Foundation's End

Some 45 years after reading the original Foundation trilogy, I have now fished the other four books in the series.

The four books, two prequels and two sequels, came 30 years after the original trilogy and were very different in style. The original books comprised a series of fairly short episodes, each largely self contained though linked to the central theme of the Foundation, the collapsing empire and the Second Foundation. They were infused with politics and power, not to mention some memorable epigrams from Salvor Hardin; my favorite is still "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".

Asimov's style changed completely in the 'quels. They are longer to begin with; and there is a single story in each in place of the small self-contained episodes of the original trilogy (hereafter just the "trilogy").  While he draws nicely on his robot stories, weaving them into both the pre- and se-quels, they are ultimately less satisfying.

The ideas are sparser, and that's not just because the books are longer. The big ideas, psycho-history in Foundation, the Mule in Foundation and Empire and the Second Foundation in its eponymous volume seem conspicuously absent. Gaia was not an original Asimov conception. And they lack the suspense that permeated the trilogy.

My final thought for the evening, is that Asimov couldn't decide whether to bring the series to an end.  Having woven the threads to bring the protagonists of the last volume face to face with R. Daneel Olivaw where he could easily have left things, he chose instead to hint, in the very last sentence, of a malevolent alien intelligence from another galaxy.

To my mind that was gratuitous; all the the pieces had been seemingly carefully orchestrated into the final "ah-ha" moment, providing a relatively satisfying clicking together of the last piece of the puzzle, yet he seems somehow to have balked at the last minute. Perhaps he got cold feet about bringing the series to a close, indeed bringing both streams of work to a close. We will likely never know.

But while the cliff-hanger ending (literally) to the Italian job ("Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea."), this seemed contrived and out of place. A slightly sad way to end to one of the most important contributions to the science fiction genre.     

Postpone the election!

That's what Trump would dearly like. Why? One, he wants more time to see if the pandemic will magically disappear (he may not yet have learned that magic doesn't work against viruses).

Second, it gives him more time for a vaccine to appear that he will then claim credit for.

"So I said to Faucci, 'why not see of we could use crisper to cut the virus in half, that would kill it, right, if you cut in down the middle, like with a knife, into two pieces, that's was crisper does, right', and nobody knew that until I told them, at least that's what people are telling me, and Faucci said he'd look into that, I don't know why nobody likes me, my poll numbers should be better than Faucci's 'cos I came up with the vaccine, only the fake news media is saying it was science".

Let's also remember that delaying elections and disputing their legitimacy is precisely what autocrats do to cling on to power.   

"Stunning" 3rd quarter predicted

The Trump administration is predicting a huge rise in GDP for the 3rd quarter. Two notes of caution are in order. First, take an extreme example if the economy shrinks from $20t to $13.3t, a reduction of 33% and then grows by 50% it may look like we're way better off but in fact were back to exactly where we were: $20t.

Put another way, if the economy contracts 9.5% and then expands 9.5%, GDP will be about 1% lower than it was before decrease. But no doubt Trump will claim that the rise is thanks to his stable genius.

And we should forget that none of this is going to happen if people can't go back to work because the pandemic isn't under control or the jobs they had before covid have disappeared.

DACA

One constitutional crisis after another; Trump continues to break new ground when it comes to pushing past the boundaries. Sending DHS "troops" without invitation from the States was last week's violation. This week's is the DHS thumbing its nose at the SCOTUS decision that it must reinstate DACA. Yes it's part of a pattern, but this is perhaps the most serious to date by far. Prior efforts to violate the law were rebuffed by the courts and Trump backed down. But this time he's simply doubling down, ignoring SCOTUS' decision.

There is no higher democratic authority to determine what is or is not lawful. That he is ignoring it indicates we have left the domain of democracy and are on the precipice of authoritarianism. So, where do we go when an administration ignores the ultimate rule of law. We are living in perilous times.

The question is "what now"?       

Partisan differences on tech - are really the same issue

The Trump acolytes complain that they're being targeted by social media companies. Dems are worried that social media not doing enough to deal with disinformation (lies) hate speech. These are not different issues. The tweets that are being targeted are disinformation (lies) hate speech; and they're almost always posted by the Trump acolytes. 

