News

On Syria and Delusions of Isolation

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There’s a piece I’ve been meaning to write for months about the end of Pax Americana. This is not the post, but it is a prelude.

Traveling in Turkey last week, American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that “longer-term status of President [Bashar] Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” This may not sound shocking, but it’s a thinly-veiled euphemism (similar to ones employed by long-time Assad ally Vladimir Putin) for a shift in American policy away from overthrowing the Assad regime and towards allowing Assad to finish suppressing the Syrian rebels and retain power.

Within a few days of that, Assad’s forces apparently launched a chemical weapon attack that killed at least 69 civilians, including women and children. It’s not hard to draw a line from the first event to the second. Although Obama infamously and catastrophically failed to back up his “red line” threat, global disapproval is the key feature that has kept the Assad regime from repeating the chemical weapons attacks of 2013. In signalling the shift in American policy, Tillerson effectively handed the Assad regime a blank check. They cashed it.

What’s fascinating to me is the reaction by American isolationists to this fairly mundane and predictable series of events. If the implacable foe of a murderous, WMD-deploying dictator suddenly decides that they’re placcable after all, it shouldn’t shock us when that murderous, WMD-deploying dictator uses his suddenly longer leash to go out and use those WMDs to murder his enemies. That is what murderous, WMD-deploying dictators do. And so this is what American non-intervention looks like.

But the isolationists–led by Ron Paul–can’t face that reality because they have been telling Americans for literally decades that the real source of all the violence in the Middle East is American meddling. If only America would back off, they say, the level of violence would diminish. In order to preserve that narrative, we suddenly get outlandish conspiracy theories about how the attack was a false flag operation at the behest of American neocons. Yes, according to Ron Paul (and a lot of his followers), it is more plausible that John McCain, the CIA, and Syrian rebels are in a conspiracy to frame Assad for using chemical weapons than that Assad himself used chemical weapons.

This is not the post where I present my full case for continued American participation on the global stage. That will come soon, I hope. This is the post where I remind everyone that extremism is almost always a symptom of absolutism. Absolutism is a natural reaction to a tragic world in which tradeoffs, ambiguity, and complexity are unavoidable. Humans hate all of these things at a visceral level. We would much rather live in a simple, black-and-white world with easy answers to all of our toughest problems.

When I was a little kid, I was viscerally upset about the Chinese crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests.[ref]Yes, that’s the kind of thing that really bothered 8-year old Nathaniel.[/ref] I fantasized about the US sending F-15s to blow up the bad guys and save the student protesters. Real life doesn’t work that way, and it seems that some of the loudest voices calling for us to “do something” in Syria never learned that lesson. As though it was self-evident that anything we did would have a net-positive impact. That’s one kind of extremism. The other is the kind that says if the US just packs up and goes home, vicious dictators won’t take advantage of that power vacuum to drop chemical weapons on unarmed families. As though it was self-evident that anything we did would have a net-negative impact.

So let me be clear: this isn’t an argument for more or for less intervention in Syria. I don’t know the best strategy for us to take there. This is simply an argument against oversimplification and the vilification that inevitably follows. Why does oversimplification lead to vilification? Because if the world is simple and the answers are easy, then you have to come up with an explanation for why all our problems still exist. The only plausible answer is that there are really bad people who just want everyone to suffer and somehow they are in control. That is why belief in a fundamentally simplistic world leads directly to belief in astonishingly ornate conspiracy theories and cartoonish supervillains. It’s just the cost of sustaining the illusion that the world is orderly, predictable, and comprehensible.

No matter what we do in Syria, there will be costs, they will be high, and they will be borne by the most vulnerable. I hope we can try to debate with a little more good faith and sobriety what–if anything–we can do as a nation. It might not seem like the emotionally appropriate response to tragedy, but it’s the only responsible one.

Mr. Pence and Mrs. Butterworth

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Let me start out at the outset by saying that The Onion’s spoof of the WaPo’s revelation[ref]Actually, just a mention of something Pence told the Hill back in 2002, but never mind that detail.[/ref] that Mike Pence “never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either” is hilarious: Mike Pence Asks Waiter To Remove Mrs. Butterworth From Table Until Wife Arrives.

Let me add, as a second point, that the issue of unequal treatment of women is very much alive today, and affects many women, especially those working in male-dominated sectors like engineering and computer science. We’ll come back to that at the end.[ref]I added this paragraph on 2017-April-01 after a Facebook discussion with a woman in one of these sectors. I hadn’t added it before then because I thought it was obvious.[/ref]

The mini-debate that has been ongoing on about Pence’s policy has been quite interesting. At least one friend on Facebook compared it to The Great Dress Debacle of 2015: conservatives found Pence’s stance perfectly normal while liberals were split between ridiculing him and accusing him of practicing Sharia. Lest you think I’m joking, here’s one example cadged from The Federalist:

So, here are a couple of thoughts.

