White Christmas

When my ex first bought the movie, I was skeptical. As the review on IMDB says, it is schmaltzy, the plot is thin, and escapist. However, I have grown to like it for its snapshot of post-WWII Americana. Among other things, I marvel at the

• escapist story about a famous traveling song-n-dance show. This was definitely Virgin America, before the Kennedy Assassination.
  
• extremely white-washed version of America. I believe there is only one non-white character in the entire movie, a black train porter whose face we possibly never see as he serves sandwiches. It seems amazing even for that time that they don't even have a black singer or dancer in the show.
• drag performance of "Sisters" by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. At one point, they make a choreographed hand gesture that is also a vulgar gesture for female genitalia, which I don't believe was accidental.
• Kaye was reputed to have had an affair with Laurence Olivier during this period. Knowing this, it makes the drag number and his reluctance to get involved with girls all the more funny.
• One of Crosby's kids claimed after his death that Bing was abusive. Other kids denied it, but two of them committed suicide. This background stands in stark contrast to his gently paternalistic character in the movie. Crosby, apparently, was also a helluva businessman according to his Wiki bio, which is entirely resonant with his character. For example, Crosby invested in Ampex in the early days; Ampex developed the first reel-to-reel recorder, and Crosby was the first performer to pre-record his shows. You could probably learn a lot about how show business was conducted in those days by watching this movie.
• Vera Ellen's athleticism as a dancer. She is as fun to watch as Jackie Chan in several of the numbers.
• Train travel! Train travel is almost an integral part of the plot. It seems much more relaxed and civilized than plane travel. I went from Madrid to Paris by hotel train one time, and didn't feel nearly as wrung out as I would have had I flown.
• military hero worship. As The Gittering Eye points out, one song if not the whole movie appears to be a pro-Eisenhower commercial for the 1954 mid-term election. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far; I always assumed that it was an attempt to recapture or cash in on the popularity of Berlin's and Crosby's wartime hit. Still, I'm baffled by the song in which Crosby appeals to the soldiers to come to the show for the retired general. It goes
  

[VERSE:]
When the war was over, why, there were jobs galore
For the G.I. Josephs who were in the war
But for generals things were not so grand
And it's not so hard to understand

[REFRAIN:]
What can you do with a general
When he stops being a general?
Oh, what can you do with a general who retires?

Who's got a job for a general
When he stops being a general?
They all get a job but a general no one hires

They fill his chest with medals while he's across the foam
And they spread the crimson carpet when he comes marching home
The next day someone hollers when he comes into view
"Here comes the general" and they all say "General who?"
They're delighted that he came
But they can't recall his name

Nobody thinks of assigning him
When they stop wining and dining him
It seems this country never has enjoyed
So many one and two and three and four star generals
Unemployed

Are we really supposed to feel sorry for them? And isn't peace a good thing?

Overlapping subgroups

From this post, there seem to be at least two ways of looking at the electorate on a given policy X: there is either a continuum or separate constituencies. Polls seem geared towards dividing them into the latter camp (Pro, Anti, Uncommitted or Independent). However, I find that to be wanting; I prefer the overlapping view in which there are somewhat independent groups, but there is broad overlap.














Take two voters at A and B: for this policy X, they seem to have the same opinion, so why are they separated into different groups? The answer is that their preferred broad coalitions may have this alignment for X, but a different alignment on policy Y, and yet another on Z, and so on.




















An additional feature of the broad, overlapping coalition view is that shifts in policy may be accomplished by several different mechanisms, whereas there is really only one in the separated groups. The changes that may occur in the overlapping groups consist of shifting the center group one way or the other, appealing to the opposition members and causing broadening of it, and appealing to the base to bring outliers back into the fold. Any of these can cause a shift in the population majority.














Shifting the center group just a little one way or the other from equilibrium is the most obvious way of achieving a general majority. That is more true if the center group is homogeneous in its opinion (more of them are closer to the subgroup mean), since a little shift in either direction will carry many votes with it. If the independent group has a wide variety of opinion, however, a slight shift in the group will not have as much effect. Further, the independent group doesn't have much power to sway the argument generally since they don't have a strong pro- or con- investment and their slight moves may be countered by the other two appeals available to the pro- and con- groups.














