The gun debate

Two more terrible mass shootings in the last week, one racially motivated  in Buffalo, New York, the other a suicidal youth in Uvalde, Texas, have brought the debate over guns back to the fore. 

As usual Democrats have called for banning assault rifles and more gun control generally, and the GOP has blamed mental health, lack of armed teachers and the rest of its regular litany of alternative explanations that might divert the conversation away from gun control.  So no surprises there.

What is becoming clear is that the argument is not about guns at all, but about identity. It has morphed into a debate about individualism versus collectivism.  The individualists want the right to bear arms in part because they do not trust the state to provide protection; indeed many do not trust the state at all and think their guns are their last line of defense against what they perceive as state oppression.  The collectivists believe that some curtailing of individual rights (gun control) is needed to reduce the number of gun-related deaths, at the same time trusting, indeed expecting, the state to protect its citizens.  This dichotomization of identity happens to line up with the rural vs. urban divide and the right/left divide.    

On the vertical axis is the rate of gun related homicides, on the horizontal a function of the ratio of democratic to republican votes in the 2020 general election, for all fifty states. There is a clear relationship between high rates of gun related homicides and right-leaning states.  What is so tragic is that in the twenty years since the Sandy Hook shooting, not to mention Columbine and all those since, almost no action has been taken by either party; the Democrats are stymied by the filibuster in Congress and an increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court.  

The GOP on the other hand has no excuse for inaction, and anyone interested in curbing the rate of gun related homicides in America should be asking the GOP two questions. First, from the list of possible causes (mental health, for example) what actions have been taken? Then two follow-up questions; if the answer is nothing, then "why not"? and if the actions have been taken then "to what extent have the worked"? My guess is that in those states favoring solutions other than gun-control, little if anything has been done. But if things have, we need to know if anything worked so that the same measures might be applied elsewhere. 

A new macroeconomic normal

Two exogenous shocks have disturbed the macroeconomic equilibrium that has existed for several decades. The first in 2020 was the pandemic; the second in 2022 has been Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  Both will alter the global economy in profound ways. 

The pandemic has had both a short and a long run effect. In the short run governments mostly in the developed world sought to less covid's impact with strong economic stimulus. While the intent was to prevent people falling into poverty, a by-product was a fueling of demand as those who continued to be employed found themselves with additional disposable income.  However, the nature of that extra demand shifted from services, which were hard to access due to the pandemic lock-downs, to goods. That led to a spike in prices as demand exceeded supply. The surge in demand also led to supply chain bottlenecks with perversely further restricted supply - containers stacked up on docks meant that the normal functional of logistics operations were disrupted.  

While some thought that the shift from services to goods was temporary there is reason to think that it may be much more long lasting. Even though covid is moving towards endemicity, people's willingness to socialize and make use of services that involve coming into close proximity with potentially infectious others will not recover to pre-pandemic levels for some time if ever. The increases demand for goods may therefore be permanent rather than transitory. 

The second long term change stems from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Political risk calculations are now front and center of firms economic decision making. Factory locations will be reconsidered and new overseas investments, both for production and markets will no longer be viewed though a purely economic lens. In the short to medium term this will results in reconfiguration of supply chains and lead to additional supply chain bottlenecks. In the longer term access to cheap labor will be constrained and that,  together with  re-shoring of manufacturing, will lead to higher prices.  In particular the reduced flexibility of fewer off-shoring options will shift power away from management and back to labor, which will add to inflationary pressure. 

Finally, while not so much a shock as an increasingly urgent pressure, the need to develop energy independence from autocratic regimes combined with the need to move away from fossil fuels will create a medium term increase in energy prices. Energy costs have almost doubled in Europe and will rise further in coming years. 

Over the last thirty years, most of the developed world has enjoyed a stable and predictable economy. That predictability has almost certainly come to an end.

Sacrifice

It some level, it boils down this. What am I willing to sacrifice in the name or principle and humanity for people I don't know even if "they look like me"? Higher gas prices, while salient and an irritant, is a sacrifice I'm both fortunate enough to be able to afford and willing to make.  But would I be willing to live in a post-nuclear holocaust world? That's much tougher. If continued escalation in Ukraine leads to a nuclear exchange, we might be on course for a strategic strike against the US. 

Cities would be laid waste. People who survived the blast would be dying of radiation sickness. Food would be short and people would starve. There would likely be no electricity and hence for for us no water.  With scarcity might come violence and a breakdown of law and order. My life expectancy might come down from a couple of decades to a couple of years or months depending.  Given that, I'm very reluctant to side with the hawks that escalation is the only way to stop Putin. Ant that's precisely what Putin's counting on. So while I feel terrible for the people of Ukraine, I'm not yet ready to make the kind of sacrifice that would come with a nuclear war. 

A Tipping Point?

Talks to arrange a ceasefire are going nowhere: Russian negotiators have no deal-making authority since to give ground would anger Putin; that would not be good for them.  Whether the war goes on or stops depends entirely on Putin's whim.  He now has no way out. Dividing Ukraine down the middle and leaving him the eastern part of the county is probably not enough from him; he wants it all.  

Given the unexpectedly slow pace of the Russian advance, he is now intense pressure, externally and to some extent internally. As Zanny Minton-Beddoes put it: "Putin cannot win this war and he cannot afford to loose it".  Stress may cloud Putin's judgement, particularly when he lives in an group-think information bubble, so he cannot be depended on to act rationally.   

That leads to a consideration of the possibility of escalation. It now seems well within the realms of possibility that Putin will use chemical or tactical nuclear weapons. Given the West's decision not to respond forcefully when Assad used chemical weapons in Syria, Putin may well be expecting the West to step back again, making him more likely to use them. If it does not, we will be a step or two higher on the escalation ladder. Where that stops without an obvious "off-ramp" for Putin is hard to say and Armageddon is no longer just fantasy.  

Sanctions

(c) Economist 2022

The sanctions regime deployed by the West and others to persuade Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine is by all accounts the most draconian and consequential ever imposed on a large industrial economy. Nevertheless, there are two reasons to think they will not halt the Russian invasion nor prevent Putin from deposing Ukraine's legitimate government.

The first is and overarching reason is timing. Sanctions, even those just implemented, despite already having profound effects on the Russian economy, are widely thought to require weeks or months to achieve their desired effect. But Ukraine likely has only days not weeks in which it can hold out. 

The second is the mechanism. Sanctions are meant to be persuasive at several levels; on Putin himself, on his oligarchs and on the Russian people as a whole.  They will not deter Putin personally since for him this is no longer about his personal wealth but about power, control, his standing as a world leader, and his grandiose ambitions to reconstruct the old USSR.  If he wins he stays in power and will have access to all the money he wants. For Putin, alternatives to a win are two; he backs down, but remains in office (in the totalitarian state he has built he will never loose another election) although his standing on the world stage will be reduced to pariah. But if he refuses to back down, the end results is the same. So there is no upside for him to back down now. 

Sanctions on the oligarchs will only cause Putin to change course if the oligarchs collectively believe he can be deposed; while Putin remains in power, they are beholden to him for their wealth, at least that not yet frozen by the West, but more importantly for their future earnings. They have no real power themselves unless they can either persuade the Russian parliament to act to curb Putin's power or persuade the Russian military to mount a coup.  Both the military and members of the Duma must in turn weigh the chances of success; should legislative measures to rein Putin or a coup fail, all those involved, directly or indirectly, will likely face long prison or death sentences. Weighing such odds depends on an assessment of outcome probabilities. That in turn depends on a critical mass willing to support such a course of action. Developing that critical mass takes many quiet conversations and time. 

The last mechanism by which sanctions act is through their effect on the Russian people. The there are only two ways in which ordinary Russians get any say. The first is through the ballot box. But not only is an election too far distant to matter, even were an election to be held tomorrow, because Putin controls the press, the media and hence the narrative, he would likely win even without rigging the election. Oddly, sanctions work to Putin's advantage. As the Iran's Ayatollahs have done since sanctions were imposed on their country, Putin will telling the Russian people that their suffering is due to evil regimes in the West who are trying to destroy Mother Russia. 

