagued by the cult of personality and hero-worship, and both Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes, managed to convince a lot of seemingly smart people to buy into their stories. With a posse of powerful influential but largely uncomprehending bakers, they were able to weather headwinds that would have sunk less well protected firms far earlier. And that unnatural longevity increase the scale of the damage inflicted when they eventually imploded.
If is fitting and not entirely surprising that high profile founders ended up failing in such spectacular fashion.. But until people, particular the influential (who by dint of their prior accomplishments, often overestimate their abilities) learn not to be take in by "bright young things" with an appealing story and do a little more due diligence fueled by a good does of skepticism, we'll be here again before too long.
Geoffrey Hinton, the father of Artificial Intelligence, worries about AI as an existential risk for humanity. While he is concerned about the potential societal disruption of mass unemployment, political division driven by social media message targeting, the increase "ease" of going to war when your side only looses "battle-bots" and not people, not to mention the further erosion of trust in messaging and institutions, his principle concern is that unconstrained AI well see no need for human direction and control, and perhaps no need for humans at all. That is the existential thread he and many others worry about.
The threat from AI has been compared to that we faced sixty years ago from nuclear weapons. But there are two critical differences. First, nuclear weapons were designed and built by governments while A.I. is being developed in the private sector. Governments therefore only have indirect control over its development and their ability to influence it is somewhat "arms-length".
The second critical difference is incentives. Both nuclear weapons, particularly the H-bomb, have a clear downside - the total destruction of life on earth. But the up-side is quite different. For the bomb, it's the deterrent effect that is thought to have prevented World War III. Importantly, the diminishing marginal return from the number of weapons allowed governments to negotiate a halt to the arms race.
For AI however, the up-side is not only quite different but much more complex. First, AI offers clear benefits to society from better medical diagnoses, safer roads, more targeted teaching and tutoring and faster access to information. And since AI is being developed in the private sector, the potential profits are a strong incentive that weren't directly part of the decision making in developing the bomb. That incentive is exacerbated by the potential network effects common to software and other non-rival goods and services. Companies who fall behind in developing AI are destined to lose; that creates a strong incentive to push forward as fast as possible. And since the software industry has historically been more concerned with speed then safety, the "fail-fast" mentality, when flaws are discovered after the product is launched rather than before, guard-rails are likely to be an after thought at best and a band-aid for a severed artery at worst.
All of which means that companies are unlikely to self-regulate effectively, leaving that job to governments. But governments have two problems. First, legislators have in the past have had difficulty grasping the some of the basics of new technology, let alone its implications and how they might be mitigated. Second, there is not only inter-firm competition but inter-country competition. The US government for example may be loath to impose too much regulation on AI for fear that China and Chinese firms will gain a competitive advantage which will have consequences for US competitiveness and its economic welfare.
Finally there is an issue of oversight and enforcement. With nuclear weapons, a physical entity, inspection and intelligence gathering allowed both side in the cold war to know enough about the other was doing. That's much harder when the development is not being carried out by singular government entities but dispersed throughout the private sector. And when there are no physical tell-tales to monitor, oversight and enforcement of any international agreement limiting the development of AI is going to be much harder.
None of these issues applied to the development of nuclear weapons. Were one were looking to the history of the cold war for a road map to control the development of AI, the historical analogy would be quite misleading. One can only hope that around the world there are enough people with sufficient foresight to design some kind of effective global agreement. But given the political dysfunction in the US, the lack of cohesion in Europe given the tension between a European identity and its composite sovereign states and the lack of democratic accountability in China and Russia, it's hard to be sanguine about the future.
Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash along with nine of his deputies on Thursday. No one was particularly surprised. Prigozhin's plan crash looks very much like a carefully planned assassination by the Russian military, in all likelihood ordered by Putin. Prigozhin had risen to prominence as Russia's dictatorial president, Vladimir Putin, came to rely increasingly on the Wagner group mercenaries to do the work the regular Russian army was seemingly unable to.
