What's Wrong With the World?

 I'm writing in the wake of having watched Americans select an erratic convicted felon who's displayed traits of narcissism, racism, misogyny and authoritarianism as their head of state and commander in chief.  This isn't hyperbole and these are not trivial shortcomings.  He's promised to politicize the public service, enact high tariffs and conduct mass deportations, moves which economists assure us will do enormous damage to the US and world economies.  However, he's so unpredictable that nobody knows to what extent he'll actually go through with it and and many of his voters revel in the fear and worry this uncertainty instills in the broader population.  Even if he scales back on tariffs and deportations, there are other, potentially much more damaging actions he will almost certainly take like:

1. Sabotaging climate measures to address and mitigate climate change
2. Undermine world efforts to shore up democracy and stand up to authoritarianism
3. Further divide the US and the world along racial, gender and ideological lines
   

It hurts.  It hurts to know there are millions of people out there who for whatever reason would support this type of degeneracy.  It hurts to know this will harm my children's futures.  It hurts that this shakes my faith in democracy and lowers my opinions of the people with whom I share this planet.  What makes it even worse is in all of the online chatter I've read (and there's been a lot), I've yet to see a credible, comprehensive attempt at even understanding this mess, let alone fixing it.

One of the traits I've inherited from my father is my urge to fix things. When something I own breaks, my first tendency is to take it apart, understand how it works and see if I can fix it. Even when I can't (which is often), it helps me understand how things work so I'm positioned to get a better version of it next time.

So, I sit here and wonder.  What is causing our democratic institutions to fail?  Why are governments (which are supposed to be representing the will of the people) failing to make changes that make people happier? What causes people to turn to ridiculous billionaire saviours?

 Certainly, misinformation and disinformation are a significant part of the problem. Pollsters reported that Trump voters believed that economic benchmarks were much worse than they actually were.  Elon Musk bought Twitter (and renamed it X so I refer to it as Xitter) and weaponized it.  He's reportedly amplified his own voice and other commentators on the far right. Even before this, though, a swamp of right wing news sites, bloggers and other commentators have created an entirely separate reality for right wing viewers.  According to researchers, this is a direct threat to democracy.

Working class citizens felt they were being left behind.  It didn't help that Democrats spent billions forgiving student loans while the majority of Americans don't attend college. Trump voters reported that rent and groceries kept going up while billionaires got ever richer.  The Democrats attracted a majority of voters that made over $100,000 per year - which is a small minority of Americans.

In news reports, Trump voters claim that the Democrats heavy reliance on identity politics has turned them off.  Republicans were successful in branding the Democrats as the party of the elite and the out of touch.  While, Democrats have positioned themselves as champions of racial minorities, Republican support among many minorities (particularly Latinos and native Americans) has ballooned.

 There are no shortage of other theories.  On social media, every center and left account is shoehorning this loss into their favourite world view.  Socialists are blaming this on excessive capitalism.  Supporters of Palestine claim that it's because Democrats supported genocide in Gaza.  Feminists blame misogyny. Others blame racism.  Harris backers blame Biden for hanging on too long.  Biden loyalists blame Democrats for abandoning Biden.  I could go on.

No doubt there is truth in some or all of these claims.  However, it doesn't help to point at a dozen different problems without identifying the key ones.  And it doesn't explain why Americans would be seduced by an explicitly anti-democratic con man backed by billionaires into voting against their interests. 

We need social scientists to get back to evidence-based truth finding and help us figure out what's gone wrong.  Post-modernist thinking has produced a line of thinking where truth can't be ascertained and so it provides foundation from which to set a direction. 

We need real answers, supported by solid data and transparent analysis; compiled by people who aren't ideologically captured.

How the west created Putin

 As I write this, a horrific war of aggression is being conducted by the Russian armed forces against the country of Ukraine.  Russia is a much larger country with a much larger army and much more military equipment. Despite some aid from western countries (mainly the US), Ukraine has lost considerable territory in the south and in the Donbas. International and Ukrainian officials are documenting multiple war crimes including targeting of civilian infrastructure, murder of civilians, rape and illegal rendition of residents to Russia.

Although there is widespread condemnation from many countries, there are also many who criticize the west (again mainly the US) for the conflict.  From what I've seen, these criticisms take two main  positions:

• The countries adjacent to Russia should remain "neutral" and provide a "security buffer" so that Russia won't feel threatened by NATO and so that Russia can have a "sphere of influence".  This is the position of "political realists".
  