Where does this leave Ukraine? If sanctions are the only tool the West is prepared to use against Putin, Ukraine will fall; it may take weeks rather than the days Putin had hoped, but in the medium term the end is the same.  A Putin-friendly puppet regime will be installed, freedom of speech will be harshly curbed using the same tactics as Putin is now using in Russia, and Ukrainians will be subjugated into the new Russian empire.  They may fight an insurgency but displacing another pro-Russian leader from their country will be far more difficult than the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych. Putin may even reinstall Yanukovych, someone who was not only loyal to Putin when he was president before, but like so many of those Putin has promoted and richly rewarded, he will owe his position entirely to Putin's largess. Putin was upset by Yanukovych's ouster in 2014 and will make sure not to let that happen again.  

If sanctions are an ineffective tool, what then? If only military action is sufficient to stop Putin's current, not to mention future land-grabs, does the West have the stomach for what could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust?  That, sadly, is a question we will be facing in the weeks ahead.

Confiscating personal assets

Several countries including the US and the UK announced yesterday that they are moving to confiscate the personal assets of a number of wealthy Russian oligarchs. While the logic is clear and the cause is just, it raises a troubling question about property rights and the rule of law.  

It may set an uncomfortable precedent that property rights are only inviolate when its suits a particular government in whose country those assets reside. It signals that if politically expedient, foreigners' rights may be abrogated. 

There has always been political risk in investing abroad, but it was general accepted that in Western democracies that were upholders of the international rules based order, property rights would be upheld.  But by abandoning this principle, it will be harder for those countries to protest when their citizens' assets are confiscated in other countries; what a "just cause" is that makes such seizures legitimate depends to some degree on ones point of view. 

This increase the uncertainty for companies and individuals investing abroad and that may have negative implications for the global economy.  Of course one might argue that it has always been so; Israel has been stealing land from the Palestinians with impunity for years (although that's the only example that immediately comes to mind).      

Escalation

While much discussion ensured after Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons two days ago, that's only one avenue for escalation. The other and more likely path is the increasing used of indiscriminate shelling and bombing resulting in huge loss of civilian lives. The longer the invasion goes without Putin reaching his goal of regime change, the more desperate he will get and the more extreme and more violent the Russian forces will be told to be. Unless he is stopped, or unless Ukraine capitulates which seems unlikely, Putin will raze the country to the ground. 

Through a glass darkly

After four days of fighting, Putin's forces have not yet taken the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, nor have they managed to depose its government. Volodymyr Zelensky bravely decided to remain in Kyiv, inspiring many Ukrainians to fight rather than flee, which may have been a factor in slowing the Russian advance.  

In addition to additional sanctions, the West today announced shipments of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine via Poland. It may be too little, too late but since the invasion has not gone to plan, they may still arrive in time to bring fighting to a stalemate.  I am reminded of Israel's stand-off with Hamas and Hezbollah in the Gaza Strip.  Since its highly unlikely that the Ukrainian forces could repel the Russian invasion, a stalemate would be the best likely outcome for Ukraine.  While Putin's offer to negotiate is almost certainly in bad faith, it might afford an opportunity for a temporary cease-fire allowing the West to resupply the Ukrainian armed forces with the weapons they desperately need to keep the Russians carrying out regime change. 

Very worrying is Putin's state of mind. His vituperative rhetoric combined with his miscalculation about both the Ukrainians' and the West's responses to his assault raise questions about his rationality. His decision to ready strategic nuclear weapons looks like an act of desperation; one can only hope that he is bluffing.   If not, we will find out whether the strategists who predicted that the use of battle-field nuclear weapons would be containable and not escalate to the use of long range intercontinental weapons were right. Their argument was predicated on actors on both sides being completely rational; it is unclear weather Putin is.  

While it's comforting to know that now we have serious people with their fingers on the button on this side of the pond, Russia's launch codes are in the hands of just one paranoid, possibly psychotic, individual. Those in West who are paying attention will not sleep well this coming week.   

Reflection

Tonight, as the Russian soldiers being their assault on Kyiv, I thought I should stop thinking about abstractions like the "Pax Americana" or the importance of the "international order" and turn my thoughts to the forty four million people, suddenly upended by one megalomaniac's obsession. 

My father's family fled Czechoslovakia just ahead of the Nazi invasion, just as many Ukrainians are doing today.  The family escaped to Sweden, and my father to London. He arrived with no English just on one trunkful of belongings, working as a technician at the London Hospital during the day, with the Germans bombing the city at night. One of my aunts moved to new York, taught arts and crafts at the Braerley school, studying at night to become a psychoanalyst. My other aunt and her husband moved back to Czechoslovakia after the war. In 1968 they saw Russian tanks on the streets of their home town, Prague. My my family is well acquainted with the trauma of having to flee before an invading army and of having to endure Russian occupation. So I am filled with great sadness and empathy for the people of Ukraine. We are, as a species, no better now than we ever were. The progress we may have made in material things has not been matched by progress in stemming our greed, our thirst for power, our capacity for indifference and cruelty.   

And so, as I sit here in the comfort of a warm home without having to worry whether I will die tonight from enemy bombs, or have to leave the place I call home with little more than I can carry, I am grateful. And I wonder how we could have let this happen again? How could we have thought that diplomacy and non-military means would stop an autocrat bent on war? How did we delude ourselves that tanks and troops on the Ukrainian border were not there for the exact purpose for which they were built? How is it that somehow we failed to learn from history? 

Why sanctions won't work

In response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the West is proposing "stiff sanctions". Simply put they will not work. First, to prevent Putin from effecting regime change in Ukraine, they would have to bite within a week; that as long as one might reasonably expect the Ukrainians to hold out against the Russian onslaught. Within a week, Putin will likely have deposed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and installed his own interim administration. But sanctions won't have desired effect in that short a time; they cause problems over weeks not days and Putin has already buffered himself and Russia from their impact, further lessening their efficacy. 

Sanctions will also have two unwelcome consequences for the West. First, they will cause problems for ordinary Russians which will only serve to bolster Putin's hold on power. Just as the Iran theocracy blames the country's woes on Western sanctions, so will Putin. Secondly, sanctions will also impact businesses in in the West that currently trade with, or do business in, Russia. Over time as the America public comes to accept the Russian installed regime as a "new normal", opposition to lifting sanctions will subside and business interests will prevail. 

One can see how ineffective they are in the US' policy toward China and Afghanistan. China's stance towards the US has hardened in the last five year despite tariffs and sanctions against Hwawei. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is continuing to enrich uranium. And the Taliban is not becoming more liberal in its attitudes towards women while the Afghan people starve; because of that the West will change course before China, North Korean, or the Taliban. And while sanctions remain in place, Russia will seek to develop trading relations with other countries, further reducing both their medium term impact and making them still less effective as a future deterrent.  

That makes President Biden's reported statement that were Russia to attack a member of the NATO alliance, "the use of military force is not off the table" significant.  It means that the use of military force is not an inevitable consequence were Putin to move against a NATO country in Europe. Given the futility of sanctions and the possibility that Putin could threaten and invade NATO member countries without a military response from the West, he must now feel he has considerably more freedom to act as he pleases.

The Endgame in Ukraine

Eugene Robinson suggested today that two hundred thousand troops may be enough to defeat the Ukrainian military but not sufficient to hold the country. That misses the point. Putin will remove Zelenskyy, the elected president, and in his place establish an interim government. He'll run a rigged election and install a Russian puppet in Kyiv. He will maintain that all this will be "in complete accordance with the Ukrainian constitution".  He does not need to hold the country with soldiers on the streets; he needs only a pliant Ukrainian administration, at which point his tanks can return home to Russia. 

