Morning Fog

You Don't Need A Weatherman ...

ABC News reported the results of an interesting public opinion survey yesterday, finding among other things that 70% of all adults oppose affirmative action, while 57% support gay/lesbian marriage, and 63% are in favor of granting such couples the same federal benefits as other marrieds.  These results aren't particularly surprising, though I suspect they may be surprising to some who are on the opposite side of those questions.

Equally unsurprising, but more interesting, are the breakdowns provided by youth on the latter two questions, with younger people on the whole much more "in favor" than older folks, and all three race groups about equally opposed to affirmative action on university applications.   I find myself with the majority in all three cases.  Does that mean I'm an African-American 25-year-old?  It doesn't.

It might mean, though, that I'm really a child of the 1960s.  In my observation the liberalization of social attitudes in the U.S. has grown steadily since that decade of rebellion.  I wouldn't call myself a rebel, far from it, yet no doubt my own opinions have been shaped by that environment.  In the 60s the issues were broader:  Desegregation and racial equality then, vs. a sub-element of the same big cluster -- affirmative action -- now.  There have been bumps and setbacks in the trend, but it persists, and its future continuation seems assured when we look at the different views of young people versus older ones.

There are those in the country who still hope to reverse the trend, and return to the 1950s.  Evidently they are the ones who DO need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

 

 

Privacy In The Contemporary World

Gee, another uproar over something the government's doing?  I guess we must be in the second term of some President or another.  It's become kind of a rule that things start to unravel, or appear to, in the second term.

I'm personally not too upset about the telephone records issue.  It's generic data and it's being gathered for reasons of national security, in an era where we face threats of terrorism and industrial espionage.  The same people who have their tidies in a twist over the Verizon-NSA furor still expect 100% security from being blown away by a terrorist bomb, but they fail to explain how the government can do that if modern avenues of intelligence gathering are to be closed to it.

Suspicion of government is quintessentially American.  But it skews our concept of privacy in very odd ways.  We don't begrudge providing all sorts of personal data online to big companies like GM, Prudential, J.C. Penney, and Google, which are collecting and using the same kind of generic, non-individual-specific information that's involved in the current telephone brouhaha.  Many of us, particularly the young and inexperienced, are happy to put every detail of our social life, health, feelings, and passions on FaceBook (with photos, no less) but think it's an invasion for the state to put our photo on a driver's license. 

The government, whose functionaries we elect, has a (largely undeserved) reputation for inefficiency; big business, over whose functionaries we have no control, has a (largely undeserved) reputation for extreme efficiency.  Both reputations are unreliable stereotypes but if they were true, which entity would be the greater danger to our collective well-being?

Perfect Reflection Won't Win Election

It was evident during last year's Presidential election campaign that neither Romney nor his party seemed to have much understanding of the changing attitudes of U.S. voters.  It was even clearer once the election results were known. Unfortunately, Republicans shied away from seeing the real reasons for the outcome.  Because the popular vote was relatively close, they persuaded themselves that they just hadn't got their message across to voters (or worse, that the voters were too dumb to figure it out).  They failed to acknowledge that Romney lost even with huge traditional political advantages; they never gave a thought to the idea that the voters understood and rejected that message.

That has changed only slightly in the intervening months.  A few Republicans have suggested that it's not the medium, but the message itself, that's the problem.  But by and large, the party remains mired in a refusal to see itself as others see it.  They look in a mirror, and see a reflection in which they can find no flaw.  They need someone else to look in the mirror for them.

 Blogger Alexandra Petri today makes one attempt to be that person. 

 

Double Double-Think

Doublethink and its bosom buddy doubletalk are common in politics.  Columnists aren't immune, either, though.

In "Get Rid of the Trust Funds" in today's Washington Post, economic columnist Robert Samuelson points out some double-talk when he argues that focusing public attention on the health of the social security and medicare "trust funds" is deceptive because it suggests these imaginary funds really exist and are funded separately from other spending. 