• The US is using the Ukraine to conduct a "proxy war" to extend its hegemony and create a unipolar world.   

The former is more philosophy than analysis.  It argues that all great powers dominate the countries around this (and therefore we should anticipate Russia will as well).  This might be true but it's hardly a justification.  It essentially argues that since the US commits crimes of aggression, Russia can also.  So, I discard this argument as fundamentally immoral.

The latter is ridiculous.  While the argument can be made that the war has become a proxy war to a limited extent and certainly it would be western policy to have Ukraine aligned with the EU rather than Russia, the notion that the US wanted Russia to invade Ukraine makes no sense.  Consider:

• Immediately prior the the invasion, Biden publicly announced it was about to happen.  Why would he do that if the US wanted a war?
• The vast majority of military analysts expected Ukraine to collapse in under a week
• The US failed to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons, aircraft or navy assets needed to successfully sustain a war with Russia in the years between 2014 and 2022.  Even after the invasion, military aid in the first three months is insufficient to stop the forward advance, let alone allow Ukraine to strike back.
• The sanctions being imposed are hurting the west as well as Russia and are causing Biden political problems at home.  There will almost certainly be a recession which will hurt the Democrats in the midterms.

Neither of these claims make any sense, yet I still fault the west for this war and the other things that Putin has done.  The reason is that the west in general, and the US in particular, are responsible for the rise of Putin.  This is no small problem because Putin is a textbook fascist dictator.

Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the great giveaway of state assets had already begun.  Senior government officials had been allowed to transfer government assets to themselves and their families.   Things only went downhill when the west showed up to help.  The New York Stock Exchange sent lawyers and academics.  Then Harvard sent its best and brightest who promptly tried to profit from the situation. Of course, it wasn't long before the IMF showed up.  Naturally, everyone had the same cure: capitalism as soon as possible.  With the Russian state officials and other insiders eager to cash in on state assets, nobody was looking out for the interests of ordinary Russians.  

The effects of the "structural adjustments" and uncontrolled privatizations were predictable.  Corruption reigned supreme.  The value of the ruble plummeted and inflation spiraled out of control.  Ordinary people were wiped out as their savings and pensions were almost worthless.  Organized crime arose and suddenly there were execution style killings on the streets of Moscow.  This type of societal chaos is the perfect breeding ground for the rise of an authoritarian leader.  Then came the 1996 Russian election.  Worried that his friend Yeltsin might lose to socialists, Bill Clinton shamelessly meddled in the election.

Less than four years later, Yeltsin resigned and passed the presidency along to a former KGB operative who he knew would ensure that Yeltsin and his buddies would never be held accountable for their corruption. Vladimir Putin took over at a time when oil prices started to skyrocket. Although the Russian economy had been hollowed out by the economic reforms, the petro-rubles provided plenty of room for Putin to get credit for bringing prosperity and stability to Russia.  And anytime he felt his popularity slipping, he just picked another fight with one of his neighbors.

Since then, the west has been complicit in Russian corruption and criminality.  Over the past two decades, hundreds of billions of dollars have been laundered into western banks, real estate, stocks and other assets.  Oligarchs have bought their way into western institutions, charities and political scenes.  Donald Trump is alleged to have benefited from Russian organized crime buying his properties.  Russian oil money has undermined the integrity of many, many western institutions.  The result has been a tendency to look the other way when it comes to Kremlin war crimes and human rights abuses.  

Between the initial 90s rush to convert Russia to capitalism and the apathy to his crimes in the intervening years, the west aided and abetted the creation of a monster.  Now we, as 21st century Dr Frankensteins, look upon our progeny with horror and contemplate how to deal with it.

I Don't Know

 It feels like my existence consists of balancing alone on a narrow ridge.  On one side of me is a valley populated by people who uncritically accept mainstream views and conventional wisdom.  Even to ask certain questions is enough to get you branded as a conspiracy theorist.  On the opposite side are the actual conspiracy theorists who claim to be skeptical but are actually much more open to believing narratives that are wildly implausible than those are are simple and logical.  Pharmaceutical companies aren't just big heartless corporations, they (along with the WHO, Bill Gates and the "global elite) are part of a global conspiracy to depopulate the planet.  I don't want to join either camp.  It's tempting to join the mainstream camp and just push aside all of the nagging doubts.  And I know from past experience, the conspiracy camp can be intoxicating and addictive; believing that you're on the cusp of discovering the truth behind some great secret.  I don't dare fall asleep for fear I will fall to one side or the other and not be able to get back to where I am.