Putin's hold on power

There has been some discussion about how Putin's invasion of Ukraine will impact his popularity at home. His answer may be "I don't care". As long as he continues to rig elections, as has has likely done in the past, and controls the security apparatus, he has little to fear. He can't be voted out of office and any protests, should they arise, will be met with a swift crack down, and the arrest or untimely demise, accidental or otherwise, of its leaders. His position is secure as long has he can continue to pay those he needs to carry out his orders. Given his control over the state coffers, that looks unlikely to change any time soon.  

A war in Europe

For the first time since 1945, a full scale conventional war is underway in Europe. As unimaginable as that was a year ago, it upends long-held assumptions about peace, stability and the world order. For too long it had been assumed that economic integration and the benefits of stability, in addition to the deterrence of nuclear weapons, would keep the peace. That in part was the underlying rationale for the creation of the European Economic Community, now the European Union. Vladimir Putin has blown up that assumption. He has demonstrated what one individual in a position of power can do when they decide to discard the conventional play-book. Of the three possibilities I had envisioned, a limited incursion in the east of Ukraine, a slow incremental scaling up of hostilities and and full scale onslaught, the latter seemed to me the least likely; but that's where we are.   

The problem that the West must now grapple with is whether Putin is rational or not. It had been widely assumed that we was; that while he might appear unpredictable, as a means of keeping his enemies off balance, ultimately he would weigh the costs and benefits and reach the same conclusion envisioned by his game-theory adversaries in the West; that after all was the genesis of game-theory. 

Unable to rely on long held assumptions about the range of Russia's likely actions, we are now back in the position we were seventy years ago of being hard-put to predict Putin's next moves. He has threatened all-out nuclear war, a specter that had largely disappeared from everyone's thinking when the Berlin Wall fell. Suddenly that has re-entered the realm of possibilities. 

Graham Alison's analysis of the Cuban missile crisis is instructive. We should not necessarily treat countries as rational actors. What makes sense for Russia may be quite different from what makes sense for Vladimir Putin.  

We should however be thankful for small mercies; at least now there's an adult in the White House. Had Biden't predecessor been reelected, the prospect of two unpredictable, megalomaniacal leaders with delusions of grandeur, both with nuclear arsenals, one of whom is egregiously ignorant, is almost too frightful to contemplate. 

Timing

Yesterday Vladimir Putin recognized Donbass and Luhansk, two regions in the east of Ukraine, as "independent republics" and promptly dispatched "peace-keeping" troops. The Biden administration did act, imposing sanctions, but in a very limited way, only on companies doing business in Donbass and Luhansk - so effectively nothing. The New York Times editorial argued today that it was too soon to pull the trigger on the threatened strong sanctions. That raises the question when is the right time?

Putin is not going to declare war; no one does that any more. That's as out-dated as challenging your enemy to pistols at dawn.  It is increasingly difficult to say exactly when hostilities start. Is a cyber attack by a foreign government an act of war? If so Russia has been at war with the US since 2016 if not earlier. Is a drone strike? If is it, America has been at war with numerous countries for decades.  Is artillery fire across country borders? How about one soldier straying across the border. What if it were a platoon; or a battalion?  

Because the point at which war begins has become indeterminate, when to impose sanctions becomes problematic. If, as the NYT suggests, one holds off until the smoke clears it may be far too late. By making many very small moves, Putin increases the ambiguity about when hostilities can be said to have reached a level that justifies the "big sanction package". And that's what Putin is banking on. 

Taking both sides

One advantage (and disadvantage) of flip-flopping on an issue is that whatever the outcome one ends up being both right (once) and wrong (once). On Feb 11th I argued that Putin had put himself into a position in which invading Ukraine was his only logical alternative.  I took a contrary position six days later. Then yesterday I did another one-eighty.  Today it appears as if my first (and third) takes were the right ones.

What now remains to be see is what the West will do. As has been argued here and elsewhere, much is riding on its response. A weak or ineffective response opens the door to more of the same from Russia perhaps into other of its close neighbors, from China into Taiwan, or from other rogue states who see this as a green light to take land they want by force.  While the West has threatened strong sanctions it may be that these and other "non-kinetic" approaches do not raise the costs for going to war sufficiently to either deter Russia and will certainly be ineffective in halting it once in progress.  Ukraine's forces are likely to be soon overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the Russian military at which point supplying them with weapons ceases to be useful (or feasible).    

So as far as Ukraine goes the cards have been dealt and all that remains is to see how each hand is played. The scope for variation without missteps is narrow; but assuming none are made, Zelensky's regime will be toppled, and just as it did in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, Russia will install a pliant puppet government. Europe (and the US) will for a while endure higher energy prices in applying the promised sanctions. Ultimately, however, they will come to accept Russia's actions in order to lift sanctions and restore access to cheaper natural gas.  It is remotely possible that if that normalization takes long enough, Germany might reverse itself on its "no nuclear" policy and ween itself off fossil fuels but that is far from certain.  Putin will appease his oligarchs at home by making good the losses they will suffer from the personalized sanctions being discussed in the Washington, blunting their effectiveness. The Russian economy may decline but Putin's patriotic stand for "Mother Russia" will shield him from much of the domestic political blow-back.    

The larger question is what happens after Ukraine? Will the apparent unity the NATO alliance has been showing recently allow it to respond more robustly in the face of future Russian aggression? Will NATO learn the lessons of Russia's recent adventurism and act with sufficient resolve to prevent Russia from future incursions? And (as Eugene Robinson noted in today's paper) what if Trump is in power next time?  As if things weren't bad enough, that is a truly sobering thought.

In the long run?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may be right, that if Putin does occupy Ukraine by force, it will ultimately be to his and Russia's detriment in the long term. But in the short term lives will be lost and in the medium term, at least until Ukraine is able to return to sovereign self-rule, Ukrainians will pay a heavy price, from loss of freedom to economic stagnation under Russian or "Russian approved" governance. That should net be seen as acceptable. If the West is serious about defending democracy, perhaps it should admit Ukraine to NATO immediately and begin moving troops and military assets into the country to defend it in the face of Russia's current and possible future aggression. 

... Or not

On Thursday is seemed as if there were signs of Putin hesitating, perhaps having second thoughts about invading Ukraine. It seems that was wrong.  The absurd video of what looked like tiny model tanks on flatbeds crossing a bridge, purportedly returning to barracks, could have been a clue that this was all just a stalling tactic. 

Troop numbers at the Ukrainian border have risen since them to in excess of one hundred  an fifty thousand.  More alarming still is the deployment of short-range nuclear weapons.  Were they to be used, it would be the first time that a nuclear weapon would have been used in a European theatre; the decision-making then begins to look more like the Cuban missile crisis than tanks rolling into Georgia or Crimea. It would not an exaggeration to say we may be on the brink of a nuclear war in Europe.  

If Putin needed to stall to make ready his invasion plans, one must hope that besides the West's diplomatic efforts, it has prepared an immediate and significant response to invasion, one that will hit home in hours rather than days or weeks. Sanctions may change Putin's calculus over the long term but they won't stop his tanks next week. The West's tepid response to both Russia's invasion of Georgia and annexation of Crimea may have given Putin a sense of security (whether false or otherwise remains to be seen) and he has correctly deduced that first movers do have strategic advantage.  While the West plays catch-up, he can, and indeed has, prepared Russia to buffer itself from the West's long signaled response. Unless the West has some tactic we don't know about, Putin's hand, which he is playing close to his chest, seems for the moment far stronger. 

Putin may just have blinked

A Russian T-72B3 tank fires as troops take part
in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range. AP

Six days ago I wrote that war in Ukraine seemed inevitable. But the anticipated day came and went, and on the day troops were supposed to have begun the assault on Ukraine, Putin said he was moving some away from their forward positions (though whether that was true is still debatable). 

My rationale was that in threatening Ukraine without actually invading, Putin had created, from his point of view, the worst possible outcome: the West was now unified against him, it was taking steps to insulate itself from his economic leverage through sales of gas, and it had not made the concessions Putin had been demanding. So there was and still is no further downside to invading besides the losses he has already racked up other than the loss of life of the Russian soldiers he would be sending in (for which he may care little other than for the impact that might have on his domestic political standing). 