Appealing to the opposite group and causing it to spread is akin to achieving consensus. As Buchanan and Tullock discuss in Calculus of Consent, it therefore has the least external costs, but possibly the highest cost of decision-making. Politicians don't want to expend political capital to get their way, but this would be the outcome most beneficial to the constituency as a whole. This is a government failure, a situation in which politicians systematically fail to achieve the best outcome for the constituencies because it runs against their own self-interest. You can't make a campaign commercial out of "I compromised with my opponents 9 times out of every 10" or "We agreed on X" that is as powerful as "I forced my opponents to bend to my will 9 times out of 10" or "I obtained X for my district". If the independent group can be seen as libertarians, broadly defined, then Kos' attempts to appeal to the independent group are a sham; Matthew Yglesias makes occasional forays, but seems to always lack the moral courage right at the moment of commitment; leaving only the Freedom Democrats with a principled appeal.














Change may also occur if one of the groups manages to bring its outliers "back into the fold", as shown in the following illustration. This is what happens when they "appeal to the base", but it seems likely that this activity will cause an equal reaction by the bots in the opposite camp. In fact, that is the goal of people like Kos and Anne Coulter.














Use of this method results in pushing the groups further away from each other; it collapses in the extreme case to the three non-overlapping groups (from the first link above).














That means that more power is given to the independent group in the center to effect outcomes even as the rhetoric of the parties grows in its rancor. This, unfortunately, looks to the victorious side like conversion, and will only serve to fire their rhetoric.














A further observation about the overlapping groups model is that each group may also consist of separate but overlapping groups. Partisans like to gleefully observe the fractures and factions of the opposing group as if they didn't suffer from the same problem, but that isn't so. Democrats consist of socialists, environmentalists, labor activists, progressive business, religious leaders, secularists, and other groups who overlap generally but don't agree on every detail, while Republicans consist of traditionalists, evangelical Christians, militarists, and other groups who overlap generally. Do they bicker? Yes. Does the other side have its internal squabbles? Of course. Does this suggest that it is possible that we may actually be a more diverse society than the party bosses would like us to think? Absolutely.














I favor first consensus and supermajority over simple majority. That encourages some combination of proselytization without pandering. But I also realize that unless supermajorities are required constitutionally, politicians have no motivation to seek them.

Negativity

I am interested in looking at things in a negative way. No, I don't mean pessimistic, I mean turning a widely held paradigm on its head to see whether the result is more illuminating. The best literal illustration of this is when graphic designers make effective use of whitespace, as in the FedEx logo. Note how the E and x form an arrow:




One conceptual negative is that of rights: Negative rights mean things like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to own property. These are not grants of religion and speech and property, but rather the right to be free from interference. Other citizens and government are prevented from doing something rather than required to do something as they are when a person has a right to a job, to food, to healthcare, and so on. The first set of rights, the negative rights, place no burden on anyone to do anything, only a burden to refrain from doing something. The second requires someone to do something and usually, in fact, negates their other rights. You cannot have a right to property or to control your own life or labor if you must also donate your labor and property so that someone else can have some.

The next time I ran into negativity was in David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom. Friedman dedicates Chapter 41 to discussing problems with deriving libertarianism from simplistic, formulaic principles. To illustrate, he offers a scenario in which a madman opens fire into a crowd. A rifle happens to be nearby, but it is known that the owner has publicly stated that he will not allow anyone else to use it for any purpose whatsoever. If you believe strongly in private property, you are forced to either violate that rule or to accept the loss of human life. What to do? It seems to put you in the position of hoping that someone else will take the rifle, and that you will disapprove of that action when they do. As a possible way out of this, Friedman suggests that a better formulation to "never initiate coercion" is "do whatever minimizes the total amount of coercion". In other words, he has switched the emphasis on that which you maximize (adherence to principles) towards that which you minimize (avoidance of anti-principles).

The third time I ran into this was in reading Scheffler's Consequentialism and its Critics. Here is my kindergarten view of moral philosophy:

• Utilitarianism: maximize utility/pleasure/good. Suffers from the problem that you may violate basic desirables such as freedom (think of the solution of The Matrix: lots of happy slaves). One derivation looks like the opposite of a moral rule: if it feels good, do it.
  
• Deontology: pick good rules and stick to them. Suffers from the problem that good rules may lead to bad outcomes (should you lie to a man who is looking for your neighbor in order to murder him? Kant said no, you should never lie. I'm not willing to be that charitable to roving murderers.)
  