The ridge is obviously a metaphor but the divide is very real.  I know people in both camps.  I think both have something to contribute.  However, the two sides have stopped talking to each other and now just lob mortars over the ridge.  The mainstream camp people think they can just marginalize and ignore the conspiracy side.  For their part, the conspiracy people think that they have a monopoly on hidden truths and eventually everyone else will join them. I see both sides and I get frustrated with both.

They have more in common than they think.  They both seem to have a need to know.  For the mainstream camp, this means accepting what they are told by authority figures and not asking too many questions.  They're begging to be lied to and used.  For the conspiracy camp, it means rejecting anything "mainstream" and listening to various narratives without real regard for source or logic.  They are also begging to be lied to and used, but by different people.

The problem is that governments do lie to us - a lot.  And we don't always find out until much later and in some cases probably never. Science does get things wrong - a lot.  What's accepted today is overturned tomorrow, usually without any public reckoning of the harm done or even what went wrong.

For me, the answer to the impasse lies in three little words - "I don't know".

Was the JFK assassination the result of a larger plot?  I don't know.  Why did the twin towers collapse on 9/11? I don't know.  Was COVID made in a lab?  I don't know.  Is there some conspiracy amongst billionaires to de-populate the planet?  I don't know.

Those three words aren't much of a conversation starter but at least they don't end it.  People with mainstream views could be more open to skepticism and be more flexible in their view of the world.  The old left-right paradigm of politics is collapsing and in its place is emerging a divide between people who want incremental change and those who are looking for radical solutions.  For their part, people who distrust everything and want a revolution should be careful what they wish for.  However bad you might think things are, they can get worse.  

I have one last comment to make on the divide.  The resulting distrust and polarization is making progress difficult and paralyzing governments across the industrialized west.  If we think of who stands to benefit from that polarization, we could come up with a list.  Authoritarian regimes (principally China and Russia), the billionaire class, organized crime. Is that a conspiracy theory?  Yes.  Does it have any truth?

I don't know.

Do White People Suck?

 In the wake of the recent discovery of unmarked graveyards at residential schools in British Columbia (at least 219 bodies) and Saskatchewan (at least 751 bodies), I've seen an outpouring of outage from some of the Twitter accounts I've been following.  One said simply "White people suck!  Don't @ me".

At first, I dismissed it as just one more emotive expression that didn't mean anything; but then I began to wonder.  Do white people suck?  Or is it just that people in general suck and white people just happen to collectively hold systemic power in much of the world?

This isn't a meaningless question.  Maybe white people really do suck.  Maybe there is some genetic predisposition to power-seeking behavior or perhaps western culture is predicated on conquest instead of peaceful coexistence and this leads to endless subjugation.  If that's the case then all of us, especially white people, owe it to the world to identify and eliminate this tendency.  

On the other hand, maybe the tendency to distrust and discriminate against those who you perceive to be not like you is a near-universal evolutionary response to our tribal roots.  In the pre-civilization era, it would have been a survival advantage to trust members of your own tribe and distrust others.  Is it possible that all forms of discrimination whether it be based on race, religion, culture or other indication of group allegiance is predicated on a primitive 'friend-or-foe' identification mechanism?  

 Still, the question remains:are white people generally more racist than non-whites?  Well, not according to the (admittedly limited) research I did.  Researchers conducted a survey asking people if they would be comfortable having neighbors of a different race and found that the most tolerant countries (surprisingly for many of us who live in them) are in North and South America, Australia and western Europe.  Conversely the worst were in Asia, Africa and Middle East.   

Anyone who's read this far might be tempted to dismiss all of this as rationalization and ask "Why does any of this matter?  Shouldn't we be against all racism?"

 Here's why I think it matters. If it's true that racism and other forms of group discrimination are evolutionary tendencies inherent in all of us, then many of the solutions proposed by liberals and leftists are wholly unlikely to rectify the issues and in fact are more likely to make them worse. The rise of identity politics and the propensity to see events through filters of race, gender, sexual preference or other identity dimension may actually be triggering to the unconscious forces within us that are predetermined to perceive other groups negatively.  Similarly, reparations for historical wrongs, affirmative action, and subsidies targeted at marginalized groups could cause resentment and further the tendency towards discrimination.