First, some folks seem to be missing the primary point of a rule like this. It is not, as the mockers deride, because Mr. Pence’s self-control is so flimsy he is afraid that merely sitting next to a woman in a restaurant without supervision would place him in danger of fornicating right there on the spot.

This isn’t a minor confusion. It’s a fundamental misapprehension of an ancient worldview that Christians still adhere to. In religious language: we’re all weak, vulnerable, and prone to sin. In modern, secular language: we’re irrational and often behave in ways that counter our own best interests and/or confound the values and goals we think we have. Doesn’t matter if you call it “fallen nature” or “cognitive bias”, in this context we’re talking about the same thing.

So how does this play out? The most common way that Christians (or other social conservatives) might try to explain a rule like Pence’s goes something like this: Anyone who goes on a diet will start by throwing out all the tempting food in their house.

The problem is that this analogy is very easy to misunderstand. One interpretation–the wrong one–is that cheating on your wife is the same kind of momentary lapse as cheating on your diet. It’s as though absent-mindedly chomping down on a Krispy Kreme you forgot to throw out is equivalent to absent-mindedly wandering into a hotel room with a woman you’re not married too. Lots of folks get as far as this (silly) interpretation and stop there.

The actual interpretation of the metaphor is quite different. It is saying that good behavior is not just about making the right decisions in the moment. It’s about manipulating your environment to make it conducive to the kind of behavior that you want in your life. Social conservatives understand that because we’re irrational creatures with amazing abilities to rationalize our ways into following short-term desires part of being virtuous isn’t just saying no to temptation in the moment, but avoiding it altogether.

Pence’s rule doesn’t draw the line at the moment when he’s tempted to be sexually unfaithful to his wife. It draws the line much, much earlier and so prevents the first seeds of infidelity from ever having a chance to take root in the first place.

I don’t follow Pence’s rule. I think it’s overkill. I’m not interested in trying to convince anyone that his particular rule should be some kind of universal standard for everyone. But I don’t think it’s ridiculous or absurd either. After all–in addition to the concerns about compromising marital fidelity out of an initially innocent friendship–there’s also legitimate concerns about being taken advantage of. Politicians are powerful and that also makes them vulnerable. Just ask the KGB (the FSB, these days) which has employed agents to try and seduce traveling politicians and officials for decades and decades in order to blackmail their targets into betraying state secrets. This is, by the way, one of the reasons that the CIA, FBI, and many other agencies are fond of hiring Mormons.[ref]Catch up here, if that is news to you.[/ref] Not only are we extremely family-focused (I know lots of Mormons who follow Pence’s rules), but we also don’t drink. Taken together, this means observant Mormons are less likely to be compromised in this way than the average population.

In the wake of the Republicans failing to pass the AHCA, there was a nauseating avalanche of cutesy Facebook posts from liberal fans of Hamilton. Here’s one:

If you missed the reference, it’s from Cabinet Battle #1, when Madison and Jefferson taunt Hamilton. Other favorites included “Winning was easy… Governing’s harder” and “Do you know how hard it is to lead?”

The funny thing is, if Alexander Hamilton had followed a rule like Mike Pence’s, he could have avoided his part in America’s first political sex-scandal, saved his family a lot of agony, and spared Lin-Manuel Miranda a song or two.[ref]Die-hard Hamilton fans are probably not persuaded by that last one, of course.[/ref]

And that brings me to my second point. Just as liberals are happy to take very selective lessons from Hamilton, there’s an awful weird dichotomy in a town where liberals practice all kinds of non-judgmentalism for open marriages but are more than happy to ridicule and deride someone for trying to keep their marriage closed. That’s the point Jonah Goldberg made at the National Review:

Last summer, when Bill Clinton spoke about his wife at the Democratic convention (“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl . . . ”), liberals gushed at the “love story,” and the rule of the day was that marriage is complicated and the Clintons’ ability to stay married (though practically separated) was admirable. Besides, “Who are we to judge?” — no doubt Bill Clinton’s favorite maxim.

It’s a very strange place we’ve found ourselves in when elites say we have no right to judge adultery, but we have every right to judge couples who take steps to avoid it.[ref]Emphasis added.[/ref]

He’s not wrong, you know.

I do think there are some legitimate concerns. The most important being that if you’re, say, a business executive who follows these rules, does it mean that you’re creating an environment where you give preferential treatment to men? If a young, up-and-coming male executive could ask you out to lunch to seek your advice, but a young, up-and-coming female executive cannot, then we do have a legitimate problem. It’s also possible to simply take this stance too far. I don’t recall conservatives having a problem with forcing Muslim boys to shake hands with their (female) teachers in Switzerland, for example.[ref]Unsurprisingly, liberals have a double standard that cuts against traditionalist Christians while social conservatives have a double standard that cuts against traditionalist Muslims.[/ref]

So I’m not saying that it’s impossible to have questions and concerns about a position like Pence’s. But the degree of hostility and deliberate (or at least, lazy) misunderstanding of the rules that the Pences have agreed on for their own marriage are at least as concerning as the rules themselves.