• Consequentialism: pick good outcomes and follow whatever rules that lead to those outcomes. Suffers from the problem that this is essentially "the ends justifies the means", only with bigger words.
• Rule consequentialism: pick good outcomes, pick good rules that generally lead to those outcomes, and stick to those.
• Negative consequentialism: pick rules that minimize bad outcomes and stick to them.

Similarly, I like to reformulate Churchill's dictum about democracy by calling it the "least worst" form of government. Realpolitik is choosing the least worst policy. And so on.

Hence, I like my bot theory of politics because it emphasizes agents who react against rather then act for a particular outcome or proposal. But this prompts me to wonder: what should we react against, in a general way? In other words, what in society would we like to minimize? I'm sure everyone could produce a list of things we, as a society or as the electorate, would like to see promoted: health, education, welfare, security, and so on. Most politics, on the surface, looks like a struggle to determine the best mix of outcomes and the best mix of policies to achieve those (and it's insane to try to simultaneously solve both problems: how can you determine the best method to achieve an outcome that has not yet been determined?), but what is it that we should try to minimize? Friedman's suggestion of force seems a clear candidate. I would further suggest anomie. Hunger, privation, and inequality are bound to be nominated, but I would ask whether these would likely have bad outcomes (I suggest maybe, maybe, and yes).

The downside to such an approach is that it may be interesting, but is ultimately no guide. If you only look at the arrow in FedEx, you don't learn the name of the company or what it does. Or what it should do.

New Congress, new strategy

or

A Few Random thoughts in the wake of Election '06

The Dems are in charge of Congress, so freedom from corruption should break out any time now! I expect within a week of taking over, they will:

• Surround K-Street and evict the lobbyists
• Allow the FBI to come in and finish its investigation of William Jefferson (D-LA), et al
• Ban campaign contributions from non-individuals, including corporations, unions, and PACs
  

----------------------------------

The Democrats are in danger of overestimating their mandate. Jane's Law states

The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

Megan McArdle penned that in 2003, and its universal truth is about to be demonstrated as Democrats are starting to believe that it was their ideas that carried them to power.

BZZZZT!

Dissatisfaction with Iraq in general and with perceived or real abuses of power is what caused people to vote against Bush. The Democrats have been conspicuously devoid of any countering ideas with regard to Iraq, terrorism, Israel, the economy, etc. I heard the architect of their campaign (was it Rahm Emmanuel? I was listening, not watching, so I had no titles to read) on the podium on Tuesday night talking about how the new Congress was going to solve the problems of health care, balancing the budget, energy independence, making college affordable, securing social security, coming up with an Iraq strategy, and so on. All of these were either old ideas (confirming my belief that the Democrats are now the true conservatives) or pseudo-ideas. If "stay the course" is not a strategy, then neither are "bring accountability", "change leadership", "work from a base of power in the Congress", or "hold hearings". I don't even know what he meant by securing Social Security - didn't MoveOn and the other George Soros outlets assure us that there was no crisis, even going so far as to contradict former favorite son Al Gore? I suppose he was just listing off the "Six for 06" soundbites.

To make things worse, listening to John Murtha (D-OH?) on NPR on Wednesday morning was a shock. "I ... I ... we ... me and the White House ... I ... let me tell you something ... my plan ... I ... mine ... I spoke out ... we ... I am, I've been working ... my ..." Even Steve Inskeep, the host and interviewer, seemed incredulous. Inskeep asked, "Are you willing to cut off funding?"
Murtha's answer: "Well obviously we're not going to do that." Didn't these guys hear about the change they are supposed to bring? Inskeep interrupted him to ask what he meant by "me and the White House" and whether his intent to oppose Pelosi for leadership wouldn't be divisive. Murtha justified his actions on the grounds that he had been working on it (huh?), that it wouldn't be divisive because the Democrats have a big tent (huh?), and then went on to correct Inskeep's misinformation about Murtha's place, which for the record is "number three in the power plays".

I'm no psychologist, but the man seemed drunk on either himself, power, or both.

----------------------------------

In my lifetime, no Democratic Congress has produced a non-deficit budget more than once in a row. I don't expect one from them now. Somehow, Reagan got blamed for the fantastic deficits the Democratic congress produced (which he failed to veto but didn't fail to spend). In terms of percentage of GDP, they were far greater than recent deficits. Then, as now, the problem was/is the spending, not the revenue.