If we really want to build a world where everyone is perceived on a equal basis, it seems to me that the way we do that is to stop accentuating differences that are often based on superficial qualities (eg skin tone) and build societies based on shared goals, shared values and mutual respect.

And for the white people proclaiming "White people suck", no doubt you mean well; but you're more likely part of the problem than part of the solution.

Russia, Putin and the 2020 Election

 As the 2020 US election draws near, one of the oddest and most dysfunctional debates I'm witnessing is in regards to Russia and its alleged election interference.

Liberals and centrists insist that not only did Russia interfere with the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, the campaign and possibly Trump himself colluded with them.  They see the interference as an attack by a foreign power.  

Leftists, on the other hand, refer dismissively to "Russiagate" as just furtherance of US imperialism and a ready-made excuse for how Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.  They see the lack of a conclusive finding in the Mueller report as proof that the affair was overblown.  Many (rightly) point to the the history of US interference in other country's elections (including Russia) as proof that this is all hypocritical posturing. 

I find the whole debate odd from a plethora of perspectives:

1. Both sides refer to "Russia" as if the Russian people have some role in this.  Russia stopped functioning as a democracy years ago so any actions like election interference would be solely the responsibility of the oligarchy and the intelligence agencies
   
2. As soon as intelligence agencies get involved, it's hard to know the truth about anything.  Supporting information gets locked behind the wall of "classified information".  So, while it's certainly plausible that Putin interfered in the election, it's hard to be sure.
3. Putin is the very last person that leftists should defend.  He's a crony capitalist who robbed his country blind and has somehow become one of the richest men in the world while on a politician's salary.  Labor rights in Russia have declined under his rule.
4. Under the Clinton administration, the US interfered in a Russian election on behalf of Boris Yeltsin while Putin backed one of Yeltsin's opponents.  Yeltsin then handed power to Putin who's wielded it ever since. So, if Putin is now interfering with US elections, you could call it karma.  Or blowback. Liberals and centrists never seem to acknowledge this.
5. Through all of this neither side makes much mention of the fact that the integrity of the entire election rests on voting machines with multiple vulnerabilities.  According to attorney and election advocate Jennifer Cohn, 80% of the country's voting machines are supplied by two private companies, meaning who owns them isn't public knowledge.  Further, Cohn has reported that in some battleground states (Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin), these voting machines are connected, via cellular modems, to the internet.  She says they could be hacked.  Maybe by a state actor.

So, here's what I make of this whole messy debate:

Leftists would be well advised to check their sneering when it comes to interference from Putin's Russia.  He's ex KGB, has a reason to hold a grudge and it doesn't take an enormous amount of money to mount a cyber war.  His interference in democratic elections in many countries has been widely documented.

Before liberals point the finger at Russia or anyone else, they should look at the actions of their own government.   The US has a long and unsavory record of interfering in elections around the world going back decades.

Both sides should worry less about Russia and focus on their own voting machines.  They've already been implicated in potentially being the deciding factors in each of the past 3 Republican victories.  When I read Jennifer Cohn's research, I find it crazy that more action isn't being taken.  Where is the Democratic Party on this issue??

It's a crazy time in world politics and particularly so in the US.  Hype and rhetoric win out over nuance and detail.  Under those conditions, it's hard for an intricate issue like this one to get due consideration.

I hope democracy wins in November.

Planetary Health Index - a better way to measure progress

 "You get what you measure".  This old business aphorism is an essential truism.  Whether your goal is personal, organizational or national, that which you measure regularly will get your focus.  

Too often, we measure the wrong things.   People measure their weight, which is a poor indicator of health. Corporations are often focused on the quarterly results, which could be detrimental to the overall health of the company. 

 As societies, we obsess over gross domestic product (GDP), which is a largely arbitrary figure, consisting of the total goods and services produced in a country during a given time period.  When the media talks about the economy, they're talking about GDP.  If the economy is doing "well", GDP is growing.  If a country is in recession, GDP is shrinking.  Since the economy is a matter covered by general mainstream media and obsessed over by business media, it's foremost in everyone's mind.  It also means that if a government is judged to have managed the economy poorly, the chances of being elected are minimal.  A large GDP also provides a country with more geopolitical clout.  So, governments obsess over the GDP, elevating its importance over almost everything else.