The more Putin relied on Prigozhin's men in Ukraine, Prigozhin's influence and leverage grew. Prigozhin's increasing frustration with what he saw as the incompetence of the leadership of the regular army led to his demands to replace top Russian military leaders in June and ultimately to his failed coup.
While Prigozhin's demise isn't surprising - after all disposing of political opponents is precisely what autocrats do - what was, at least until yesterday, was the fact that Prigozhin appeared to have reached a deal with Putin. Yet what we now know, assuming the assessment is correct, is that Putin was merely biding his time. The supposed deal was never one on which Prigozhin should have relied.
It has been suggested that Putin liked "revenge as a dish served cold". Yet there seems a more pragmatic reason for his delay in exacting retribution. By lulling Prigozhin into a false sense of security, allowing him to travel back and forth between his self-imposed semi-exile in Bellaruse and Mother Russia, he found an opportunity to eliminate not only Prigozhin but all his top lieutenants at the same time. That not only disposes of the charismatic Prigozhin but neutralizes any potential threat from other Wagner Group leaders who might have shared Prigozhin's aspirations for power.
The other surprising aspect here is that Prigozhin never seemed to have seen this coming. Thinking he could challenge Putin's leadership and get away with it seems the height of hubris. Putin's enemies have been assassinated all over the world. Flying back and forth to Russia was a flagrant challenge to Putin's stature, one that he simply could not tolerate.
Looking forward two things seem clear. The first is that Putin's hold on power, at least for the moment, is more secure. The fate of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants will make others who might have thought to challenge or even disagree with Putin far less likely to do so. The second is that there are only two ways in which Putin's hold on power will end; with a coup or if he dies on the job (although the two are not mutually exclusive).
Causality is often not bidirectional. In many cases causality runs in one direction only with changes in A leading to changes in B but not vice versa. China appears to be a case in point. It has been generally assumed by economists that democratic free market economies function more efficiently and therefore generate more wealth than centralized command and control economies. In the 1990s that reasoning was turned on its head and many political scientists assumed that the corollary would also hold; that greater economic prosperity and freer markets would lead to an inevitable transition from a centralized political system to a decentralized democratic one. The quarter century since that view came to prominence has shown that in China at least, market liberalization and greater personal wealth do not lead to democratic reform. When relationships are not simple and dyadic (A->B, B->A) but are the product of many different mechanisms one cannot assume causality runs both ways.
A legal pundit on The News Hour yesterday suggested it was never a good idea to antagonize the judge in a case in which you are the defendant. That may be the case for mere mortals but not Trump. He believes, and with good reason, that the normal rules don't apply to him. If you color inside the lines you are indeed constrained by the rules and norms most of us take as given. But Trump has learned from experience that if you ignore the rules a range of possibilities open up not all of which end in tears.
What the News Hour pundit seemed not to realize is that insulting the judge and disparaging the legal system may hurt Trump's legal case, but helps his political campaign. And since his fate belongs less in the hands of the legal system and more in the hands of the electorate, insulting the judge and not playing by the rules seems like a pretty good strategy.
Donald Trump was indicted for what to a lay person looks like an attempted coup. Nothing in America's political and constitutional history has been more serious.
Many have argued that the fact that he was charged shows that the judicial system has held even under the most sever stress it may ever had have to endure. That may be so, but despite the compelling evidence and care in selecting how to charge Trump, the outcome for the country still hangs in the balance.
A decision tree is illuminating here. The first branch deals with whether Trump is able to delay the trail until after the 2024 general election. The next two branches are the same except order depends on whether or not his delaying tactics were successful. The two branches are the outcome of the trial and the outcome of the general election.