----------------------------------

I love this story about Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA). In case you don't know, he was accused of trying to strangle his mistress. People still voted for him.

----------------------------------

In this report (pdf) (hattip: Sologue @ Degrees of Freedom), we find that Ron Paul (R-TX) wins a high approval rating (67%) from Peace Action. That puts this libertarian in heady company with such statesmen statespersons as Sheila Jackson Lee (100%). Given that few of Sheila and her idealogical colleagues have ever bothered to read the Constitution or understand the benefit of such things as property rights, that leaves Ron Paul as the only Congressman with any actual values. Only.

----------------------------------

In ballot initiatives,

• Michigan voted to restrict affirmative action? Michigan??
• Alternative energy funding was shot down in Caleeforneea? Really?!
• The minimum wage will be raised in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.
  
• Marijuana legalization was shot down in Colorado, Nevada, and South Dakota.
  
• Gay marriage was shot down in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The Republicans' playbook is getting a little worn, don't you think?
• Abortion was kept legal in South Dakota.
  

I find that last to be excellent news. As I wrote in this post, an overturn of Roe v Wade is good news for the country precisely because it will force the creation and invigoration of local, Democratic groups and spell the demise of the Theocratic Wing of the Republican Party. Oh, and also we might actually get around to using the Constitution, all of it, instead of bashing Bush for violating the one or two passages we happen to like while advocating complete disregard for those we don't.

----------------------------------

I mean, what's not to love? He was choking his mistress!

Okay, okay ... during the fight, did his wife root for him or the mistress?

----------------------------------

I caught a very Republican co-worker telling someone else that Bush should order a barrel of ink for his veto pen. I suggested that he would have to find it first, since he hasn't used it in 6 years. Obviously, I forgot about the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005.

Afterwards, I realized I should have also pointed out that the Constitution that Bush uses includes a quasi-veto by means of signing statements, which allow him to veto without actually having to face the consequences of the veto (to wit: Congress can override a traditional veto). I have read the other Constitution (the one the rest of us have a copy of), and can't find anything about signing statements.

----------------------------------

Incidentally, I agree with his veto of the Stem Cell Research, though not for his reasons. Remember that there is no legal ban on stem cell research with private funds, and not even a ban on federal funds to do any stem cell research; there is only a legal ban on using federal money to fund research on stem cells coming from fetal tissue (embryonic stem cells). It's a tiny percentage of the total research agenda, and non-fetal tissue stem cell lines are available for federal research if you must have it. But that's not the reason I oppose federal research funding.

People talk about corporate welfare as if it were something undetectable or anonymous; they speak about it sanctimoniously, as if it were something they would obviously oppose if only it were detectable by us mere mortal, private citizens. But when confronted with an actual and obvious sample of corporate welfare -- federal funding for drug development research -- they are willing to overlook it because it's corporate welfare they happen to favor. Bigness -- of institutions, of infrastructure, of corporations, of government -- is aided and abetted by such things as federal research. Bigness is anonymity, anonymity precludes transparence, and opacity aids backroom shenanigans between corporations, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians; it is a descending, spiralling vortex that leads from populist democracy to anonymous oligarchy. And in this case, there are other avenues by which to conduct the research. Merck and Scherring-Plough are certainly large enough to be able to afford their own research.

----------------------------------

When Democrats lose, they blame Republicans for dirty tricks at the polling place. It doesn't matter if the election officials are Democrats, if the problems worked equally well against Republican candidates, or if other Democrats manage to debunk the conspiracy theories. The people obviously want Democrats, so something else must explain their losses.

When Republicans lose, they blame Democrats for dirty tricks in the media. It doesn't apparently matter if Republicans control AM radio, or that Fox News and blogs have become viable alternatives since the last time Republicans were in the minority. The people obviously are receptive to Republican ideas, if only they could get them out.

Both parties are for free and fair elections and wide participation. They just aren't for people voting the wrong way. It apparently never occurs to them that these are mutually exclusive desires.

----------------------------------

And people still voted for him? Perhaps the campaign described over at Wonkette helped. Perhaps a little electoral extortion is just what we need to spice things up a little: Vote for Sherwood, or he'll choke you!