I credit him for making a darned good case, too, at least until he gets to the point of saying that "A dollar spent on Social Security or Medicare can’t be spent on border control, highways, school lunches, financial regulation, military readiness or the Forest Service." (emphasis added).  Samuelson's basic point is true, but the reference to military readiness is another instance of the same self-deceptive doublethink that he's complaining about, because such a large part of our defense budget consists of yet another "entitlement," one that lacks an imaginary trust fund, but nevertheless fails to  pay for itself as many assume it does.

Speaking of doublethink where military readiness is concerned, let's go back to politicians.  Right across the page from Samuelson's piece, a Congressman named Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, blames Obama for even thinking about reductions in defense funding, and sings his own version of the well-known tune "We Can't Ever Spend Too Much Mon-ee/On Our Beloved Darling Militar-ee."   Maybe getting carried away by his own rhetoric, Buck provides the perfect example of the doublethink affecting our deliberations on this topic:   "We have passed 51 straight annual defense bills, all with the express purpose of providing the American people the peace they deserve" (emphasis added).

Gee, Buck, really?  If so, we must conclude that our annual defense bills have miserably failed to achieve their purpose.  Peace?  From Vietnam to now, it's almost easier to enumerate the years when we were NOT at war, than those when we were. We deceive ourselves with the myth that our constant military engagement in foreign lands is necessary for our "defense," but it hasn't given us peace, and it's this kind of sloppy thinking that will cause us, some day, to "pay the price ...if we do not change course" (to use Buck's own words). 

Sacred Cow, Tip Of An Iceberg, Part 2

In my last post I promised to return to this topic to sketch in the iceberg of the title.

The rising costs of our titanic defense establishment, epitomized in miniature by the question of military commissaries, is a natural outcome of our decision to "professionalize" our armed forces after the Vietnam war.  The thinking at the time was that if people were fed up and disillusioned by our seemingly endless and fruitless engagement in Indochina, and couldn't be induced to service grounded in the concept of a citizen's duty, we would need to rely on mercenaries.  We would pay our soldiers more, and enhance benefits, so that the job would be economically attractive. 

This appeared to work for a while, and even today, I believe it's correct to say that our servicepeople are not motivated strictly by money.  They are attracted to the military because it meets their expectations and desires, in the same way that people who love kids and believe in education become teachers, or those of a certain objective mindset might become engineers or scientists.  

That's not a totally bad thing, but as I have argued before, it does have negative consequences in the sense that when everyone has a mutually-reinforcing way of approaching problems, there will probably be less questioning of decisions or policies - in a crucial element of our national being where different views should be represented.   If "everything looks like a nail, to a hammer," it won't be critical to the country if Target hires only hammers.  I'd say it's different, and more serious, if our armed forces are made up only of hammers.

With our commitment to a fully professional force, we committed also to continually, and probably exponentially, rising costs of the sort we see detailed in the Washington Post.  And as hammers talk among themselves (and to no one else) it's not at all hard for them to begin to view themselves as entitled to a higher level of pay and benefits.  

We haven't yet begun to hire foreigners to do our fighting for us (or have we? -- there are plenty of "aliens," both legal and illegal, serving honorably in our forces -- but the historically minded should, I think, take the lessons of other expansive world powers to heart - Rome's power waned when it couldn't meet the increasing demands of its military forces (and couldn't control them with the force of arms, since the legions had all the weapons).  The Ottomans had the same problem.  The British Empire, perhaps, had a gentler landing, seeing a rising and unaffordable cost, and acting in time (?) to slough some of its demands off -- some of them on us. 

There are dangers to the "professional" army.  We may be able to avoid them by controlling costs, but we've shown little taste for that where civilian entitlements are concerned, and even less where military ones are involved.  Is it too late to restore conscription? 