The decision tree can be simplified since the two right sets of branches (election outcome and trial outcome) are the same except that order of their application depends on the outcome of the leftmost branch. For the moment, assume that the probabilities of winning in court and winning in the general election are the same whether the upper branch or the lower branch obtain. The model is then completely insensitive to the likelihood of the trial being delayed past the election, depending, along both "delay" and "no delay" branches, only on the combined probabilities of an election win (or loss) and a win (or loss) in the courts. Given that the first branch only flips the order of the subsequent branches, the tree can be reduced to:
His fate therefore depends almost entirely on the electorate; they cannot put him in jail but they can certainly keep him out of jail. Even if his conviction were absolutely assured, his accountability rests with the American people. This, then, is the ultimate test of America democracy.
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| (c) NASA |
In what seemed an eternity later but was in fact only six months, Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag on the lunar surface. The Apollo program was only three years old, and less than a year since the first Apollo astronauts had left earth*
Five more moon landing were made until the program was terminated after the flight of Apollo 17 in 1972. It had taken only three years from the first manned flight of the Saturn V to the sixth lunar landings. In hindsight, the speed with which the program moved forward was astonishing. That was fifty one years ago.
In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed and the "space race" effectively ended. The Space Shuttle never seemed to fulfill its original promise and didn't capture the public's imagination as the moon landings had. America turned inwards to become increasingly consumed in what we now think of as the culture wars.
Existential challenges confront the country and the world yet America's increasingly chronic inability to tackle anything consequential, at least with any success, imperils the country and the wider world. Two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to achieve their objectives, the wealth gap has widened and trust in institutions has all but evaporated.
The feeling I had as I watched man set foot on the moon, the sense that there was almost no limit to what could be accomplished, has given way to the realization that America's sclerotic politic and societal dysfunction has turned the dream of a bright future, brimming with possibilities, into to a bleak and deeply depressing nightmare
*Tragically Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the crew of Apollo 1, died in a fire on the launch pad in Feb 21st, 1967.Judge Aileen M. Cannon, in what appears to be a very unjudgmental decision, split the difference between Special Counsel Jack's Smith request for a speedy trial and Donald Trump's attempts to evade justice by delaying his trial until he might be in a position to direct the Justice Department to drop his case.
To a Brit the situation seems utterly bizarre and Kafkaesque. First Trump's argument that the trial might interfere with his political campaign is mind-boggling. Defendants in criminal cases generally don't get to use the argument that they can't go to trial because they can't get time off work. So clearly not everyone is equal in the eyes of our justice system.
Second, that notion that it is possible to campaign for an elected office that could be used to alter the course of ones own criminal case equally baffling. To suggest that this would create a conflict of interest is, even for a Brit, an extraordinary understatement. It's as if Jeffrey Dahmer stood for election to the governor of Wisconsin in order to stop his case going to trial or to grant himself a pardon were he to be convicted.
While there may not be constitutional or legislative guard-rails that prevent a presidential candidate from either the delaying of a trial or the possibility of self-pardon or of stopping an ongoing prosecution, the Founding Father's almost certainly would have not approved of such self-dealing. The constitution does seem to suggest that public service requires people be of "good moral character"; and what that meant may, to the Founding Father's, have seemed completely self-evident.
However while they may have met or been aware that individuals as unscrupulous as Trump existed, it probably never crossed their minds that the electorate would ever entertain such as absurd notion as electing such a person to the highest office in the land. Yet the morality that the Founding Father's considered sufficient to keep individuals lacking "good moral character" out of the White House seems to have evaporated. With the increasing polarization of American politics both sides are willing to turn a blind eye to a lack of "good moral character" if their side stands to gain. What is particularly ironic is that the GOP, which routinely rails against the decline in societal morals, is willing to entertain the candidacy of a deeply immoral person ostensibly in order to restore the country's morals.
Over the last several months Prigozhin had become increasingly and publicly critical of Putin, suggesting he was increasingly confident of his own power and his indispensability to Putin.
The Wagner group, in recruiting from Russia's prisons, turned out to be a more effective fighting force than Putin's regular army. As the war on Ukraine bogged down, Putin begin to rely increasingly on the Wagner Group to backstop his regular army's failings and in so doing ceded power to Prigozhin.