----------------------------------

Michael Savage is hilarious, though not always intentionally. During Bush's press conference this week, a reporter pointed out that his own immigration reform plan is very close to that of Democrats, and then asked whether he was looking forward to pressing that agenda. Bush responded positively. Savage cites this as proof that Bush sabotaged the election to get the Democratic Congress that he always wanted in order to get the amnesty and guest worker law he always wanted, proof that Bush is a librul in sheep's clothing.

----------------------------------

It is grand farce to hear Democrats talk about how the Administration sent soldiers into Iraq without the proper equipment as if Democrats had been lobbying for more military spending all this time. They came into power on the country's dissatisfaction with the war. I predict we will still have troops in the Middle East in the next mid-term elections with Pres. Hillary making at least one "stay-the-course" gaffe along the way. Democrats will come to defend the Middle Eastern presence, saying that she is managing it better.

----------------------------------

Rumsfeld is out. I welcomed him at first - he seemed to want to change the military, make it faster, lighter, and more responsive. He stood up to Congressmen (notably J. C. Watts (R-OK)) who wanted to protect local pork projects. He clashed with the old culture when he demanded reform. Everything changed after 9.11. He became entrenched even as he punished dissent from those with whom he was becoming entrenched. For a man who seemed detail-oriented, he had apparently overlooked one little one: what happens when Iraq falls? He then compounded the error by refusing to admit it. It was time for him to go a long time ago.

Note to future presidents: First, consider the Powell doctrine heavily, especially the part about an exit strategy. Then, if you must, go in. As soon as you are ready to declare the invasion phase complete, change over the entire upper management. The invaders will tend to be defensive about the invasion when they become occupiers; it will be distracting and they will probably be tempted to mislead. Don't give them the opportunity. Thank them all profusely on their way out the door. You see, of course, that this will also lead to some strategic maneuvers:

• Defense Secretaries wanting to remain on post will oppose invasions. Good.
• You will have to spin up a replacement team early on; they will know their responsibility is for occupation; therefore, they will study the situation from the standpoint of "what happens when ... Saddam is no longer there to oppose Iran ... the Shias and Sunnis want to kill each other ... etc." They may even point out that no exit strategy is available and they may oppose the war. This will work against their desire for the war which will bring them into office. In either case, they will be primarily focused on winning the peace and not on defending the decision to go in the first place. Good.

----------------------------------

Anyhow - yeah! Divided government! Long live gridlock!

According to the National Taxpayer's Union's BillTally study, new candidates tend to have more ideas for saving money (at least new Republican candidates, which explains why the 95-98 Congresses managed to balance the budget), while veteran politicians have more ideas for spending it. Murtha has been there since 1974!!! Byrd since 1953 - heck he was already an 11 year veteran when he helped filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But many of the Democratic faces are new and, apparently, moderate. That might be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the Dems are going to return to their old custom of assigning Committee Chairs by seniority. According to The Economist ($?), that puts people like John Dingell, a 51 year veteran, in charge, and seven of the 19 will be over 70. In light of the NTU study, that might be a bad thing.

Remember the good old days when Saturday Night Live lampooned Republican Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms? Yeah, you might see a return to that. And water might run uphill.

----------------------------------

And just when you were hoping that maybe a divided government was a light at the end of the fascist tunnel, we have this (hattip: Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek) Slate article called "The Lou Dobbs Democrats", which argues that we are about to undergo a period of extreme nationalism at the hands of the new crop of Young Democrat Turks. Author Jacob Weisberg writes

In Virginia, apparent winner James Webb denounced outsourcing and blasted George Allen for voting to allow more "foreign guest workers" into the state. In Missouri, victor Claire McCaskill refused to let incumbent James Talent out-hawk her on immigration. "Unfair trade agreements have sent good American jobs packing, hurting Missouri workers and communities," she said in one of her ads. "We should be encouraging businesses to stay at home, not rewarding them for moving overseas." In Michigan, vulnerable Democratic incumbent Deborah Stabenow survived while promising to set up a federal office to prosecute unfair trade by foreign governments.

Just when I was hoping Savage was correct for once, it looks like the new xenophobic Congress may not want to make nice with George Bush on the one thing I would like to see.

Demobots and Republibots (and Liberbots?)