Gorsuch and the Frozen Trucker

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Neil Gorsuch, nominee for Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, and President Donald Trump, via the official White House YouTube page. (Public Domain)

As you might be able to tell from my last post, I like Judge Gorsuch. I’d never heard of him before his nomination, but I listened into a lot of his hearing, and quickly came to respect his philosophy of judicial integrity.[ref]That’s actually what was at the heart of my last post about his hearing.[/ref]

Earlier today, I had a Facebook friend castigating Gorsuch for the “frozen trucker case.” This refers to a dissent that Gorsuch wrote in 2016. According to a critical Slate article by Jed Shugerman, here are the basic facts of the case:

Alphonse Maddin was a truck driver for TransAm. Late on a January night in temperatures below zero, he discovered that his trailer’s brakes had locked up due to the cold weather. (The truck itself could drive but not when attached to the trailer). He called TransAm’s road service for help at 11:17 p.m., and then discovered that the truck cabin’s heat was broken. He fell asleep and woke up two hours later with a numb torso. Maddin also could not feel his feet. He called the road service again, and they told him to “hang in there” despite the life-threatening conditions. He waited about 30 more minutes before unhitching the broken trailer. Although his supervisor ordered him to stay, Maddin decided to drive off with the truck after almost three hours in the subzero cold. A service truck did arrive 15 minutes after he left, but it’s hard to blame him for deciding not to risk his life. It’s amazing he waited so long at all.

TransAm fired Madding for leaving behind his trailer. In his turn, Maddin filed a complaint with OSHA, arguing that his decision to drive away from the trailer was statutorily protected. Then Tenth Circuit sided with Madding and OSHA, but Gorsuch wrote a strong dissent. This strong dissent has come back to haunt him, as Democrats in his confirmation hearing and journalists and pundits outside of it are using the dissent to paint him as having an “arrogant and cold judicial personality.”

I thought I’d look into this, so I read Gorsuch’s dissent, which you can find online here. Here’s the most important paragraph, where Gorsuch explains why he believes TransAm’s firing of Maddin wasn’t illegal:

It might be fair to ask whether TransAm’s decision was a wise or kind one. But it’s not our job to answer questions like that. Our only task is to decide whether the decision was an illegal one. The Department of Labor says that TransAm violated federal law, in particular 49 U.S.C. § 31105(a)(1)(B). But that statute only forbids employers from firing employees who “refuse[] to operate a vehicle” out of safety concerns. And, of course, nothing like that happened here. The trucker in this case wasn’t fired for refusing to operate his vehicle. Indeed, his employer gave him the very option the statute says it must: once he voiced safety concerns, TransAm expressly — and by everyone’s admission — permitted him to sit and remain where he was and wait for help. The trucker was fired only after he declined the statutorily protected option (refuse to operate) and chose instead to operate his vehicle in a manner he thought wise but his employer did not.

The logic is pretty straight forward and irrefutable. The law protects people who don’t operate equipment out of safety concerns. It doesn’t protect people who do operate equipment under safety concerns. And so–applying the statute–TransAm was free to fire Maddin as far as the law is concerned. And that is the only thing that Gorsuch (and his fellow judges) were called to decide. Gorsuch goes on:

… there’s simply no law anyone has pointed us to giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their employers forbid. Maybe the Department would like such a law, maybe someday Congress will adorn our federal statute books with such a law. But it isn’t there yet. And it isn’t our job to write one — or to allow the Department to write one in Congress’s place.

This is a theme that Gorsuch talked about frequently during his hearing. Again and again he reiterated his position that a judge has to apply the law as it is actually written and can’t simply “interpret” the law in ways that suit our notions of justice or fairness or propriety or even common sense.

Reading between the lines, the majority opinion in this case was especially egregious because the judges invented a rationale for their position (siding with Maddin) that wasn’t even raised by the OSHA lawyers. Gorsuch points out that the majority opinion cites a prior ruling (Cehvron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.) even though:

…the Department [OSHA] never argued the statute is ambiguous, never contended that its interpretation was due Chevron step two deference, and never even cited Chevron. In fact, the only party to mention Chevron in this case was TransAm, and then only in a footnote in its brief and then only as part of an argument that the statute is not ambiguous.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Maddin should not have been fired. As a matter of morality and basic decency, that’s a given. But the responsibility to grant him that legal protection rests with the legislative branch. It’s their job to write the law to cover that case. They failed to do so. Relying on the judicial branch to fix their mistake by–in effect–amending the law to be what it should have been is impermissible under American rule of law. As Gorsuch put it, “it is our obligation to enforce the terms of that compromise as expressed in the law itself, not to use the law as a sort of springboard to combat all perceived evils lurking in the neighborhood.”