What's wrong with that?  After all, GDP is a measure of how well off we are, right?  Well, it's not a very good one.  GDP is an aggregate measure, meaning that if some people are extremely wealthy, it says little about the experience of most people.  It counts bad things as well as good so if there's a plane crash and a lot of money is spent on cleanup, lawsuits and funerals, that's part of the GDP.  It only counts what you pay for.  If you pay for someone to cut your lawn, fix your car, look after your kids or paint your house, you're "helping" the economy by increasing the GDP.  Most worrying, though, is that GDP says nothing about the degradation of our planet, the ultimate resource on which we all rely for life itself.  When you remove plant life that was producing oxygen, when you kill microorganisms that are the basis of life, when you pollute the air and water, when you degrade the soil, when you destroy biodiversity that sustains the web of life, it takes a long time for that to be noticed in the form of GDP.  And by time it does, it's too late.  It's not exaggeration to say that our single minded pursuit of GDP is jeopardizing the ability of the planet to sustain life.

We need a new measure, one that reflects the ability of the planet to sustain life.  It needs to be an aggregate measure, including biodiversity, climate stability, air pollution, water pollution soil health and ocean health.  We could call it the planetary health index.  It needs to be top of mind for everyone, everywhere.  Free browsers should come with bookmarks to it.  News aggregators like Google need to include links to it.  Social media sites need to promote it.  Public broadcasters should host shows about it.

This needs to trump the GDP as the top priority of governments.

Some Unsolicited Advice to Democrats from an Outside Observer

At this point, there is a very good chance that in 9 months, we will be "celebrating" Trump 2.0.  That's a sobering thought for people who believe in climate science.  Or any science.  Or intelligent discourse. Or honesty.  Or justice of any sort. Or democracy.

Do you think that's an exaggeration? According to Sarah Kendzior, expert on the authoritarian states that emerged after the dissolution of he USSR, Trump has been following a well-documented pattern of undermining democracy since he was elected.  In fact, the situation with the Trump family is eerily similar to that of Uzbekistan.

Still, Trump is historically unpopular.  Shouldn't we take comfort in the fact that polls say that almost any Democratic candidate would be 8-10 points ahead of him in an election? Maybe.  The problem is the increasingly vitriolic infighting that is going on between supporters of various Democratic candidates - particular between Bernie supporters and people I will refer to as Bernie-phobics (including those who say they will bring a barf bag to the ballot box if they have to vote for him).

If I were a Trump strategist, an obvious strategy presents itself.  When you need to re-elect a divisive, unpopular leader, you need to aggressively deploy voter suppression techniques.  Release damaging information (true or not) and make it appear that the candidates are cheating or employing unethical tactics to win.  For Republicans, the path to victory is to get Democrats engaged in a bitter battle to the point where the loser's supporters stay home on election day.

If I could address Democratic supporters, I'd say this.  First of all, stay clear of conspiracy theories.  If you are spreading rumours about other candidates that even your own candidate doesn't repeat,  you're not helping.  If you're announcing that you will never vote for candidate x, you're not helping.

For the Obama/Clinton/Biden crowd who seem to be desperate for any centrist alternative to Bernie Sanders, I have to ask: what's so bad about universal healthcare and free post-secondary education?  It seems to work pretty well for the Finns. If you're convinced that Bernie can't win, I invite you to read this insightful analysis that claims the opposite.  If you think Sanders is a radical, here's what French economist Thomas Piketty had to say on the matter:

 I think, first, that [Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth] Warren and Sanders are not radicals," said Piketty in response to one interviewer's question. "They are moderate social democrats by European standards....

Like many other economists, Piketty insists that, as happened in Sweden, sharing wealth more broadly will make the U.S. economy stronger, not weaker, and richer overall.

And for those of you who consider Michael Bloomberg some sort of saviour who can stand up to Trump, I invite you to look at his own, very troubling past, particularly when it comes to racial issues.  No, he's not Trump but he's not great either.

For Bernie supporters, I would say this.  Yes, this is a historic chance to finally get a progressive in the White House and it will be a bitter blow if it doesn't happen.  Still, there is no basis for the claim that Biden, Klobuchar, or even Bloomberg is "worse than Trump".  Publicly declaring "Bernie or bust" is divisive and will encourage centrists to stay home or worse, defect to Trump.  Your best play is to support Bernie but stay positive.

To everyone, I would say support your candidate.  Keep it clean and remember that the ultimate goal in November is to have  president whose name doesn't rhyme with "dump". 

Good luck to the US and to the world.