On the upside, he would expand the Russian empire, something apparently dear to his heart. Yet he is hesitating, which may suggest that he is having second thoughts about going through with an invasion. His bluff appears to have been called and it is possible he may have folded. Of course it is still way too soon to tell as there remain over a hundred thousand troops at the ready near the Ukrainian border, and until they return to barracks, he could still invade at a moments notice. But assuming at least for the moment that he has, if not blinked, at least had a moment's hesitation, that in and of itself is significant. We will likely never know his thinking yet I'm sure intelligence analysts, think-tanks and journalists will be debating what this means for days, weeks if not years to come. 

Trump; the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st Century?

What has led Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine now (or at least early next week)? Little had changed on the ground. The West and NATO have not moved short or medium range weapons nearer to Russia. They have not positioned more troops nearer the Russian border. So it can't be a rising level of threat to which Russia is responding.  Perhaps it was the ousting of the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych? But that was eight years ago. Another theory is that Europe, and Germany in particular will be muted in its response to a military incursion by its dependence on Russian energy? But Nord Steam 2 is not yet operational so Germany's dependency would have been much greater a year from now, so that looks unlikely as a factor. 

What has changed in recent years is Donald Trump. It's not his fawning behavior toward Putin that may have led Putin to decide now is the time, but rather the sentiment his election uncovered and then amplified; that the US has no interest in maintaining the international order and little interest in conflicts that have no proximity to, or impact on, the US. Trump's America First approach, and its resonance with his acolytes on the right and even some anti-war folk on the left was enough indication to Putin that any repercussions would be manageable for him to take the decision to invade Ukraine. 

And so, bizarrely, not only will Trump have done enormous damage to democracy at home, he will also have helped shred the international order that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War.  Not only will the world be less safe and more conflict-prone as a result, but the economic prosperity enjoyed by countries, including America, that depended on trade and relative geopolitical stability, is now in serious jeopardy.  He should be Time magazine's man of the century.

Unexpected Consequences

If Sarah Palin wins her defamation suit against the New York Times, the far right which is relishing "sticking it" to the establishment and the main stream media, may before too long rue the day. 

If the Times, which maintains that the error was unintentional and quickly corrected looses, what does that mean for Fax and the even less scrupulous so calls "news" channels? The alleged offense was not in the paper's reporting but in its editorial, in other words an opinion piece. If the standard for defamation is relaxed and the protection from legal action the media have had enjoyed disappears, Fox and its kind will either have to clean up their act. It has claimed that there is a distinction between its news programs and its opinion programming. 

If an opinion piece in the Times is cause for a successful defamation suit, Hanity, Ingraham, Carlson and Shapiro may be in for a rough  ride. Perhaps those on the right should be a little more careful what they wish for. 

On the eve of war in Europe

It looks increasingly likely that early next week Europe will once again be at war; or at least Eastern Europe. What initially looked like first a ploy by Russia to extract concessions from NATO and the West, then a possible incursion into the eastern part of Ukraine where the population is mostly Russian-speaking now looks set to be a full stale occupation of a sovereign state.  That would effectively move the "iron curtain" almost half way back to its pre-Glasnost / Perestroika position. The West's lack of resolve is  reminiscent of the repose to Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland. Britain was sure that Hitler could be reasoned with. But that hope was in vain. The adage "give them and inch and they take a mile" looks ever more salient. 

The thought occurred to me today that Staw and Ross' paper on escalating commitment is partially applicable. Partially in that it is not clear that the course of action is a failing one, but their model of escalating commitment, from psychological to social to political is entirely appropriate here.

Putin's next move, for a long time unpredictable, now seems clear; how the West responds and the efficacy of that response will have ramifications for the international order, not just in Europe but in the Far East  as well, for decades to come.  

Honestly!

I have written frequently about the importance of trust for society; that in its absence, any economic exchange (social or monetary) incurs transaction costs. Like market failure, those additional costs will lead to some exchanges not taking place. Even without such missed exchange opportunities, the amount of exchange will fall as the cost of each rises. 

The corollary to loss of trust in a decline in honesty; a lack of honesty erodes trust. Being honest was once, nominally at least, widely shared societal value. Even if some (or many) were not honest in their dealing with others, few dared to admit that they did not think being honest was a good and lying was bad.  Increasingly that shared value seems to have eroded. 

The poster child for dishonesty was the country's 45th president. He lied frequently and blatantly but such was (and still is) his appeal to the highly motivated alt-right that now animates the GOP, no one dared correct him, let alone scold him, for his bad (i.e. lying) behavior. (One possibility is that most of those with whom he had much contact shared his disregard for honesty as a value).

Part of the battle around what tech companies allow on their platforms is about honesty. While the discussion is ostensibly about "misinformation" what many may be reacting to is the lack of respect for honesty as a core value. While not all misinformation is a lie, all lies are misinformation. But by lumping them together we no longer reinforce the idea that lying is unacceptable, or at very least something to be ashamed of, in a civilized society.   

It is telling that the more benign-sounding term, "misinformation" is now widely used; its seeming neutrality robs it of the value-laden component that was an important pillar of creating a set of shared values around right and wrong. A similar mealy-mouthed and now ubiquitous term is "claimed, without evidence". Presumably calling something a lie would expose publishers to deformation law suits since the burden on the defendant would be to prove that the misinformation was made with the knowledge that it was untrue and proving what was is someone's head can be tricky.     

The tech companies' defense is that the misstatements are not made by them but their users, thus they are not responsible for the misinformation and have no duty to police such statements.  This ignores the wider damage letting go of honest as a core value does to society.  

Since honest is a public good and trust is often (as it is in this instance) an externality for businesses, there is necessarily a role for government.  In Britain the Advertising Standards Authority regulates misleading and dishonest advertisements; in the US the Federal Trade Commission carries a similar charge. 

This is clearly a very contested question; go too far and government is regulating speech; do nothing and trust erodes and the fabric of society is undermined. At the moment the GOP is a beneficiary of widespread misinformation (the Big Lie being only the most recent and prominent example), but the embracing of exaggerated claims that stray into lies goes back a long way, from McCarthy, to Gingrich to McConnell. And it's not only the GOP; Biden has made some pretty dubious claims too (as has Bill Clinton). 

Increasingly the public is happy to ignore dishonesty it if serves their side's cause. With more dishonest, society's bifurcation accelerates and tribalism dominate dialog and compromise. Tribalism in turn creates a "end justifies the means" mentality that further weakens adherence to shared values like honesty. 

And that, in part, is what has led us to a point in time where the prospect of serious politically motivated civil unrest is no longer unthinkable.

Open letter to Sir Lewis Hamilton

Sir Lewis Hamilton,
c/o Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
Operations Centre,
Brackley NN13 7BD,
United Kingdom

Dear Sir Lewis,

I am and have been an admirer of yours for well over a decade (in fact after your first season with McLaren).  I was absolutely gutted by Michael Masi’s (in my view) complexly wrong-headed decision in the Abu Dhabi GP. You dominated the race from the get-go only to have it stolen on the last lap. If I’m upset, I can only imagine how hard that was for you. 

I really wanted (and still do hope) to see you win an eighth world championship title. That would be a record that I doubt would ever be broken. I started following Formula 1 when Jackie Stewart, Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi were at the top of the profession, so I‘ve seen a good many drivers come and go in 50+ years: and not one, other than Schumacher, has even come close to what you’ve accomplished. But with at least another season ahead of you, that eighth title is within reach. You would go down in history as the greatest driver of all time (an accolade I suspect you have already earned).

My point is this: I really hope you do decide to stay in the sport for at least another season, or until you bag that eighth title. These days, you are really the only reason I watch F1, so for me and all your fans, please don’t quit now.