As Prigozhin's confidence grew, along side his frustration with the Russian bureaucracy that seemed to be starving his mercenary army of military supplies, so did his impatience and his criticism of Putin. The feud between Prigozhin and Putin's Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff came to a head on Friday June 23rd when Russia’s Federal Security Service issued a warrant for Prigozhin’s arrest. The following day, confident of his own invincibility, Prigozhin ordered his private army to advance on Moscow in what looks very much like an attempted coup.
Many of my colleagues have been lamenting the infringement of academic freedom in red states which are passing laws preventing the teaching of subjects related to race and gender.
What is striking but not perhaps surprising is that very few made the same augment about infringement of academic freedom when AB1460, a law mandating the teaching of ethnic studies in the CSU was passed three years ago.
Apparently infringement of academic freedom is only problematic when it's a policy that many of my colleagues don't like but is perfectly fine when its one they support.
It appears that hypocrisy is alive and well on the left as well as on the right.
Donald Trump was indicted yesterday on thirty-one counts of Willful Retention of National Defense Information (in layman's terms, 'espionage'), and another six counts of obstruction of justice and conspiracy. For anyone not is a position of national power and influence, this would appear to be an open and shut case. Trump had no right to retain classified information, lied to the authorities investigating the case and tried to cover up his wrong-doing, allegedly.
But Trump is not an ordinary individual in two ways that matter in this case. First he is a national figure, at present the front runner in the Republican presidential primary. While justice is supposed to be blind, the Justice Department cannot proceed without at least considering the political implications of bringing the case. While Trump's notoriety should not influence the pursuit of justice, it clearly influences the process by which justice might be arrived at. For example, Jack Smith, the Special Council tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with investing the case, is hoping to move the process forward quickly to avoid it dragging on into 2024 and the presidential primaries. It appears too, that he has been meticulous in his collection of evidence and the building of the case to ensure that any claims that this is a shoddy, politically motivated "witch hunt" might be easily laid to rest.
The other way Trump differs from many other criminal defendants is in his brazen attacks on the legitimacy of the judicial system and the judicial process. Just as may autocrats, when deposed and brought to trial, claim the the system under which they are being prosecuted has no legitimate right to hold or try them, so Trump is making the same argument. Of course the difference is that when a dictator is deposed, there is often a question about the legitimacy of the judicial system in which they are being tried; but that is certainly not the case in America. Trump has and will continue to claim he is the victim, that the charges are trumped up and politically motivated, and are only being brought by the "elites" to bring him down. He will raise money for his presidential campaign on the back of the indictment. And he will try every trick in his extensive play-book to delay the proceedings so that he can leverage his court case into his victim-hood narrative as he campaigns for the nomination and likely the presidency.
While much of the punditry has been focusing on the legal implications of the case, ultimately the outcome may be largely irrelevant. If Trump is not convicted, he will claim it as a victory that demonstrates not only his innocence, but a vindication of his claims to have been persecuted. If he is convicted, he will claim that his is yet further evidence of his being victimized by his political opponents who have manipulated justice to their own political ends. Politically, Trump makes hay either way.
Since the verdict may not matter much, his inability to find a legal team experiences in dealing with espionage cases may not matter much either. What he is probably looking for is a team that is prepared to risk everything (think Sydney Powell or Rudy Giuliani) while being adept at brazening things out in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. Ultimately, while I'm sure he'd like to be acquitted, he is looking for a victory in the court of Republican public opinion, not the legal system, betting that the former matters more than the latter. Yes, the indictment is consequential, but less in terms if its legal implications than its political ones.
Much of the imagery will be of the finery and the trappings of royalty; the crown, the orb and sceptre, the gilded carriage. Much will be made of the pageantry, the four thousand man and women from the armed services, the splendid (if somewhat bizarre to an outsider) uniforms of the Grenadier Guards or the Household Cavalry.