Sacred Cow, Tip Of An Iceberg - Part One

A piece this weekend focused initially on the status of one of the U.S. military's sacred cows, the base commissaries.  For the unititiated, these are in effect, taxpayer -subsidized supermarkets on military bases that sell groceries to military personnel - and only military personnel - at a discount. 

The commissary is really an anachronism, in two ways:  First, such stores date back to times when military bases were often located far from population centers.  That's still true of some bases today, but the civilian environment has changed:  Even pretty small towns have modern supermarkets these days.  Second, it's one of the many special military benefits that remained unchanged when conscription was abandoned in the 1970s and military pay was upped .. and upped some more .. to make it more competitive with the civilian labor market with which it was competing.  (According to this same article, for example, the average enlisted man/woman's compensation is higher than 90% of what his/her civilians peers with equivalent education and experience receive.)

The cost of commissaries is only the tip of an iceberg - the rising cost of military pay and benefits - which I hope to get to in another post.

As for the commissary issue itself, though, there are some pretty simple solutions available.  First, if private grocery chains shy away from opening stores on military bases on a non-profit basis (and who could blame them?), maybe the answer is a coop arrangement.

Further: a community needs test makes a lot of sense.  Some bases (like Joint Base Myer-Henderson near me in Arlington, Virginia) are vest-pocket size and offer dozens of choices of grocery stores within a mile or two of the front gate.  Really, there isn't much reason such bases should have commissaries.  Others are sprawling facilities that house populations of several tens of thousands, and it's only natural that our servicemen and -women would want a grocery store in their community, just like any suburban household in the civilian world has.  They should have it, but need it be operated on a subsidized basis?  

Ah yes, there's that discount issue.  Military folks are up in arms on the web this morning about the potential loss of this small part of their entitlements.  That's natural.  Civilians scream if the mortgage deduction is threatened, and oldsters get agitated if anyone even talks about changes to Medicare or Social Security.  In all three cases, however, change has to happen.   Clearly, in light of the anachronistic nature of the commissary system, we should be taking a good hard look at whether our military members really still need subsidized groceries.

 

Golf Holds The Line

I am not a golfer, and I would never have known, if the Washington Post had not enlightened me, that there was such a thing as an anchored putter, or that it is on the verge of being banned.

That won't stop me from shouting a loud "HURRAH," though.  Too many other sports have introduced changes over the years, for example in basketball where that whole three-point shot didn't exist.  (Incidentally, basketball also used to have a penalty for what was known as "traveling" - was that changed at some point, maybe while I was overseas? - but one way or the other, no one much seems to care if the players take three steps, or twenty, without dribbling. 

Then, there's tennis, a game I played for quite a few years.   But those new gigantic, wide raquets?  Or two-handed strokes?  Give me a break! 

Most of these modern changes seem to me aimed not at making it a better, tougher, or more challenging sport, but a more interesting, lively, or higher-scoring spectator experience.  Pro sports are really the diametric opposite of real sports, because they encourage people to sit on their behinds rather than getting any exercise.

Changes for these reasons may increase advertising dollars and professional players' and teams' profits, but they don't do much for the "sport" that the game's non-pro afficionados play.   If a strict and clear line could be drawn between the amateur and professional games, I might be more in favor, but it's inevitable that the changes introduced for non-sporting reasons creep into the weekend duffer's game too.

Golf may not even technically be a "sport."  It's more of a game, but one that involves a degree of skill and effort, no doubt about it.  But I applaud the effort to preserve tradition, and to ensure that records set now are comparable to those set decades ago.

Gun News

This week's New Yorker carried an interesting portrait/interview of Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, a Democrat who started in office with a typical red-state stance that he has since moderated, saying that over time he has changed his mind and come to believe certain controls like background checks can be at least partly effective. 

Yesterday I received by e-mail a copy of an article from Michael Bloomberg's very own periodical noting the already well-documented downward trend in violent crime across the nation.  The article pointed out that this would make it even more difficult for those who favor "gun control" to pass legislation.