 

I don’t like the ruling that Gorsuch came to, and Gorsuch didn’t like it either, but it was certainly the correct ruling to make under the Constitutional system of law we are supposed to live under. According to his critics, this case is supposed to make me like Gorsuch less, but it’s not working. It makes me like him more.

Gorsuch Would “Walk Out the Door” If Asked to Overturn Roe

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President Donald Trump introduces Gorsuch, accompanied by his wife, as his nominee for the Supreme Court at the White House on January 31, 2017. (Public Domain)

The following was an exchange between Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham during yesterday’s marathon confirmation hearings:

Graham: I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest you’re his [Trump’s] favorite. Had you ever met Mr. Trump personally?

Gorsuch: Not until my interview.

Graham: In that interview, did he ever ask you to overrule Roe v. Wade?

Gorsuch: No, Senator.

Graham: What would you have done if he had asked?

Gorsuch: Senator, I would have walked out the door.

This exchange is getting all kinds of coverage, and most of the analysis concludes or strongly implies that Gorsuch’s statement is a commitment not to overturn Roe v. Wade. As one example, here is Sophie Tatum’s take for CNN, where she puts Gorsuch’s statement at the hearing in the context of Trump’s promise to nominate a pro-life judge and then segues into “Gorsuch also defended the value of precedent…” This kind of analysis is making some of my pro-life friends furious and some of my pro-choice friends breathe a sigh of relief, but it’s a misunderstanding of what Gorsuch actually meant.

First, Gorsuch was not rejecting the possibility of overruling Roe v. Wade in particular or of overturning court cases generally. This is pretty clear from ths rest of his statement. After saying, “I would have walked out the door,” Gorsuch paused for a long moment before continuing: “That’s not what judges do.” So what, exactly, did Gorsuch mean here? What is it that “judges [don’t] do” and that would have prompted him to walk out on an interview with the President?

The answer is that Gorsuch is committed to rule of law, and that means that as a judge he is bound to only rule on the merits of the cases actually brought before him in light of the law and the relevant facts. To commit to the President–or to anyone–how he would rule on a hypothetical case that hasn’t even been brought yet is a flagrant violation of the judicial process that would have substituted politics for law. Gorsuch reacted so strongly not because he was defending Roe v. Wade, but because he was defending judicial process. In other words, it doesn’t matter which Supreme Court case Trump had asked about, the answer in any case would have been to “[walk] out the door.” You do not nominate anyone to the Supreme Court as a way of setting policy. You do it as a way of sustaining the Constitution. Therefore, Gorsuch’s reply here tells us absolutely nothing about how he would actually rule in a case involving Roe v. Wade other than that it would depend on the specifics of the case as it was actually argued before the Court.

Second, we still have every indication that Gorsuch is most likely an extremely pro-life nominee. The evidence for this comes from his book The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. I haven’t read the book, but here are two quotes that I think reveal quite a lot about Gorsuch’s thinking in ways that are directly relevant to abortion. The first comes from a Vox article, I read Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s book. It’s very revealing, and it sums up Gorsuch’s argument in the book:

Gorsuch’s core argument in the book is that the US should “retain existing law [banning assisted suicide and euthanasia] on the basis that human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Right off the bat, this is characteristically pro-life rhetoric. For all that they are derided as merely “anti-abortion,” the pro-life movement is united in opposition to abortion and euthanasia by a commitment to the idea that “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable.” You simply never hear the pro-choice side use this kind of language.

In terms of logic, the key here is that “human life” is a broad category, and if it is broadened to include unborn human beings, then Gorsuch’s argument against legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia also applies to abortion. This is made clear in the second quote, this one from a New York Times article:

What gives individuals such an inviolable right, he has reasoned, is a status that legal scholars call “constitutional personhood,” defined by the 14th Amendment. Under that amendment, a state is prohibited from denying any constitutional person “life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” and cannot “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Roe decision expressly excluded human fetuses from that definition. As the court put it in 1973, “the word ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.” But if the Supreme Court were ever to recognize fetuses as constitutional persons, however unlikely that might seem now, then under Judge Gorsuch’s framework, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause would require that they be entitled to the same legal protection as constitutional persons. Laws that prohibit murder thus would have to be extended to them.

Judge Gorsuch has said as much himself. In his book, he wrote, “Abortion would be ruled out by the inviolability-of-life principle I intend to set forth if, but only if, a fetus is considered a human life.” He noted that had the court “found the fetus to be a ‘person’ for purposes of the 14th Amendment, it could not have created a right to abortion because no constitutional basis exists for preferring the mother’s liberty interests over the child’s life.”