But two things stuck me particularly today. One was an old man in his undershirt, the other a old wooden chair.
That old man was the new King, being ceremonially undressed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Charles is the constitutional head of the Anglican Church, established by Henry VIII in 1543. I was struck by the symbolism of this public display of vulnerability, of the public acknowledgement of his role as the servant of god as well as the people.
We had some time to wait. Most of what happened is now a bit of a blur, save three memories. The first was saying goodbye as she was taken into the operating room. She was frightened; I held her hand and told her it would be fine. l really believed that.
I waited in the car park. The operation was scheduled for ten and was supposed to be over by noon; but by 1:30 I'd heard nothing. Then I got the call from Max Horowitz, the surgeon. The operation had run longer than expected but he thought it had been a success, at least as far excising the cancer was concerned. It had progressed to Stage 3, I think he'd said, but the margins were clean. I was relieved that the operation was over but concerned; Stage 3 was not what I'd wanted to hear. Now we had the chemo ahead of us, but that was a month away and I was looking forward to Judith coming home.
The next memory was going into recovery as Judith was waking up. She was under a heating blanket, still very groggy, her hands making little grasping motions. She wanted her special hydrogen-infused water water which we'd brought from home. The nurses let me stay till 6pm when I set off home to feed the cats.
I would retrace that journey for a week. Judith was supposed to come home after three or four days but because someone had cut into a large vein during surgery (that was why the operation had run so long) and she'd not been re-positioned, she sustained serious motor nerve damage from the sustained compression. That deprived her of any motor function in her left ankle. Foot-drop was the very non-technical-sounding term for the condition. That was why she stayed in hospital several days longer than planned, and had a significant impact on her life for the next six months, confining her to her chair for most of the time. It was the first indication that things weren't going to go smoothly.
The last memory from that early hospital episode was picking her up to go home. I think she was to be discharged around noon. I went to her room, talked with one of the surgeons about her foot drop (although that may have been a different day) and then went to bring the car round. But there was some confusion and crossed wires about which entrance she'd be coming out from and it took a few phone calls to sort that out. She was pissed and I was annoyed that the episode had soured what should have been a happy occasion. As things turned out, there would be very few happy occasions after that.
However the strict legal definition of corruption is really not that important here. What does matter is impropriety and the appearance of impropriety as the Founding Fathers noted.
It's hard to say if Thomas' rulings were directly influenced by his wealthy friends lavishing him with gifts or whether their friendship arose and was sustained by a shared world view.
Nevertheless, that fact they became friends only after he was appointed to the Supreme Court, while not in and of itself improper, it could be construed as a conscious attempt by his benefactors to exert some subtle influence in his general thinking even if not directly on his legal opinions.
The second question which Journalists haven't looked at (and which I think they should) is whether his donors sought out and then lavished similar gifts on other like-minded thinkers or whether their "outreach" was only to those who wielded significant power. If that were to be the case it would look suspiciously like an attempt to influence Thomas' (and other powerful peoples') decision-making and hence his opinions.
Since the Court like many important institutions of democracy relies on public trust (just as banks do, as First Republic has just shown us), the appearance of impropriety undermines that trust and so creates instability in society.
SCOTUS needs to get its ethical act together for the good of the country and do so without Congress getting involved. Showing it can police itself will be important to restoring trust; having ethical rules imposed on it from outside will only reinforce that idea as an institution it cannot be trusted to do the right thing.
Academia has a lot to answer for; it may have ruined the lives of a generation or more. To understand why, we need to go back to the 1990s.
Once the Berlin Wall fell, America turned its attention to international trade. Governments (and economists) thought growing international trade would bind nations states more closely economically and that would reduce the likelihood of war. Parenthetically, in 2022 Russia proved that to be an unfortunately illusion. Business and manufacturing companies in particular saw the post-Cold War order as an opportunity to move jobs to lower wage countries and offshoring took off.