I have been trying to formulate a theory about the behavior of political partisans. It is normal to say that they espouse a bundle of beliefs and elect politicians whose own stated beliefs most closely match their own, but that doesn't explain a lot of the other behavior, such as when they defend things which are either clearly not true, or against what you would think were their normal interests, or policies which are clearly working in the direction opposite of that intended.
The high school civics version is that Democrats and Republicans push for policies they want. But when Democrats owned the White House and Congress in 1993-4, we didn't get a minimum wage raise, we didn't get national health care, we didn't get strengthened NLRA, we didn't get moderation in the War On (some people who use some) Drugs, etc. Then, when the Republicans owned Congress and the White House in 2001-present, we didn't get free trade (Doha) or a national anti-abortion law. It is as if both parties lose their voice when they obtain the free and unobstructed control of the podiums of power. Instead, we get inexplicable policy shifts, like NAFTA from Clinton, a prescription drug law from Bush, and other bizarre posturing.

Another aspect of this is that the supporters of the main politicos will defend the indefensible, and blindly attack the other side even when it is not to their advantage. Carter deregulated, Reagan didn't. Clinton didn't spend or request money for education, the two Georges Bush did (charted here). Ted Kennedy wrote No Child Left Behind, but Bush is blamed for its failures and especially failing to fund it even though he is outspending every previous administration by a mile (and even though Congress appropriates, not the President). Clinton vetoed welfare reform five times, finally signed it when it was apparent Congress would override, the Democratic base resisted the idea beforehand, claimed credit afterwards, and the Republican Congress gets no credit at all.

I am considering the possibility that the high school civics version is nearly correct, but has one key thing backwards. Demobots and Republibots don't have an agenda they prefer, the real bots have an agenda they hate. They don't act in their own interests, they react negatively to the other party.

I wish further to distinguish among several groups. There are first of all the masses who just drift. Most of them don't vote, or when they do they vote out of a sense of duty rather than conviction. Then there are the issue voters who care about little else than their one or two issues (gun control, abortion, death penalty, retirement, etc.). The most important groups, however, are the bots, the ambitious politicians, and the wildcards.

The ambitious politicians are people like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush, and most other heavyweight politicians. They have some convictions, mainly to obtain power. They blow whichever way the winds of popularity blow. If it is good to be pro-death penalty, Bill Clinton will abandon the campaign trail to kill a retarded kid, otherwise he embraces the persona of the compassionate gentleman. If it is good to be a tobacco farmer, Al Gore will tell you how he grew up on a farm, but if tobacco is bad, Al Gore will tell you about his dying sister and anti-tobacco crusades. If it is good to be compassionate, George Bush will speak at length about religion and charity; if it is good to be ruthless, George Bush reserves the "right" to torture and kill even religious people.

The bots thrive on reacting to the politicians of the opposite party. If George Bush says it's good to be compassionate, the Demobots ridicule him. If Bill Clinton decides to bomb terrorist sites in Afghanistan, Republibots ridicule him. But the nature of the politicians is to avoid getting backed into those corners where they have to take a stand, so it would seem that there was a permanent standoff where none will take an action so there is nothing to react to. So how does the system operate?

The wildcards are the catalysts for the interaction of the bots and the politicians. After 9/11, George Bush seemed to have no plan for securing ports and borders and coordinating anti-terrorist agencies. The Demobots went into opposition mode and demanded that he do something. They criticized him for failing to connect the dots. Enter wildcard Joe Lieberman, who suggested that the Homeland Defense Department be created. Immediately, the Republibots opposed this, but Bush decided it was an idea with little downside (though it didn't really accomplish anything, the cost of moving bubbles around on org charts was "the cost of protecting America", and nothing popular got eliminated) and proceeded with it. That prompted the Demobots to ridicule him for doing something, completely opposite what they had said before. The Republibots then also switched positions and supported it. Then, further connecting the dots, and on the advice of wildcard Paul Wolfowitz, he decided to invade Iraq, which the Demobots also opposed, and the Republibots therefore supported. The Republibots, as you may recall, were the same people who ridiculed Gore for nation-building and Clinton for his Serbian adventure, which the Demobots supported, which is to say, they opposed the Republibots opposition to it.