Sincerely

Simon Rodan

This year and beyond

With Kyrsten Sinema blocking any changes to the filibuster rules in the Senate and Joe Manchin's refusal to support Build Back Better (BBB), two pillars of the Biden administration's agenda, Welfare reform and climate change, and voting rights protections, are going nowhere. Unless Democrat's change course they are set to loose both chambers this fall. And by 2024, with nothing accomplished, Biden (or whoever heads up the ticket) will loose the White House. That would mean another four years of Trump.   

The only possible solution I can see is to wipe the slate clean and bring two completely different bills forward. On voting rights access is secondary to counting, and that needs to be addressed as a top priority. Democrats can vote in ever larger numbers but if Republicans control whose ballots are counted, the Democrats will never win power again. With some completely new legislation focused on amending the Electoral Count Act and with a bit of luck something on impartiality in election administration and oversight, there may be enough Republicans in the Senate to overcome the filibuster. 

Pushing BBB is pointless now that Manchin has dug in; since he can't appear to back down the only way out to protect some of the provisions is to start from square one. It must be a smaller package so that Manchin can't complain about over-spending. And Democrats will have to decide on their priorities; climate change or social welfare reform. Again, some of the moderate GOP senators may think that climate change is serious enough to do something about.   

Absent this or a miracle, three years from now Trump will shuffle smugly back into the White House.       

Not quite what they expected

The Brighton Festival was a staple of my family's entertainment. So in 1979, when my mother received the festival program and saw John Williams was slated to play a concert, she bought tickets. 

The concert was, I think, in the Dome, an ornate Victorian era decor  theater in the center of Brighton.  

Some context is needed. My parents, or at least my father, were not big fans of popular music. The only contemporary music in the house was a 45 of Edith Piaf, and one of the Modern Jazz Quartet that for some reason was often played before I wend to bed when I was very young, perhaps one or two years old, to put me to sleep. It was affectionately known as "Ding-dong music", my term for the vibraphone at that age.  Otherwise it was Bach to Brahms; baroque to romantic, but nothing 20th century. Mahler, a favorite of my uncle Kurt, was tolerated but very seldom played. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute, by contrast, were routinely played alternate Sundays mornings.  But I digress. 

As we found our way to our seats, I was surprised to see a huge mixing desk in the middle of the stalls, not something one sees for a classical solo recital.  The concert began with "Westway" which starts with a driving synth keyboard riff played by Frances Monkman and the electric bass of Herbie Flowers.  It was something of a surprise to my parents, who had been expecting John Williams top be playing classical musics on acoustic guitar. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the show (I think there was a light show) and bought the group's first album, which I played as often as I was allowed at home until a year later when I bought my own record player, amplifier and speakers (the speakers I still have to this day). I don't recall my parents discussing the snafu; my father didn't care for Sky's music and my mother must have been mortified. Horizons weren't easily broadened; although since I'm almost the age my father was then, I wonder whether in five years or so I'll be similarly set in my ways.  

Rerecord, not fade away

Many who consider Trump's unprincipled pursuit power (and money) to be anathema to the office he recently held were hoping that after loosing the a bid to be re-elected in 2020, he would return to Mar-a-Lago to a life of golfing and shady property dealing. He did not.  Instead his thirst for affirmation, vindication and revenge have led him to continue his quest to be returned to the presidency.       

Had he melted from view, his more unsavory supporters, the white nationalists and the gun-wielding crack-pots (Taylor-Green, Boebert) or the simply craven (Gaetz, Hawely, Jordan, Gosar) might have been ousted or at least played a less influential role in GOP politics.  Not giving Trump the attention he so craves might have helped the GOP regain (what passed for) its senses.  That seems to have been the rationale for the Biden administration avoiding blaming Trump or even mentioning him in connection with events of January 6th.

That calculus has clearly changed. In his speech yesterday he pulled no punches. He went after Trump stridently and clearly. He laid bare the former president's flaws and the danger he and those like him represent to democracy. Biden's earlier calculus that Trump would fade away and so it would be counter productive to appear to criticize him (and by extension those who supported him) had changed. He has clearly concluded that Trump is not going away and his base is not, at least for the foreseeable future, likely to simmer down and accept the result of the 2020 election. Their rage and resentment that Trump fed to propel him into office is too deep-rooted to abate on its own; and so the risk of energizing that base by attacking Trump is moot; it remains fully energized.

Since not riling up Trump supporters is no longer an issue, the speech was aimed not at the die-hards, but the quasi independents who were members of the pre-Trump GOP. They may be persuaded if not to vote for a Democrat, at least not to vote for a GOP candidate which to all intents and purposes has become the National Front^[1] of America. Never Trumpers and Democrate can't win over all Trump's supported; but they might be able to get enough at the margin to make a difference.  Trump's base is what it is, and the only way of saving democracy from further erosion by Trump and his allies is to ensure that he doesn't get a second bite at the cherry. Because if he does, he wont by quite so inept in is efforts to subvert and exploit the highest office in the land next time around .  

^[1] The Nataionl Front (like it French equivalent the Front Nationale) is a party of white xenophobic anti-immigrant racists.

Appeal To Ignorance (Ad Ignorantium)

Jo Biden, in his speech commemorating the tragic events of January 6th attack on the Capitol, repeated  the assertion that that was no evidence of voter fraud. That's entirely true but unconvincing for many; the Appeal to Ignorance reasoning fallacy allows those who want to believe that was fraud to say that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  

It was this kind of reasoning that allowed people to say that there was no evidence that smoking was injurious to health so smoking must not be unhealthy; or that there was insufficient evidence that climate change was occurring or that if it was it was attributable to the burning of fossil fuels. Ultimately, however such reasoning falls away as sufficient evidence is gathered to dispel any doubt. 

While it might have been argued in November of 2020 that there was no evidence of voter fraud, that is no longer the case; there is now ample evidence that there was none. Those who wish to preserve democracy in America need to take a more definitive line, namely that the numerous court cases and investigation mean not simply that there is no proof of fraud, but that it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that there was no election fraud.   

Courage

Courage is doing what is right when is likely comes with significant personal cost. Cowardice is failing to act generally out of fear of personal loss when the moment demands.  The alt-right has been allowed to over the GOP because too many Republican members of Congress wither thought they could deal with and manager the extremists they were letting into their ranks or they underestimated the hold Trump and his alt-right followers had over voters. When it  became clear that both were misconceptions, Republican members of Congress were faced with a choice, go along or stand up for democracy and the established order they once avowed to defend. Collectively they could have done some, but it required sufficient number of courageous individuals to prevent them from being targeted and overwhelmed by the alt-right insurgents. Only a handful met that challenge. The result has been the annexation of the GOP by Trump (who has no principles but loves the power and the attention) and his alt-right helpers.  All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. 

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”  John Stuart Mill, 1867

Peace for our time

In 1938, Prime-minister Neville Chamberlain proudly declared that he'd had a good conversation with  the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler and that they had a signed agreement guaranteeing "peace for our time". He and much of Britain then, were guilty of magical thinking. 

It appears that at least among some at The Economist, a similar self-delusion is prevalent. In reviewing Barbara Walter's book "How Civil Wars Start", it praises the book's theoretical analysis which sets out  a series of conditions that have lead to civil wars around the world: when they are somewhere between dictatorship and liberal democracy; when politics revolves around identity; grievance-mongers who are are creative creative liars; complacent cosmopolitans; when a large group fears it is losing status; when disgruntled members of an aggrieved group take up arms and social media accelerates the descent into bloodshed. This, the Economist says, is well argued. 

Then it concludes that "This far-fetched conclusion [that America is at risk of civil war] spoils an otherwise interesting book". That's pretty odd given that not just some but each and every one of Walter's six conditions are met.   

1. When they are somewhere between dictatorship and liberal democracy

Efforts to put the oversight of elections in the hands of partisans in Republican battleground stats moves the country away from liberal democracy; and fealty to an individual rather than a party or a set of principles is characteristic of dictatorships. The GOP is no longer a party of principles but a party in the thrall of one man.  