As manufacturing jobs in the US (and Europe) disappeared, management scholars began lauding the "knowledge economy" as the answer to offshoring. In order to meet the demand for "knowledge workers", at least 40% (Tony Blair suggested 50%) of high-school graduates would need to get a four-year degree. In the UK polytechnics became universities with the stroke of a pen.
Fast forward a quarter century and academia (and much of the US) is either up in arms or enthralled by ChatGPT, a deep learning Artificial Intelligence engine. Tellingly, a member of the Wharton business faculty asked it to answer one of his exam MBA questions and he considered its answer, had it been a student's, would have earned a "C". So the debate about whether to use ChatGPT in the classroom or ban it is in a sense moot. If ChatGPT gets a a "C" a Wharton, anyone with a Wharton C or lower is effectively unemployable. Why hire a Wharton MBA at $300k when you can get as good an answer for free?
What does this all mean? First, ChatGPT provides a universal standard by which to calibrate work across institutions. If a Wharton professor thinks a ChatGPT answer is worth a "C" and a San Jose State prof thinks it's a B, that suggests a Wharton "C" is about the same as a San Jose State "B".
Second, it creates a performance threshold, an "AI bar"; get less than a Wharton "C" (or a San Jose State "B") and you are no better than ChatGPT. So to be competitive (with AI) in the labor market, students have to do at least as well as ChatGPT; otherwise they're unemployable. That's why the debate about banning or using ChatGPT is moot. Students may use it but if they do, they won't clear the AI bar and their degree is effectively worthless.
In the longer run, the employment landscape will change radically. Knowledge work will be eviscerated. High-school leavers will eschew four year degrees for jobs that require physical presence, service and manual jobs. For a while at least jobs that require individual customization may be immune from automation and offer a temporary respite from the technological tsunami. For those in early in their careers AI will soon over-take them and they will find themselves looking for work outside the knowledge economy.
We are at an inflection point, one that OpenAI has created with the launch of ChatGPT. Suddenly everyone has been given a salutary lesson in AI's potential. CEOs who had either not been paying attention or not taken it seriously, will now be asking what is the scale of the threat it poses to their companies if they don't get on board. That will light a fire under AI's adoption and its development.
The better AI becomes (and its progress will be ever more rapid), the less knowledge work the will be. Those most effected will be knowledge workers in their early careers, say one to ten years in. But that age range will get larger as AI improves. Only those with deep experience will be immune from replacement by "intelligent" machines. And as a consequence of academia's hype and enthusiasm over the knowledge economy we have created a huge group of people in their 30s and 40s who are most at risk from being replaced by AI. That's a big potential social problem for which academia is responsible.
Moreover, that creates a conundrum; if people early in their careers are replaced by AI, fewer and fewer will get the experience needed to stay ahead of the machines. The result will be an increasingly divided society with a tiny elite rising above the "AI bar" and commanding insane salaries while everyone else will be jobless or working for minimum wage. It could even be worse (although I doubt that politically this would be allowed to happen - but that's another story); AI could render even the best and the brightest redundant.
By the 2030s the political divide won't be between red states and blue states, but between a small insanely wealthy elite who have jobs and the 99% who will be out of work or earning minimum wage. How well the country's leaders prepare for that future will determine whether we navigate it peacefully or have to deal with a tinderbox of volatile social unrest.
After several years battling increasingly frequent episodes of severe constipation, we had to let Buddy go in December. He was our first all-American cat, who we adopted shortly after we moved to Sonora.
A diabetic, he put up with being poked with an insulin needle twice a day for 15 years. He was a gentle soul. He'd walk up to me on the kitchen counter and if I leaned down, he'd rub his forehead against mine.
As the most senior member of the cat clan he took is job keeping the others in order very seriously. Whenever there was a fracas between any of the other cats, he'd run to break it up. Like most of our cats, he'd come when called, though he made it clear that it was on his terms.
Keep on taking charge Buddy. You were a commanding presence in the family and I'll miss you.