Another scenario: Democrats have not suggested any immigration reform, though they should favor it and eliminate the problems of illegal immigration. Republicans would normally oppose immigration reform because aliens are un-American and not traditional, but didn't propose anything even after 9/11. In this case, the President acted as the wildcard (believing that he had extraordinary insight as a former Governor of Texas and as someone who might be able to persuade marginal Hispanic voters to come to his party because of his ability to speak Spanish as well as he speaks English) and proposed a guest worker program. Boom! -- the Demobots opposed it on the principle that if Bush proposed it, it must be bad, but offered nothing else. Boom! -- the Republibots opposed what they perceived as the Demobot position, for which, since there wasn't one, they substituted the traditional one, which is liberal immigration (liberal in the broad sense of "no restriction"). Therefore, the Republibots introduced harsh, restrictive measures. Boom! -- the Demobots opposed this, opting for the status quo in which dozens suffer from exploitation, exposure, and probably violence as they cross the Arizona desert.

It isn't a well-worked out theory, but I think it has more explanatory power than the generally accepted one. The concept is simple: the bots aren't programmed with a positive program (support X), but rather with a negative program (oppose Y). The opposite bot will also only react (oppose X), so the two should normally be in a mutual standoff until someone drops a disturbance into the arena. Politicians won't do so until they know which way the general mass of people will go, so there must also be a wildcard element.

Note: It could be that this is not generally recognized because of a matter of word choices that mislead us into believing that the most vocal stand for rather than against. For example, why is it called a "pro test"? They are rarely formed to advocate for something, more often against. They should be called "con tests".

There is, by the way, a Liberbot. Usually newbies, they have accepted some of the watered down ideas such as Natural Rights theory, and they know that you can usually find something to react to no matter which flavor the other bots are or what they do. Bush proposes s...-- Boom! It must be wrong. Clinton proposes th...-- Boom! It must be wrong. Which is unfortunate, since welfare reform was probably right (it was better than the old system, and the Demobots would never have allowed a Republican president to do it. Only Nixon could have gone to China, as they say.). I'm having a hard time thinking of something Bush has done right -- perhaps the immigration proposal, but that seems a dead issue for now.

Notes for BBC reporters

After listening to you chaps on NPR lo these many years, I thought I might offer some feedback.

• You are using a microphone and a recording or transmitting device which is used to convey by electronic means the sounds of your voice worldwide to a local transmitter that carries it to my car radio, where I can turn the amplifier up sufficiently loud to cause permanent tinnitus. It is not necessary for you to try to do so by yourself and without the apparatus. Speak in a normal voice; we can hear you. It is not a tin can and a string.
• Try to break things up a little. I know consistency is nice and all, but in a 5 minute report, it is excruciating to hear every sentence pronounced, "DAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdada-DAAAAaaaa. DAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdada-DAAAAaaaa." It's like listening to that Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reporter wax eloquent about nuclear prolifer-AAA-tion. It is reminiscent of the Monty Python episode that featured Whicker IIII[s]-land.
• Korea only has one "r" in it. Same for Africa. India has no "r" in it. Thus, we pronounce them ko-REE-a, Af-ree-ka, IN-dee-a, and not ko-Ree-er, A-free-ker, and IN-dee-er. Stop appending r's to every word that ends in a "ah"-sound (I'm sure pronunciologists have a name for it, but I shan't look it up). Last night, we were watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the brave tots made several references to "gels". That's with a hard "g" as in "garage", so not at all like the stuff hardcore suburban punks put in their hair. My wife asked what they were saying, and I had by then deduced they were talking about "girls" but had somehow left out the "r". "No matter", I reassured her, "they'll likely find a spare at the end of Narnia".
  

As I look back now, I realize that "garage" was perhaps not the best example; I meant of course the first "g". Anyhow, ...

• "No" has a single syllable, at most two when a special emphasis is required. At no time does it have four or more. "No", or perhaps, "No-o", but not "NaOOoo", nor shall it be "NaOOOooUU", and higher order elaborations are right out. I have heard Australian correspondents turn "No, Sue" into iambic pentameter.

Otherwise, nice job, cheerio, keep it up, pip-pip, and all that.

Truth, relevance, and Iraq

I would like to demonstrate the technique and the difficulty of using the visualization introduced in the last two posts (groups and truth/relevance framework) with respect to Iraq by listing common arguments from both sides (pro-invasion and con-invasion) that I heard and how they could be analyzed in the framework (in no particular order):

Empires fall: true, but irrelevant. Non-empires fall, too. Frequently to empires.