"One question still dogs Trump: Why not try harder to solve the coronavirus crisis?"

That headline was in a lengthy piece in today's Washington Post. But the answer seems quite simple. Trump knows that he has failed up to this point, and that it is unlikely, even if he were to apply himself the problem, that he could turn it around. So if he does engage now, his efforts would almost certainly be seen as having failed. And that he cannot tolerate.

By the same token, his reluctance to engage directly in the spring, choosing rather to claim it was a States' problem, was likely for much the same reason: he knew he really wasn't guaranteed a win and so he didn't want to play. And while in his prior jobs that strategy might have worked, this a field of play he can't simply walk away from. It's really not just someone else's problem. 

Person man woman camera TV

On his favorite TV soap box this evening, Trump waxed lyrical about how well he'd done on a cognitive impairment test. His performance was unusually disturbing even by Trumpian standards.

First, boasting about how well he'd done is a bit like bragging that you passed a covid-91 test. That's good but nothing to brag about. He almost certainly lied about "his perfect score" but again that's par for the course, just as was his likely exaggeration about the reaction of those who administered the test. The whole episode was quite comic, and a little pathetic. One might feel pity were he not such a raging narcissistic sociopath.

But the real questions that need to be asked are, first why did he take the test at all, second did he volunteer or was he advised to take it, and finally how many previous presidents have been asked (or volunteered) to take such a test.   

If, as I suspect it is, it is extremely rare for a sitting president to take such a test, then if he volunteered to take it, this is simply evidence of his ignorance as to its intended purpose. And if it was suggested to him by his staff, what were they seeing that made them worried that he was cognitively impaired.

Granted we've seen plenty, but the little things that reasonable people might construe as warning signs of dementia, slurring of speech, inability to focus, loss of sophisticated vocabulary, all are things his inner circle would likely overlook. So for one of them to persuade him to take the test (assuming someone didn't take it for him) they must have seen something they considered sufficiently serious to risk getting fired for disloyalty. Now that's alarming. 

A ploy, but not without costs

Trump's threat to send federal law enforcement, "Trump's Troops" as Oregon's governor Kate Brown aptly described them, can best be seen as an electoral ploy. They are certainly not helping the situation, indeed their presence is inflammatory. Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. Trump wants to provoke scenes of violence between his troops and protesters to have footage and an emotive issue for the upcoming election. He's already running the campaign ads, and Fox screens little else. 

Having military forces act at the behest of a country's leader is generally associated with authoritarian despots; Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan are all leaders Trump seems to regards as role models, people whose unchecked power he appears to envy.

Of course that's not the only similarity in behavior between Trump and your typical dictator. Undermining confidence in the press, intervening in the administration of justice, surrounding himself with trusted fools rather than independent-thinking experts, fawning over the military, and pushing a xenophobic nationalist agenda are also characteristic behaviors. And before we boject that we are a democracy, not a dictatorship, it's worth remembering that not all despots are un-elected.

America isn't quite the Philippines, yet, but what the last three and a half yours have shown is just how easy it is for a president to trample the norms that were once the hallmark of a well reasonably well ordered society and come surprisingly close.   

Four risks

First, foreign interference. Clearly Russia and China, not to mention the DPRK, all want another Trump term. The first two have well developed cyber operations and Russia has already shown its hand four years ago. All see how easy it has been to manipulate Trump. North Korea still has its nukes and has gotten lots of air time on the international stage. Russia has proven completely immune from push back from Trump over: 2016 election interference; the poisoning of a dissident in the UK; propping up Bashar al Assad in Syria. China has had little to worry about as it clamps down on free speech, conducts what seems like ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, and strips Hong Kong of its special status granted in its treaty granting independence from Britain. And those are just the actors we know about.

Then there is voter suppression, whether in the form of a lack of polling places in strategic areas and the purging of voter rolls orchestrated by red state governors, a lack of mail-in ballots, not to mention the likelihood of the results being disputed, perhaps in court, if on November 4th the results are close but it looks like Trump might not have won. And there is always the potential for a random third party candidate, Kanye West for example, to come in as a spoiler, siphon of some of the African American vote and hand Trump the victory. 