The real give-away for me here, again, is Gorsuch’s very broad language. When he talks about “fetus” and “person” we can infer basically nothing, but when he says “if…a fetus is considered a human life“[ref]emphasis changed from original[/ref], then we’re talking about language that is interesting in two regards. First, it is deliberately secular/scientific as opposed to philosophical/theological. This is characteristic of Gorsuch’s thinking which, according to a quote from another article at The Atlantic, relies on “secular moral theory” rather than the stereotypically religious grounds common to much of the pro-life movement. What’s more: once we’ve entered that secular/scientific realm, the question of whether or not a fetus counts as “a human life” has an unambiguous, objective, and absolutely conclusive answer: of course it is.

So let’s recap:

  1. Gorsuch’s comment about walking out the door if Trump had asked him to overrule Roe v. Wade was not a defense of Roe v. Wade. It was a defense of judicial process, and it tells us nothing one way or the other about Gorsuch’s views on abortion in general or Roe v. Wade in particular.
  2. Gorsuch’s book opposes legalziation of assisted suicide and euthanasia under an argument that he explicitly states would apply in abortion as well “if… the fetus is considered a human life,” in ways that suggest (as science dictates) that this is in fact the case.

Taken together, I’d say that Gorsuch comes across as about the most unambiguously pro-life candidate that you could possibly hope for in someone who has not ruled on abortion cases or made explicit statements about the subject. It’s certainly not open-and-shut. He’s a smart person, and smart person and capable of all kinds of weird, circuitous, unexpected twists and turns in their thinking and philosophy. He  may indeed be pro-choice, but that’s not where I’d lay my money.

Final thought: I listened to parts of the confirmation hearing yesterday, and there was one exchange I have not been able to find (it was either from around 5:20 or around 8:40) when Gorsuch talked about the motivation for his euthanasia book. It came down to concern for the most vulnerable in society: the poor, the disabled, and minorities. Left unspoken was “the unborn,” but it fit so perfectly in that list–and with Gorsuch’s philosophy as I understand it thus far–that it almost didn’t need to be spoken.

 

Should We Avoid the News?

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trump donald trump media president trump fake news

“By and large,” writes economist Bryan Caplan, “I think news is a waste of time.  If I want to increase my factual knowledge, I read history – or Wikipedia.  News, I like to say, is the lie that something important happens every day.” With the influence of “fake news” being overblown, is this really a legitimate claim on Caplan’s part? To help make his case, he links to a paper by Swiss writer Rolf Dobelli entitled “Avoid News.” In Dobelli’s view, “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body” (pg. 1). He lists the following reasons:

  1. News misleads us systematicallyImage result for news gif
  2. News is irrelevant
  3. News limits understanding
  4. News is toxic to your body
  5. News massively increases cognitive errors
  6. News inhibits thinking
  7. News changes the structure of your brain
  8. News is costly
  9. News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement
  10. News is produced by journalists
  11. Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always
  12. News is manipulative
  13. News makes us passive
  14. News gives us the illusion of caring
  15. News kills creativity

What does Dobelli suggest instead? “Go without news. Cut it out completely. Go cold turkey…If you want to keep the illusion of “not missing anything important”, I suggest you glance through the summary page of the Economist once a week” (pg. 10). He notes that if there is indeed “some bit of information is truly important to your profession, your company, your family or your community, you will hear it in time – from your friends, your mother-in-law or whomever you talk to or see” (pg. 10). But the clincher is the following:

Read magazines and books which explain the world – Science, Nature, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly. Go for magazines that connect the dots and don’t shy away from presenting the complexities of life – or from purely entertaining you. The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it. So, you must read longish and deep articles and books that represent its complexity. Try reading a book a week. Better two or three. History is good. Biology. Psychology. That way you’ll learn to understand the underlying mechanisms of the world. Go deep instead of broad. Enjoy material that truly interests you. Have fun reading (pg. 10).

This is akin to what Hans Rosling said: “You can’t use media if you want to understand the world.” You need to use data. It’s also similar to my blogging style here at Difficult Run. And while I’m not sure if I’m completely convinced by Dobelli, it’s worth reflecting on.

The Return of the Anti-War Left?: The Carnage of Drone Warfare

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As a friend of mine said in response to this Tweet, “The left is anti-drone bombing once again. Welcome home after 8 years.” Now, if you think his quip is unfair, it should be noted that it’s based on sound social science: the majority of anti-war Democrats of the Bush years weren’t really all that anti-war as much as they were anti-Bush. As soon as Obama took office, the opposition dropped considerably.