2. When politics revolves around identity 

Over the last 20 years, politics has evolved into struggles over identity, wither it be any number of white supremacists groups on the right, from the KKK to the Oath Keeps and the Proud Boys, or on the left, Black Lives Matter. Almost all loud political rhetoric in the US is rooted in a struggle for identity.  

3. Grievance-mongers who are are creative creative liars 

Here Donald Trump and his acolytes excel. Trump spent his four years in office lying incessantly and he taught us that almost nothing is to absurd to be believed, at least by some. When those lies are believed by a critical mass, you have a powerful movement. What was once the "alt-right" but is now the GOP generates lies, testes them on small social media platforms for their virulence, and those that work are launched into the right-wing mainstream through Fox and other right wing media platforms. .    

4. Complacent cosmopolitans

Like The Economist, the metropolitan, relatively cosmopolitans parts of the country are in denial; "that kind of thing happens in third-world countries but couldn't happen here". Yet that's precisely the kind of denial circulating on January 5th last year, until Trump and his supporters put that comforting myth to rest.  

5. When a large group fears it is losing status 

Whites in America, particularity those with little education, are seeing their prospects deteriorate. Having enjoyed positions of relative privilege for so long, the conflate their declining prospects with immigration. Understandably, they want to preserve not just their economic well-being but their way of life more broadly. They see their decline not only economically but also a decline in status. And since they see themselves not though the lens of class (which would give them common cause with many of groups on the left) but through the lens of race, they are drawn into increasingly radical white supremacist groups.  Indeed the wealthy are probably quite happy to encourage the use of identity as a conceptual frame since it divides the economically underprivileged into groups and sets them against each other, reducing their bargaining power to the befit of the wealthy.    

6. When disgruntled members of an aggrieved group take up arms and social media accelerates the descent into bloodshed 

This is exactly what we have seen; when heavily armed protesters turned up at the Michigan State House in January last year, there could be no clearer threat of the potential for armed conflict. While some argue this was just "cos-play", that complacency is dangerous. All it takes is one small miscalculation, for someone to pull their trigger (literally) and things escalate dangerously quickly. The Waco Siege and the Bundy standoff in 2014 both show how confrontation develops from a legal dispute into an armed conflict. It is also concerning that in many places, extremist groups are tacitly supported by local law enforcement who will often to turn a blind to the increasing threat of the use of arms to resolve disputes with state or federal authorities.

All of the conditions Water argues lead to civil conflict are present in the US, and The Economist agrees with her analysis; so it is remarkable that it falls in the trap of "that could never happen in America".  At least one writer for the newspaper it seems is a "complacent cosmopolitan".  

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos

Elizabeth Holmes was convicted on four counts of wire fraud in a court in San Jose yesterday. The case should have been about the appropriateness of business models widely used in Silicon Valley for software development to healthcare.  

Writing buggy code and fixing it after it breaks, a model arguably pioneered by Bill Gates with Windows, is, if not acceptable, reluctantly accepted by most of us since the consequences of an application behave in unexpected ways are usually not too terrible. 

But in healthcare (and self-driving cars) the consequences of mistakes from rushing a product to market are far more serious, raising the question "is a business model that emerged at the inception of the PC industry appropriate in setting where the consequences of mistakes may be deadly"?

The focus of Holmes' trial on the hurt to shareholders is unfortunate; perhaps that's what the prosecution could most easily prove. But in missing the distinction between cases where the harm is potentially lethal rather than simply annoying (or expensive), the case fails in building a precedent that might protect people from physical harm from poorly designed products that their producers know to be faulty.  At the same time it creates a needless damper on innovation in sectors where the consequences of bad design are irritating but not life-threatening.

The Capitol Insurrection: one year on

Today, a year on from the Capitol Insurrection it is worth reminding ourselves of the horror of a violent mob trying to change the outcomes of a free and fair election. 

The image of the Senate chamber being defended from rioters by plain clothed Capitol police with drawn weapons remains the most jarring image I can remember, not just from among those of the events of Jan 6th but ranking along side the images of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Both events signify the exposing of grave misconceptions; that the American homeland is invulnerable and that American democracy is safe, sacrosanct and a model for other countries.    

Looking back at my post on January 6th last year, the only thing that I think I got wrong was suggesting "we should be immensely thankful that it was just an episode". While the next election result the Republicans don't like may not lead to the storming of the Capitols (state or federal), the ground is being steadily prepared to make that unnecessary by the politicization of the institutions that oversee elections and gerrymandering. But while it may not be needed, the threat of highly organized right wing violence it still there and by all accounts is growing.

While the left is not blameless in terms of political violence, it lacks the discipline and organization of the heavily ex-military-infused far right. Compounding that asymmetry is that distinct possibility that  some in law enforcement may be more willing to make the law as they see fit rather than enforcing the laws that politicians with whom they disagree have enacted. But that is the subject of a separate post. 

For now we need simply to remember the horror of January 6th.   

     

    

Political irony, and no steal

Today is the anniversary of the Capitol Insurrection. As shocking as January 6th was to many Americans, what has happened since should be—but seemingly isn't—more so. The insurrection wasn't the cause of America's problem but the unexpected result of the confluence of a series of currents that produced what most had considered unthinkable; the possibility of a failure of democracy in a country that holds itself up to the world as its very model. Just as Great Britain took over half a century to come to terms with its decline, so it will be many years before Americans come to understand what they have allowed to happen. 

The prospects for democracy in America look bleak. The majority of Republicans, still in the thrall of Trump and the anger he and his enablers at Fox have stoked in his base, ultimately decided that their pact with the orange devil was their only route to power. So while many Republicans may have admitted privately that Trump had lost them both houses and the presidency, publicly buying into the Big Lie was their best strategy for regaining them. Their lack of steel in claiming a steal had take place marks a turning point in the decline in public trust in the institutions of democracy and order. It signals that we can pick and choose when to accept institutionally produced mandates and requirements.

That willingness to in essence 'take the laws into ones own hands' exposes a particular irony on the political right; ostensibly the party of law and order, the Republicans seem far more willing that Democrats to ignore the institutions of law and order when it suites them. There is an inherent tension between a party of law and order that also promotes rugged individualism. But that tension provides the basis for enormous fluidity; Republican run states can protest "states' rights" in opposing federal requirements yet use the power of the state to quash counties and districts in their state making similar claims of local autonomy.  Perhaps this was always the way; law and order suited Republican when it helped imposing their political agenda but are willing to ignore the law and promote disorder when those are the means to their ends.  

From individuals ignoring mask mandates, with local sheriffs announcing in public that state mandates won't be enforced, to the refusal to accept the outcomes of an election, America's democratic foundations are rotting away. Where this ends is far from clear. Many, including me, had hoped that after two impeachments and the loss of his reelection bid, Trump, and more importantly what he stood for, would subside back into the murky conspiratorial backwaters from which he emerged. But that didn't happen and the prospects that the country will be treated to a second bout of the MAGA infection look increasingly likely. So pervasive and effective has Trump's Big Lie been in undermining faith in American democracy, the chances of it  making a full recovery, were it to suffer a second Trump term, look perilously thin. Like covid, Trumpism looks set to become endemic.     

Two shillings a foot

When George Harrison finally decided he'd had enough and walked out, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were left wondering how to complete the project without him. Two things surprised me; first that despite Harrison's leaving Lennon and McCartney seem not to consider the possibility of simply cancelling the project. More surprising still was Lennon's suggestion that they simply ask Eric Clapton to fill in for Harrison.  It reinforced the idea of a status hierarchy in the group with Lennon and McCartney  at the top and Harrison and Star as second tier, almost session players. The dynamic isn't that dissimilar to the way Roger Waters thought that by the time they'd recorded "The Wall" he was Pink Floyd. 

Another was when Star comes onto the set one morning; McCartney is sitting at the piano and greets him with "Hi Rich".  Lennon also calls Ringo "Richie" later on during the filming.  Although he'd been "Ringo Star" in public, it suggested that in private he was still Richard Starky to the rest of the band.  