Third is the potential for errors in polling. Although pollsters are confident they right this time, there are reasons to give at least a little credence to the Fox/Trump axis of evil which is asserting that the polls don't reflect his actual level of support among voters. They claim, interestingly, that lots of people will vote for him but are embarrassed to admit that to pollsters. It that's the case, it suggests they know what they would be doing (voting Trump back in) is wrong but will do it anyway. Either that or they are being super strategic, lulling Biden's people into a false sense of security: unlikely I admit. But a comfortable lead for Biden might induce complacency, reduce his turnout and let Trump sneak back in.       

Finally, and despite what most commentators are now saying, it is possible that things might change dramatically before November and Trump's sagging campaign might recover. One thing that would mean all bets are off would be the availability of a vaccine. Even if it's not widely deployed, having a vile for Trump to hold up for the cameras would put many concerned American's fears to rest and he could trumpet this as all his doing (the result of his Ward Speed Operation). Then he'd have something very real, very relevant and tangible to sell and that almost certainly would tighten the race.

So let's not count any chickens before their vaccinated.

Spot the villain

  

Testing, testing, testing. It's been about 18 weeks since I left the property; that's more than an entire semester. You'd think that in that time the country could have gotten its act together on testing; that was what the lock-down was supposed to help with. Buy time, keep the numbers low, ramp up testing and tracing so that when we reopened, we'd be in a position to quickly isolate cases, quarantine and treat; that we we'd be resuming economic activity and aggressively controlling the spread.

But we (by which I mean Trump's administration) dropped the ball. That's not completely fair, of course. They really never picked it up in the first place. Happy talk about "it will magically disappear when it gets warm", "can we look into that?" about disinfectant, well, all of that utter piffle meant that there was no concerted federally led effort.

Testing was and is seen as shining light on the fact Trump managed to mishandle the situation letting it turn into a truly monumental disaster, both medically and economically. According to his niece, he lacks any empathy and so all he cares about is a metric by which he will be judged. And if we tests less we appear to have fewer cases.  But having fewer cases doesn't mean more people aren't getting sick.  It just means we don't know who and where they are so we have no way of controlling the spread.

And because we still don't have testing at scale, results are coming back in 7 days, which is comparable to the incubation period of the virus. So people may well realize they are sick before their test results come back. In the mean time they have been merrily passing the virus on.

Once the rate of new case arrivals exceeds the capacity to test trace and isolate, it's game over; at that point we can't stop it and it will rip largely unimpeded through the community. Only mask-wearing will slow it sufficiently to prevent hospital capacity being completely overwhelmed.

And of course, as has been well documented, for a variety of reasons it will hit poor communities and communities of color hardest.

But Trump doesn't give a damn; he just wants to create the impression that things are going well so that he can win re-election. Still more people will die needlessly.

So, which one of these two fine gentlemen is the sociopath?

(Trick question: they both are, but only one is real).

Blue flu

I heard something deeply disturbing from a friend yesterday. Some friends of his from his childhood days who are in law enforcement told him that there has been a recent surge in handgun sales; mainly women (and I'm assuming white women), who apparently are "really frightened" (his words).

My immediate supposition is that these are people who watch Fox and who have been fed a diet of anti-Black vitriol (wrapped up as defending law and order and our heritage!) and incessant reporting of every violent incident committed by a person of color anywhere in the nation. (Fox needs to be shut down but  they hide behind the First Amendment to peddle their brand of thinly disguised hate speech).

But I digress; so their fear, he said is in some sense real because, and I'm quoting as best as I can recall, "the police as simply not going to respond [to 911 calls] because of the potential liability".

This is outrageous. It is symptomatic of the sense of victim-hood of those like Trump, who have been in positions of power an privilege and are now fearful that they are finally about to be reined in.  It has nothing to do with "liability" - qualified immunity hasn't been dismantled yet - so is likely just another case of the "blue flu", a way for the police to flex their power. In a sense, it's extortion: "leave us alone or we won't keep you safe" is the implied threat. And it's more invidious and less honest that going on strike - but then this isn't a bargaining situation, so what would they be striking for?