But to wake people up to the reality of the continued violence, here are the estimates of total bombs dropped by the U.S. in 2016:

In President Obama’s last year in office, the United States dropped 26,172 bombs in seven countries. This estimate is undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single “strike,” according to the Pentagon’s definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions. In 2016, the United States dropped 3,028 more bombs—and in one more country, Libya—than in 2015.

Most (24,287) were dropped in Iraq and Syria. This number is based on the percentage of total coalition airstrikes carried out in 2016 by the United States in Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the counter-Islamic State campaign. The Pentagon publishes a running count of bombs dropped by the United States and its partners, and we found data for 2016 using OIR public strike releases and this handy tool.* Using this data, we found that in 2016, the United States conducted about 79 percent (5,904) of the coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, which together total 7,473. Of the total 30,743 bombs that the coalition dropped, then, the United States dropped 24,287 (79 percent of 30,743).

Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations points out,

As Donald Trump assumes office today, he inherits a targeted killing program that has been the cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism strategy over the past eight years. On January 23, 2009, just three days into his presidency, President Obama authorized his first kinetic military action: two drone strikes, three hours apart, in Waziristan, Pakistan, that killed as many as twenty civilians. Two terms and 540 strikes later, Obama leaves the White House after having vastly expanding and normalizing the use of armed drones for counterterrorism and close air support operations in non-battlefield settings—namely Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.

…Less than two weeks ago, the United States conducted a drone strike over central Yemen, killing one al-Qaeda operative. The strike was the last under Obama (that we know of). The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

This is what leads Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs to chastise his fellow leftists:

The newspaper headlines today all blare shocking reports about Trump’s continued bigotry. But further down the page, a different story about Muslim lives is receiving far less attention: the U.S. bombing of Syria, and its increasing numbers of civilian casualties. While Trump says racist things about Muslims, U.S. warplanes are actually killing them, something far less discussed even though (or perhaps because) it morally implicates Democrats.

The U.S. has also been accused of concealing the true death toll…[But i]t’s also important to remember that death tolls themselves only begin to capture the scale of a bombing’s impact. The numbers of injuries are often far higher (and frequently unreported). “Injuries” can mean lost limbs, blindness, and paralysis. They can mean permanent disfigurement. They can mean that a person will never work again, and will suffer from depression and PTSD, or will require medical care for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, even those who are not “injured” can experience deep and lasting trauma, after seeing loved ones or even strangers torn to shreds before their eyes. The actual pain of a mother realizing her child has been blinded, or a brother watching his sister die, is absent from death toll statistics.

The complaint of human rights advocates has centered around the fact that the United States is downplaying and concealing casualties, and that the deaths are growing in frequency without any justification…All of this occurred under a Democratic president. So while the organizers of the Democratic National Convention where proudly presenting the Khan family as evidence of their superior devotion to Muslim lives (and while DNC attendees were chanting “USA, USA, USA” as if they were frenzied 2004-era Bush Republicans), the Obama administration was directly responsible for killing scores of living, breathing Muslim civilians. While Democrats were voicing their outrage that Donald Trump had said yet another despicable racist thing, the party was speaking up in defense of a candidate who had decimated a Muslim country, and who had actually voted for the senseless war that killed Cap. Kahn in the first place.

Rhetorical attacks on Muslims are indefensible. But physical attacks on Muslims, using tanks and gunships, are even more horrific. Democrats might not want to be so certain that they have the moral high ground when it comes to valuing Muslim lives.

Of course, this by no means lets Republicans off the hook. Nor does it equate Obama and Trump (or the GOP) or fail to recognize the nuances of war. It shouldn’t dampen our optimism about the decline of war and violence in the modern era either. But it does call for some consistency; to minimize selective outrage. If we treated all administrations like public servants accountable to us instead of celebrities on our favorite football team, some of this might have been avoided.[ref]Unfortunately, I don’t have all that much faith in the general electorate to oppose bad policies.[/ref]

By Riley Yates

Trade and Deregulation: Best Friends?

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President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order as early as Monday stating his intention to renegotiate the free trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, a White House official told NBC News.

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Economist Brad Delong commented recently, “The economic case against the two agreements that passed [NAFTA and China into WTO], and the one that did not [TPP], doesn’t hold water. It’s clear, however, that candidates can make an effective political case against trade agreements — and that scares me.” For those of you who may have missed the last year of posts, here’s a few highlights that demonstrate why anti-trade, anti-globalization populism is empirically wrong:

And what should appear this past week? A new study arguing that the interaction of openness to imports and deregulation can boost economic growth:

Enthusiasm for reducing domestic regulation, or ‘red tape’, has been gaining momentum in some OECD countries, and there are many reasons to think that reducing such red tape – including at local levels – could be beneficial for productivity growth by encouraging firm entry, competition, and efficiency gains. Evidence from an analysis of firms and industries in panels across OECD countries suggests that this is indeed the case (OECD 2017). Easing the strictness of regulation in network industries (e.g. energy, telecommunications, and transport) especially, as well as in retail and professional services, would improve productivity and competitiveness in downstream sectors, not least manufacturing, which use services from these upstream industries as inputs for their own production.