McCartney was clearly an accomplished self-taught pianist. What was surprising was his influences; clearly influenced by jazz and rag time, he also noted the importance of good structure and mentioned Bach as one of his inspirations. 

And of course, the cost of studio time. Despite the fact they the Beatles were the most famous band around in 1969 and probably the most lucrative for EMI, there still seemed the odd moment when "whatever they want" didn't sit happily with EMI. Instead of providing the audio recording equipment the band wanted when there were working at Sheperton, Harrison had to bring the enormous 8-track from his home studio. And when they were in the Apple studio in Savile Row, Glyn Jones remarks that the taping is costing "two shillings a foot" (in one inch magnetic recording tape).    

The changing world order

The world order (if there ever was such a thing) is changing, and not in a good way. Of course what seemed stable when I was young was simply a function of not having lived through very much change. The 1970s saw Britain grappling and coming to terms with its diminished role in the world. There was the joining of the European Economic Community (EEC), the joining and departure from the European Monetary System (EMS), the decision not to adopt the single currency, and finally Britain's exit from Europe.  There was decimalization and the first supermarket to arrive in Steyning. There was the end of Franko's dictatorship in Spain, Solidarity in Poland, the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification.  More recent was the delegation of power to the central banks and the control of inflation.  So it hasn't really been all that stable. But there was a sense that in terms of international relations, we were moving towards greater economic integration and away from large scale military conflicts. There were the small "skirmishes"; the Falklands, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, then Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, but nothing on the scale of the two world wars, and since 1946, no use of nuclear weapons. So until the first early twenty-first century, things seemed to be moving in a generally in positive trajectory. There were hiccups like the 2008 financial crisis, but economies recovered.

Today that optimisms seems harder to sustain. Tension between China and the West over Tiwan, between Russia and the West over Ukraine, the resurgence of authoritarian regimes in Turkey, Hungary and Poland, not to mention the climate crisis, are beginning to cast a long shadow. The proliferation of a fragmented media landscape and the growth of social media is turning politics towards a toxic focus on identity devoid of a shared set of facts, let alone shared values. The collaboration of authoritarian regimes, swapping ideas on how best to stay in power and beat back pressure from the world's well meaning democracies is setting up a battle not between the ideologies of communism and capitalism, or between state run economies and market economies, but between competing systems of control, democratic representation or authoritarianism, between faith in institutions and faith in (or obedience to) personalities. And while democratic regimes believe they hold the moral high ground, their increasing inability to deliver, either economically or politically, will lead to more frustration and a further decline in trust in institutions, putting democracy itself at risk. It seems that for the twenty or so years I have left, the future looks pretty bleak.          

The 2022 F1 Season

Assuming the Red Bull and the Mercedes are as equally matched next year as they were this, Lewis Hamilton will have to find a way of dealing with Max Verstappen's driving. While I'm not a competitive racing driver, as a long-time follower of Formula 1 motor racing (and an unabashed Hamilton fan) I am worried that Verstappen has found an overtaking maneuver that is both risky and currently highly effective. While drivers generally move towards the apex from the outside of the track as they approach a corner, Verstappen, when executing an overtake, comes into the corner on the inside of the car ahead and breaks very late into the corner. While technically he may be abreast of the car he is trying to overtake on entry to the corner his excess speed and the fact that his car is now pointing less towards the apex than the car he is trying to pass means that the only way for the other driver to avoid a crash is to leave the track limits. That will either cost time or mean that if he is deemed to have gained an advantage, he will have to yield the place to Verstappen. In other words, Verstappen will make the overtake by forcing his opponent of the track in a risky, some (including me) would say reckless, move. Yet that kind of driving is often just called "highly competitive racing".  But in my view, as we saw at Monza this year then the two drivers did collide  (Verstappen was slightly behind Hamilton when the shunt happened), diving down the inside put both drivers at unnecessary risk. It forces the innocent party to accommodate the aggressor. 

Although this may be a slightly stylized representation, it makes the point that while technically in a fraction of a second, Verstappen will be ahead of Hamilton and the corner is "his", there is no way for Hamilton, who is turning into the apex, to avoid a collision unless he steers left meaning he will exceed track limits (assuming there is a runoff area). Unless the stewards begin to impose time penalties for diving down the inside and forcing the other driver out of track limits (as was the case in the first lap in Yas Marina) he will continue to use the maneuver to his advantage.

So were I in a position (which clearly I'm not) to give Hamilton some advice, it would be this; go into the simulator over the winter and try different approaches to the corner to  neutralize Verstappen's "inside lunge" overtake.

Otherwise he'll have to rely on being quicker and more reliable, which simply may not be enough for his eighth world championship.  

Verstappen wins in controversy

Verstappen's victory in the Yaz Marina Grand Prix will go down in history as one of the most controversial races ever in Formula 1. With the championship to play for, Hamilton drove a flawless race from the outset, gaining the lead before the first corner from second place on the grid. He led the entire race, but the race and his eight championship was stolen from him in the penultimate lap by a terrible decision from race control. 

Nicholas Latifi had crashed five laps from the end, bringing out the safety car. Hamilton had passed the back-markers while Verstappen had not. Verstappen used the safety car to come in for a fresh set of soft compound ties but Mercedes decided to leave Hamilton out on a worn set of hards. With the safety car having eliminated Hamilton's twelve second lead over Verstappen, he might yet have won had Verstappen had to pass the back markers, although the odds were now very much in Verstappen's favor. 

But race director Micheal Masi's inexplicable decision to let the back-markers past the safety car handed Verstappen his victory on a silver platter. With no gap between him and Hamilton and on a fresh set of softs to Hamilton's completely warn hards, it was a given that Verstappen would pass Hamilton on that last remaining lap. 

Was Red Bull's strategic decision making better than Mercedes' more cautious approach? Perhaps. But in the end, without the good fortune of allowing Verstappen to clear the back-markers under the safety car rather than under race conditions, that strategizing would have been moot.  Sadly, it was a bitter end to a great season or motor racing.

Verstappen or Hamilton?

Controversy surrounds the incident between Verstapen and Hamilton on the first lap of the final race of the 2021 Formula 1 championship in Yaz Marina. Did Hamilton gain an unfair advantage by leaving track limits at turn N?  Verstapen and Red Bull clearly think so. Mercedes, on the other hand, sees Hamilton leaving the tack not as a deliberate decision to gain an advantage, but as a necessary maneuver to avoid a collision that would have taken both cars out of the race.  The race stewards decided in Hamilton and Mercede's favor. 

While I may not be a completely impartial observer, I agree with the stewards' decision. Verstapen's move to take the position from Hamilton down the inside at the entrance to the corner was risky, some (including me) would say reckless. Coming from about two car lengths behind, he braked late into the corner bringing himself alongside Hamilton's car. Notably, he was not clipping the apex of the corner but was nearer to the middle of the track, leaving Hamilton nowhere to go.  At the apex, Verstapen was pointing his car towards the outside of the corner and Hamilton had no option but to leave the track or cause an accident that would have ended both their races. Which of course would have suited Verstapen nicely since he was leading the championship only by dint of having won more races since they were even on points. And there is little doubt that was in Verstapen mind. 

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time he'd pulled this kind of stunt. The incident at Monza in which he ended up colliding with Hamilton, bringing his car over the top of  the Mercedes and injuring Hamilton in the process looked remarkably similar. And there have been others. Verstapen seems ro have learned that there are few consequences for pushing the risk envelope with that maneuver. 

While it unclear whether Hamilton gave back all the advantage he gained from leaving the track, I think the stewards may have felt that it was about time Verstapen was sent the message that would not be allowed to take the lead by forcing another car off the track.  Whoever wins the race (still in progress) I think the stewards made the right call.     

The Decline and Fall of the American Dream

Martin Luther King had a dream. The country's Founding Fathers apparently had one too, an ideal to be aspired to, the Great American Democratic Experiment. Their dream was to create a country based on principles, not race, ethnicity and tribalism, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  

Yet in the two hundred and forty five years since the Declaration of Independence was signed, that dream has proved elusive.  Granted the country as created enormous economic wealth in aggregate yet it remains remarkably unequal, not just in outcomes, which is to be expected, but in opportunity which should not be.