If that's the road we are on, there is no alternative to but dismantle police departments and replace them with a service that is committed to the welfare of the communities they are supposed to serve. More training is largely ineffective when it is working against the deeply embedded culture of bias and violence that so many police departments seem to suffer from.

Stuck in the middle

We can only return to "normal" in two ways; when the virus is crushed (i.e., no one has the virus so it can't be spread) or when 90% of are immune, either because they have had the infection or they have been vaccinated. At the moment, with cases rising out of control but at only about 1% of the population having had the virus, we are neither free of the virus nor do we collectively have herd immunity to impeded its spread. Se we are, to use Porter's terminology, "Stick in the middle".

P.S., Susan Collins, after his acquittal in the Senate, said: "I hope the President learned his lesson". Senator; on what planet were you living the three years prior? And now do you think he's learned  his lesson. Indeed has he learned anything? Ever? Not much, apparently, according to his niece.

Testing and Tracing

Testing and tracing are not separate, but two essential parts of Testing, tracing, (treat) and quarantine.

Tracing is of no use without timely data; which comes, at least in theory, from testing.  So even if tests are not just "available" but carried out, they are of little use unless the results arrive before carried become symptomatic. Once they are ill they will likely not be circulating and if they are hospitalized they will be tested on-site anyway.

And so suggesting that some testing sites offer 15 minute turnaround, when those sites are hospitals is another pointless distraction. If you're tested in hospital chances are you are there because you're sick and have had the virus for some time. Tracing at that point is too late and would involve too many people.

So are we there yet on testing? Absolutely not.     

Stone's commutation

Trump's decision to commute Roger Stone's sentence has stuck many as unnecessarily risky in the run up to the election. It appears to send a message of cronyism, of looking after one’s own even if they are guilty (and this is not a pardon so Trump seems to either acknowledge Stone's guilt or considered a pardon a bridge too far).  And while his "deplorables" won't care, it will give many of his less committed supporter pause. So why, when most around him were advising against, did he make such a bone-headed decision?  In fact it may be quite rational, calculating even, and signals two inter-related things.

First that he realizes his chances of being elected are now slim and since he's already lost many of the "non-deplorables" who helped put him in office, his commuting of Stone's sentence won't really matter much. He has said "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," so he likely believes that for his die hard supported this matters not an iota.

And second, if he's not re-elected there are plenty of shady dealings from his past that the Southern District of New York has been looking into since he came to prominence that, if things go badly, could have serious consequence for him. Since he can't run out the clock on the statute of limitations by exerting executive privilege and presidential immunity if he's turfed out of the White House, Roger Stone, had he been he locked up, might have been "persuaded" to dish dirt on Trump in exchange for a shortening of his sentence. By commuting his sentence the risk that Stone rolls on him goes away.

The last gasp of the Deep State?

There can be little doubt, except in the minds of Trump's most deluded supporters that he has botched his handling of the covid-19 pandemic.  His hoping it will "magically" go away, his abdication of responsibility to the States, his failure to listen to experts, and his refusal to model important behavior, together have led to a resurgence in cases that is uniquely American. What has become clear is that he is a no more than a huckster, an con-artist, devoid of substance (not to mention ethics or a conscience), incapable of dealing with complexity; in other words inept, incapable and unfit for his office. In organizational terms he would be an example of the Peter Principle (except that governments aren't hierarchies elections aren't won on merit). But the bottom line is that when push came to shove, when he was faced with a real external threat and not just a political problem that he could bully or gas-light his way out of, he has failed: very visibly, and with horrendous consequences.

So Biden, or let's face it anyone less venal and marginally smarter than Trump and that's probably 99% of the population, would have likely beaten him in November. That's not to take anything away from Joe Biden (who though experienced and competent I find a little dull an uninspiring) but to draw attention to the fact that the election is a referendum on Trump's administration. So Biden ought to be looking at an easy win. But that conclusion might be premature. The election is still four months away and a lot can change before November.