…In a recent paper that examines the productivity growth of firms in a dozen or so OECD countries, we find that the benefits of domestic deregulation depend both on sectoral openness to imports and firms’ technological advancement (Ben Yahmed and Dougherty 2017). The results show that firms in sectors with higher import penetration have higher productivity growth, if these firms are close to their sectoral technology frontier. The most productive firms appear to enjoy a significant increase in productivity when foreign competitors’ pressure is high; in contrast, import penetration does not incentivise firms far away from the technological frontier, or if so only weakly.

In addition, the pro-competitive effect of international trade depends on domestic regulatory stringency. Our results indicate that, among the most productive firms, the positive effect of foreign competition is inhibited for firms operating in a country with stringent regulation such as higher barriers to entry. Domestic and foreign competitive pressures are found to be complementary: firms’ incentives or abilities to improve their productivity to cope with foreign competition are stronger in countries with less stringent regulation. 

Trade and deregulation

Apparently, our political leaders need to take a long hard look at all of this.

All Trumped-Out

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I couldn’t bring myself to include an image of Trump. So here’s Betty and her sloth.

I’ve been feeling Trumped-out since before the election, and I had hoped post election (perhaps naively even after he won) that the Trump obsession would dwindle to a hum. I’ve been dissapointed to say the least (please, Facebook, bring back memes about cats and tacos, I’ve had enough Trump.) I have, however, managed to come across some articles within the Trumpian madness that are actually worth the read.

First, from the NYT, an Italian confronts the similarities between Trump in America and their own media tycoon, Berlusconi, who was prime minister in Italy for a total of nine years. His suggestion on how to combat Trump: stick to policies, ignore the person (Please, ignore the person!).

Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr. Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi (albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character.

From the Cato Institute, a critique of Trump’s inaugural address, that ignores the style of the address and worries about the substance. The author notes that words indicating an adherence to or respect of the Constitution were missing.

Still, I wish the speech had used the word “Constitution,” or “law” in a way beyond the phrase “law enforcement,” or “Framers” or “Founders,” or “Declaration” or “Amendment” or “individual” or perhaps “rights.” The one occurrence of “right” was in a passage about “the right of all nations to put their interests first.”

From Politico, an indictment of journalistic temper tantrums that describes how journalism should behave (hint: let the facts speak for themselves, oh, and shut up about crowds (and tweets)), and recalls similar (though stylistically different) issues brought about by the Obama administration.

As I’ve hypothesized before, there is a method to Trump’s tweets. Whenever he finds the noose of news lowering over his thick orange neck, he takes to Twitter to change the subject. The more outrageous and self-serving (or should I say “self-dealing”?) the tweets are, the better his results…

Consider the Obama presidency. As former Politicos Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote in 2013 in a piece titled, “Obama, the Puppet Master,” he was “a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.” … Obama, VandeHei and Allen explained, took “old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting).” In doing so, “Media across the ideological spectrum [were] left scrambling for access.”

And a, clearly biased, take on Betty White’s thoughts on the current political climate (it’s her birthday and I couldn’t find any less biased articles that focused on this point instead of the fact that she is 95!) from IJR.  Even if the article/headline is a stretch, I think Betty has great advice for all of us. Includes a video of Betty and her sloth doll (PS: my son got the same sloth for his birthday.)

I think that’s the time to buckle down and really work positively as much as you can. Instead of just saying, “This is terrible. He’s terrible.” Just think, “Alright, there’s nothing I can do about that right now but I can do the best in my little circle. So if I do that, maybe you’ll do your best and we’ll get through this.”

 

2016: Best Year Ever

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Here’s a bit of optimism after the train wreck that was 2016:

By conventional wisdom, 2016 has been a horrible year. Only someone living in a cave could have missed the flood of disheartening headlines. However, if 2016 continues the global trends of previous years, it may turn out to have been one of the best years for humanity as a whole.