With the new millennium, a generation has begun pushing more forcefully to realize that dream, and to grapple with the sins of the past that still cast a long shadow, sometime real, sometimes imagined. With it has come a shift in culture towards compassion and collectivism and away from the rugged individualism that once was central to so many Americans' sense of identity.  

David Brooks, writing about his visit to the National Conservatism Conference, sees the right as turning to the state as the only tool left to ward off the woke evil corporate behemoths, the indoctrinating mind-control of higher education and the cultural censorship of the so called main-stream media. Some of what Brooks fears is already happening.  Conservative legislatures are gerrymandering electoral districts to their advantage, and putting partisan electoral officials in place of supposedly neutral ones. They are banning books from schools and dictating curriculum.  That may stem the tide for a while. 

But suppose the "NatCons", if (or rather when) they get the levers of power, they go further. Trump has already set the stage for a more authoritarian approach to governing. If the illiberal regimes he so admires (Turkey, Hungary, Belarus) are the template for the NatCons' philosophy, censorship and increasing curtailing of speech and thought deemed inconsistent with the national interest (i.e., their philosophy) may come next. 

Ultimately, that may not only mark the end of the American Dream as a set of aspirational principles, it may also cripple the American Dream's economic component. International trade with Europe could suffer, universities will attract fewer top-notch faculty from abroad, entrepreneurs may find other more attractive places to work. And when innovation and trade suffer, the economy follows, and as it does, the immigration needed to make up for a declining birthrate will decline. Assuming that the country does not implode in something approaching civil war, America will sink into a slow fading-away, no longer seen as the beacon of freedom it once was.  So the the GOP, I humbly suggest, "be careful what you wish for".  

Get Back

Peter Jackson's editing of the three weeks of footage of the Beatles at work, leading up to the rooftop concert, provides some interesting insights into the creative process and team dynamics.   

First, the creative process. It was quite remarkable to hear how some relatively vague initial ideas quickly came to sound like the songs everyone knows ("Get Back", for example).  While the emergence of an almost finished product seems miraculous, it is a function of, and a testament to, their experience of working together and their skill at coming up with parts that fitted so well. In the end, their competence as a group of musicians allowed them to turn in an almost perfect performance in minutes rather than the hours or days it takes less seasoned players.

The other fascinating aspect of the film is the team dynamic. In the first episode, McCartney is trying to take a leadership role (something Brian Epstien provided, at least regarding work schedules, until his untimely death) but McCartney is clearly struggling. George Harrison seems to have retreated in to a passive aggressive relationship with McCartney. McCartney's belated and rather ham-handed and attempts to placate him only make matters worse and Harrison walks out of the film (and, at least temporarily, the band).

Also interesting is the relationship between Lennon and McCartney; in a secretly recorded conversation, Lennon admits to having acquiesced to whatever McCartney wanted and seems resigned to it. Lennon also comments on how Harrison feels undervalued. It is not clear to me from that conversation whether McCartney quite understood how his behavior had affected the other members of the group.  I imagine the dynamic between Lennon and McCartney had evolved over the years (since McCartney was "hired" by Lennon into the Quarrymen and was also younger than Lennon).  

I was struck by the contrast with the Amadeus String Quartet which formed while its members were also quite young (in their mid 20s - not quite as young as the Beatles). The Amadeus Quartet remained productive, cohesive and amicable until Peter Schidlof's death led to the remaining members' decision to stop performing after 40 years together. One big difference, of course, is that Amadeus Quartet formed when its members were in their mid-twenties while the Beatles came together in their late teens.   

Peter Jackson commented on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert that his film, despite being crafted from the same raw footage, tells a quite different story from that of the film "Let it Be".  I'm not sure it does. While it is true that the members of the band were still having fun playing together at least some of the time, there are clearly big issues that aren't being addressed; George Harrison's feeling under--appreciated, Richard Starkey in some sense resigned to being "just the drummer", even tension between Lennon and McCartney over creative ideas. The joking, seemingly a throwback to their early, more care-free days as teenagers, may make the day-to-day bearable, but does nothing to resolve the underlying tensions. 

And while Jackson tried to downplay the effect Yoko Ono had on the dynamic, he may be missing the point. It's true that Yoko didn't insert herself into their work but Jackson misses two things - first what Ono says to Lennon when they are at home, although given that it was McCartney who finally called it quits that may be lees of the issue than simply her presence in the studio. She may not have said anything but while she was there, Lennon's attention was divided between her and McCartney; and since McCartney had been used to Lennon's undivided attention when they were creating together in the early days, that may have been what convinced him that they could never get back to the close collaborative relationship they once had.  The Get Back sessions were, it seems, an attempt to go back to the band's creative roots working less experimentally and more simply and collaboratively and a big part of that was the Lennon-McCartney writing partnership. If McCartney felt that they could never get that back because Lennon wasn't as completely focused on the band as he had once been, McCartney may have felt that the experiment had failed and it was time to move on. 

Returning to the issue of the dynamics and personalities, Lennon seems much less goal-oriented than McCartney and seemingly would have been happy to continue to working. But my sense is that McCartney wanted to keep moving forward, keep putting out records, keep in the limelight, and didn't see the Beatles as being able to deliver on his schedule.

Might things have turned out differently had Yoko Ono not come into their lives or had McCartney recognized his attempts to lead the groups after Epstien's death were not working? Perhaps: but the question is rather pointless.  What really matters is that, in the end, the Beatles gave us a catalog of extraordinarily creative work for which we should simply be immensely grateful.

The Rittenhouse Verdict

The jury's verdict in the Rittenhouse case has, unsurprisingly, been controversial. Much stems from the confluence of two issues; the use of deadly force and inequitable treatment based on race. As has been pointed out, had Rittenhouse been black instead of white, is it almost inconceivable that he would not have been arrested on the spot (or even shot by the police) rather than allowed to return home to turn himself in later. That (among other things) is one aspect of the racial component. Another might be his becoming a cause célèbre for Fox, which again would be unlikely to have happened were he a black teenager. That afforded him an expensive, high profile and well prepared legal defense team instead of an over-worked public defender.

However, those were not the questions the jury had to consider; it was asked rather to determine the very narrow question of whether someone carrying a weapon has the right to use deadly force to defend him or herself in the particular circumstances of the case. There were three different instances; in the first, Rittenhouse was chased by an unarmed man; in the second he was attacked by a man wielding a skateboard; and in the third he was threatened with a hand gun. In the first two, Rittenhouse shot and killed his assailants; the third was seriously injured. 

Rittenhouse was acquitted in all three instances. His defense was that even when being threatened or attacked by someone who was either unarmed or armed with an everyday object (a skateboard) he was  justified in fearing for his life and hence justified in using deadly force.  While it seems a stretch that he would be in fear of his life when set upon on by someone who was unarmed, the defense suggested that had Rittenhouse been overpowered, his assailant would have taken his gun and used it to shoot him.  Although to the man on the London omnibus, that seems highly unlikely, it cannot be unequivocally ruled out, which may explain the jury's verdict.  The jury also did not consider (or were not asked to consider) whether putting oneself needlessly into harm's way in a somewhat provocative manner made the claim of self-defense less robust. 

Ultimately, the verdict seems to pave the way for anyone carrying a gun to claim that the person they shot might have taken their gun and used it against them, making their killing justified based on that hypothetical scenario. A similar case concerning the killing of Ahmaud Arbery is currently underway and the same defense will almost certainly be used. Gun rights activists assert that the "Only Thing That Stops A Bad Guy With A Gun Is A Good Guy With A Gun". The problem with that philosophy is that who the good and bad guys are is in the eye of the beholder. The trajectory we appear to be on leads almost inexorably to everyone needing to carry a gun. That's not what I think of a civil society and is certainly one I don't particularity want to live in.