What could help Trump turn round his flagging campaign and his declining poll numbers? His best play might be to say that he's still the most gifted manager of all time, a genius among geniuses, but that he was undermined by people in the deep state who intentionally sabotaged his utterly brilliant covid-19 response. Had they simply done what he suggested (which will retroactively be adjusted as needed) we'd all be sitting in the sun drinking margaritas and enjoying the 4 weeks paid vacation he would have granted had he not been betrayed by people who were supposed to be working for him. Or something along those lines.

Four things covid-19 related

The second wave is now here. New infection rates are rising fast with Anthony Fauci predicting that without a change in behavior we could quickly reach a hundred thousand  new cases a day.  It's worth reflecting on what that number means in terms of a containment strategy. If it takes a week for contact tracers to track down all those who have been exposed to a new case, we'll need three quarters of a million contact tracers. If we don't trace contacts effectively, if some get through the net, the number of cases will continue to grow. Eventually, perhaps quite soon, the prevalence of infection we will be such that we will no longer be able to get ahead of it; simply put, it will be out of control.

We got here through a series of miss-steps and missed opportunities. First, we did not act soon enough. Had there been a focused, coordinated effort at containment early on, with rapid tracing and isolation, we might have crushed the curve while it was still small; now it's a monster.

Second, was the problem of "mixed messaging". That's simply GOP spin to placate Trump as the messaging wasn't mixed at all. Fauci was clear from the outset about the need to wear masks. Trump was equally clear, just on the wrong side of the issue, and remains he there six months into the crisis. Masks are essential to slowing the spread. Fauci told us this, science told us this but Trump thought he knew better.  But the result was that one message went to Trump supporters, amplified by the GOP and red state governors, and a completely different message went to those who have inherited the legacy of the enlightenment.

Third, Trump failed to mobilize any coordinated fact-based response, choosing to abdicate responsibility to the governors, some of whom acted, many of whom (those in red states) who didn't. And because covid-19 doesn't have a party affiliation, it wasn't simply a blue state problem as many red states, like Texas and Florida, are belatedly discovering.

Fourth we squandered the time the eventual lock-down afforded us and failed to make the investment in resources needed to make reopening safe. We don't have enough contact tracers or have sufficiently clear guidelines for how reopening should take place.

And finally, many states (the red ones again) reopened to early, leading to a resurgence in transmission. And because people in states that did have lock-downs saw others taking a less onerous approach, the incentive to stick to the guidelines or ordinances was undermined. That, combined with the eroding trust in critical institutions (like science) and the libertarian streak that is part of "American Exceptionalism", not to mention, in many cases, a refusal by law enforcement to enforce state and county ordinances (so much for our law and order society when the police get to pick and chose which ordinances they implement), resulted in widespread disregard for measures that would have slowed covid-19's progress. As people cheated on their diet of social distancing and mask-wearing, the infection continued to spread largely unabated.

Understanding the metrics makes a big difference. Happy talk from Trump is, of course, getting in the way. He boasts that deaths are going down and claims credit for having gotten the pandemic under control. That's nonsense.  First, death rates lag infections by two to three weeks so the recent spike in infections will soon manifest as a rise in mortality. Second, infections are being seen in higher proportion in the young and less vulnerable, so while the number of deaths may not rise as quickly, the infection is still circulating ever more widely in the community. Third, if the mortality rate is falling because of an improved understanding of the way covid-19 acts and more effective medical interventions, there is no policy that Trump's administration is remotely associated with that in any way connects to better treatment. His only claim to fame with regard to the practice of medicine is to have recommended the drinking of disinfectant. And one can't forget his ridiculous claim that more testing leads to more cases. Infection density is not a function of testing; only our understanding of where cases are.

While we're talking about metrics, the June job numbers came in over expectations. Two points; first, much of the data was collected before the recent spike and subsequent re-imposition of lock-downs and similar restrictions to combat spread, so unemployment will go back up again in July.

Second, the "expectation" was based on sober predictions about reopening happening at a relatively measured pace; instead states opened quickly, so while employment recovered quickly so the covid-19's spread.  It it that rush to reopen in the hopes of a V-shaped recovery that will bring about a W-shaped (or even a VW shaped) recovery.     