On the other hand, we have the Mothers' Day reports of more mass shootings, this time in New Orleans.  "Normal" crime may be down, but random mass shootings -- can anyone doubt it? -- appear to be on the rise.

Putting it all together, it seems that it would still be quite reasonable to try to reduce the placement of rapid-fire weapons and large magazines into the hands of private individuals -- even so-called "law-abiding" ones.

It used to be said, regarding car accidents, that in 9 of ten cases, the cause was "the loose nut behind the steering wheel."  The same can be said of incidents like Columbine, Newtown and now - depending on what police find - New Orleans -- a loose nut behind the trigger.   This would appear to reinforce the NRA's point that "guns don't kill people." But that's a simplistic and meaningless slogan, since clearly such incidents require both the nut, and the gun - a gun of a certain type.   No gun, no mayhem.  Why not work on both sides of the equation?

 

Terrorist Disposal Problem

A smallish community in Virginia agreed to bury the dead Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev.   As far as I'm concerned, that's a good outcome.  Whatever the motives, the officials of this cemetery stepped up to do the necessary and the humane (regarding the bad guy's family) where others did not.  Now, there are a lot of questions, only some of which are being asked.

Far too many cemeteries refused to consider the burial.  Was it for religious reasons?  No, not really.  Most urban areas have a separate Muslim cemetery, or a Muslim section.  (Even Doswell, it turns out, has a Muslim section.)  Actually I'm sure most of us understand that the rejection came from fear - fear of appearances, fear of bad publicity, fear of reprisal.  To me, that's not a very kosher form of Christianity (if I may coin a term).

Many of the good people of Doswell, Virginia (a town whose name I've never before heard, in all my 20+ years living in Virginia), according to press accounts, have some questions, mainly of the "can we dig him up and move him somewhere else" variety.   (Kind of makes me think of all those "sick jokes" that were so popular in the 1960s.) 

But maybe the real question for those who question the decision on Christian grounds is "what is the message of Christianity?"  For the right answer, we might turn to the woman mentioned in the Washington Post article on this subject, who took it upon herself to apply real Christian thinking to the problem, and set about to locate a cemetery that would accept Tsarnaev's mortal remains.   

On the other hand, I can only applaud with one finger the fellow also reported in that article, who objects to the burial because the bomber's "soul shouldn't rest."  Is the body the same as the soul?  I didn't think so.

I suspect the Doswell cemetery - assuming Tsarnaev stays - will have a lot more visitors for a while, and will probably need to continue having the local police close it to curiousity seekers.  In the long run, this little tempest will be forgotten, and the whole affair will be a historical footnote, the answer to a trivia question, maybe the subject of a tiny note in the Doswell Chamber of Commerce's list of "attractions." 

 

A GOP Blockage

As Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned, the Republican Party, too divided within itself to formulate any realistic or constructive policy alternatives to Obama administration initiatives, continues to rely on political games to ensure nothing gets done to deal with the country's burning issues.

They seek to derail a hard-won bipartisan effort to fix this nation's immigration law; they believe they can (and should!) prevent the national debt limit from being increased; they hope against hope that they can turn a meaningless accusation of deception in Benghazi into a blockbuster weapon that will make any Hilary Clinton run for the Presidency impossible; and they continue to throw up procedural obstacles to the most basic functioning of government, i.e. the appointment of judges and cabinet members.

Some would argue this is "politics as usual," but it appears to go far beyond "the usual" into the territory of the nihilistic. 

Personally, I think they're wrong about Clinton.  I'm doubtful that she will run, and even if she does, modern political history suggests that it's the Republicans' turn to field the next chief executive (while the House, incidentally, reverts to Democratic control).  

So Clinton is an unlikely winner, if the GOP can nominate a candidate that brings their party back together, and closer to the middle.  They'd be better off devoting their efforts to finding that candidate, rather than defining themselves as the Party of Blockage.  But their refusal to be realistic about the Republican defeat last year suggests they're unable to do so just yet.