Those of us who live in the world of poverty research and rigorous measurement have watched many global indicators improve consistently for the past few decades. Between 1990 and 2013 (the last year for which there is good data), the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half, from 1.85 billion to 770 million. As the University of Oxford’s Max Roser recently put it, the top headline every day for the past two decades should have been: “Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday.” At the same time, child mortality has dropped by nearly half, while literacy, vaccinations and the number of people living in democracy have all increased.[ref]Similar to last year.[/ref]

The authors point to four things that can make 2017 even better for the poor and destitute:

  1. “First, give the poor cash. Studies in Kenya and elsewhere show that the simplest way to help is also quite effective. We also know that if we give cash, the poor won’t smoke or drink it away. In fact, a recent look at 19 studies across three continents shows that when the poor are given money, they are less likely to spend it on “temptation goods” such as alcohol and tobacco. More and more research shows that when the poor come into a windfall, they spend it on productive things — sending their children to school, fixing the roof that’s letting in the harsh weather or investing in a business.”[ref]This is perhaps more evidence in favor of a basic income.[/ref]
  2. “Second, innovative health-care delivery can dramatically improve outcomes…The nongovernmental organizations Living Goods and BRAC Uganda have been training women in Uganda to make a living by going door-to-door selling over-the-counter medications and health products. They function as franchisees in an “Avon lady”-style business. But these small-business owners also perform basic health checks for children to look for symptoms that warrant getting the child to a clinic. One randomized evaluation released this year concluded that taking this health care to people’s homes reduced child mortality (for those younger than 5) by an astounding 27 percent and infant mortality (less than a year old) by 33 percent.”
  3. “Third, access to mobile money may lift people out of poverty in large numbers…In Kenya, the M-Pesa mobile money system, introduced in 2007, allows anybody with a mobile phone to transfer money through a text message. Research from this year shows that as M-Pesa became more available in a local area, households became less poor — particularly households run by women. The study estimates that 185,000 women changed professions from subsistence agriculture to business and retail and that 194,000 households were lifted out of extreme poverty.”
  4. “Finally, mobile phone technologies are leapfrogging the reach of traditional telecom infrastructure, and text message reminders are proving to be effective at helping people follow through on things they want to do. One study found that they helped the poor save money. Another in Ghana aimed at combating drug resistance found that such reminders helped people to finish all of their antimalarial drugs. Researchers in Ghana also found that text message quizzes improved girls’ understanding of reproductive health, resulting in fewer reported pregnancies. In Kenya, another interactive text message system offering support for teachers helped reduce student dropouts by 50 percent.”[ref]The importance of mobile phone technologies is underappreciated.[/ref]

2017 is looking up.

 

The Cathedral Interprets the News

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Streep at the Berlinale premiere of Hail, Caesar! in February 2016 0 Glyn Lowe (CC BY 2.0)

Rod Dreher has a fantastic piece at The American Conservative about how the media is covering (or not) the awful kidnap-torture of a young, disabled man in Chicago. The super-short version? Although the young white man was kidnapped and brutally assaulted by black assailants who (while livestreaming on Facebook) shouted “F— Donald Trump!” and “f— white people” and although the crime is being investigated as a hate crime, several news outlets have gone well out of their way to delve deep into the story with nary an indication of the racial or political overtones of the story, some going so far as to insist that what is really going on is anti-disability stigma.[ref]That would be Salon, which now and then feels the need to run an article so ridiculous one can only assume it’s a pre-emptive strike against anyone taking them seriously ever.[/ref]

Now, we write a lot about political partisanship here at Difficult Run, and I want to reign things in before it becomes too much of a “look how bad those other guys are!” post, the kind we need to deplore no matter which side is targeted. And so I want to point out a few things.

  1. Dreher does a good job of providing balanced, mature context for his piece, which I can’t cover because this is a summary. (Really, go read his piece.)
  2. Some among the (alt-)right are blaming this whole thing on Black Lives Matter, which is a really solid attempt to make Salon look reasonable by comparison. (As if this needs any repeating: all sides have their crazies.)
  3. The most interesting aspect of Dreher’s piece is his extended discussion of the mainstream media as cathedral, which is interesting enough to grab your attention even without the political implications

There’s one other story I want to toss into the mix, however, which Dreher did not get to. And that’s Merryl Streep’s take-down of Donald Trump. As David French reports at the National Review, the contrast between Streep’s attacks on Trump and her standing ovation for convicted child-rapist Roman Polanski is, shall we say, informative.

A lot of people are saying that Streep’s dressing-down of Trump are, more or less, the reason he won. Well, that’s only partially true. [ref]Keep in mind, I was, am, and always will be #NeverTrump.[/ref] To really understand the disgust with which many in America hold Hollywood and the liberal establishment in general (Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia) you have to consider both Streep’s Trump tirade and her celebratory applause for Polanski.

So, back to Dreher:

About a decade ago, as a working journalist, it became clear to me that when it came to some subjects, the media thought it’s job was more about managing the news than reporting it. If you read, for example, The New York Times as if we were the USSR and it was Pravda, you better understand its meaning. The comparison is certainly not one-to-one, but it’s closer than it ought to be.

When the mainstream press tries to tell us that the Chicago attack was about disability or lauds Merryl Streep as some kind of exemplar of moral discernment, you can see exactly where the Pravda-comparison comes from.