The "cancel culture" lie

As catchy as "cancel culture" might sound to Trump's base; it is, unsurprisingly, in essence just  another lie, a catchy term concocted by Fox to stir up the base.

Those asking for monuments glorifying historical figures who were either directly involved in slavery or supporters of it to be taken down are not "cancelling" anything. The movement is advocating exactly the opposite; it is seeking the reinstatement of parts of America's history that the descendants of the perpetrators of slavery had previously expunged.

They are asking that the history, written by those who prefer that the sins of their ancestors be forgotten, either because they don't care or because it makes them uncomfortable, be corrected to reflect things that had been intentionally omitted. That has nothing to do with "cancelling culture"; it's called setting the record straight.

Another false equivalence

 

Trump's enablers and defenders have been arguing that there is no difference in terms of a public health risk of being potential super-spreader events between his rallies and the BLM protests.

Here is why the comparison is bogus.

BLM protest

Trump Rally, Tulsa Oklahoma

BLM Protest

Trump Rally, Tulsa Oklahoma

To recap: BLM was outdoors (lower transmission risk) while Trump's rally was indoors (higher transmission risk); and masks were the norm at the BLM protest (lower transmission risk) while they were the exception and the Trump rally (higher transmission risk).

Pity the Fool

"You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."  'Don the Con' [I think he'd like that one, if it weren't about him] is coming a cropper against that hard truth.

Everything to date has been "spinnable": Russian meddling in the 2016 election, "very fine people; on both sides" at Charlottesville; "I'm not a racist, I have black friends", the economy is all his doing [it's not], holding up aid to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, deals with China on IP theft [there isn't one], with the DPRK on nukes [nothing there either], peace in the middle east; there's always a spin he (or Kayleigh MacNinny) can pull out of his kiester.

But as the polls seem to suggest, covid-19 is different. There's no spinning rising infection rates, over-run hospitals and a mounting death toll. The pandemic has exploded the myth of "the competent business manager" who can fix Washington. The curtain has been drawn back to reveal a cheap huckster in an expensive suit.  His ability to fool everyone all of the time has run its course and reality has, finally, caught up with him.

Wait, WHAT?

"Tucker Carlson appears to be edging out Jared Kushner in the battle for President Trump's ear."

This was in today's Axios PM email. Can one imagine, pre-Trump, ever seeing anything quite so bizarre; that the president's son-in-law (nepotism) is being supplanted by venal television presenter.

More depressing still is the revelation that Trump's tepid and belated conversion to criminal justice reform was not a conversion out of conviction but born of political expedience, a decision he reportedly now regrets since he "probably won't win any more Black support because of it".

Remember the good old days when some were wondering whether Trump was a racist ("very fine people, on both sides"); well, to all those skeptics out there, you saw what he retweeted this weekend, so now you know!

And he won't "he won't do anything that could be seen as undercutting police". He probably thinks he's going to need all the protection from the police he can get when he's evicted from the White House, so don't do anything that would lead to a case of the blue flu when he needs them.

Integrity and trust

Many have lamented the decline in trust of institutions, and government in particular. Trust in government has been undermined when politician like Ronald Reagan assert that government is the problem, not the solution. 

When political figures, for example, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell state that as a matter of principle the US Senate should not confirm a president's Supreme Court nominee "in an election year", or "after the primary season is under way", but "let the people decide" through the election of the net president; but then just four years letter they take exactly the opposite position, it is not surprising that the public sees this as astounding hypocrisy.

But there is more than just hypocrisy; it means that politicians and leaders cannot be taken at their word. It undermines trust and makes governing more difficult because "the government" and those who run it cannot be trusted. 

That has consequences as the covid crisis has shown. Even if the GOP hadn't disparaged mask-wearing, a lack of trust in government makes it less likely that people will take actions that would result in crushing the virus. The result has been over two hundred thousand unnecessary deaths. 

It also undermines the values that a well ordered society depends on. If integrity is not modeled by political leaders, we cannot expect people to value it either. That degrades our social intersections and makes life sadder and less rewarding in general.