Bush wants the oil: true, not relevant. We could have "had the oil" anytime we wanted simply by lifting the trade ban. F-u-n-g-i-b-l-e.

Saddam is a brutal dictator: True, but irrelevant. We don't invade countries because their leaders are brutal dictators. It so happens that there is a high correlation, and normally this would be merely an interesting and beneficial side-benefit, but it isn't a good enough reason. For one thing, we don't have the resources. For another thing, our choice is rarely between a dictator and a peaceful democracy; it is frequently between an existing dictator and a potentially worse dictator, who may rise in the country in question or who may be the dictator held in check by the dictator in question.

Bush lied about WMDs: Neither true, nor relevant. A lie isn't just a false statement: the statement must be false, the speaker must know it to be false at the time he is speaking it, and the speaker must intend to deceive. At the time Bush made those statements, the National Intelligence Estimate (which is now considered by the anti-war crowd to be sacrosanct) was that Saddam had WMD. Bush, who is accused of not being very bright, believed that it was true. And he wanted not to deceive the public but to convince them that they should believe what he believes in this as in all matters. As to it's irrelevance, ...

... There were no weapons of mass destruction: True, not relevant. If they had found WMD, would the war have been justified? No?! Then it's not really relevant is it?

We are in a war with violent radicals who want to kill us for our freedoms [sic]: Maybe, but probably not relevant. Mostly, we're in a war with people who want us to leave the Middle East. We should oblige them. In 50 years, oil is going to be worthless, and then they can look at the desolation around them in full realization that they have got what they desired. Meanwhile, oil is still fungible, and they can only make money by selling it to someone. Most of our oil does not come directly from the Middle East, it comes from here in the US (yes, about 1/4-1/3 of our consumption is still domestically produced), Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and various other sources. 8% comes from Saudi Arabia, and 7.2% comes from other OPEC nations, not all of which are theocratic kleptocracies (or kleptocratic theocracies?). In other words, we are only dependent on them for about 15%, which we could easily buy from them indirectly by such means as buying finished gasoline from India.

Country	Annual production consumed in the US, thousand barrels per day (2005, EIA stats)	Percentage
US	5178	27.4
Canada	2181	11.5
Mexico	1662	8.8
Saudi Arabia (OPEC)	1537	8.1
Venezuela (OPEC)	1529	8.1
Nigeria (OPEC)	1166	6.2
Other OPEC	1355	7.2
Other Non-OPEC	4284	22.7
Total	18892*	100

* Oddly, the EIA stats don't add up. In this chart, imports are 10,126 thousand bbls per day, but in this chart, imports add to 13,714. In either case, Saudi Arabia is not the bogeyman the Buchanan Right would have them be.

Saddam was supporting terrorism: True, possibly relevant. Saddam was harboring terrorists, though not al Qaeda. Saddam was training terrorists to hijack planes, but thanks to 9/11, no plane load of tourists is going to go down quietly anymore. Saddam was paying families of terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, but now the way is paved for the theocracy in Iran to take over that racket. Saddam was waiting to rid himself of the UN inspectors so he could resume production of WMD, but at the time of invasion, he was in check. Saddam was a rival to al Qaeda, and we could have played them against one another, though they may have tried to play that rivalry out by attacking Western targets. In any case, this point is something the anti-war crowd would be wise to consider; they should grow up, stop trying to play gotcha by arguing that the president tried to tie Saddam to 9/11, and stop ignoring the fact that Saddam was indisputably supporting terrorism in the Middle East. At best we can say that we don't have proof that Saddam helped the 9/11 plot. After all the accusations that Bush didn't "connect the dots", the calls for his resignation by reason of incompetence in the wake of 9/11, and the subsequent decision to strike pre-emptively, how culpable are they for the invasion? I'm enough of a student of history to know that President's sometimes make such decisions to quell criticism rather than because it is part of their innate belief, and that because they downplay that reason, it isn't recognized until well after the events have unfolded. Further, the burden here is on the anti-war crowd who also complained about the 9/11 intel failure: you can't simultaneously complain that someone is not doing enough and that they have gone too far without describing the middle path between the two -- what would they propose to have done to prevent Saddam, who had already attacked Iran, Kuwait, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, from following al Qaeda's lead and striking the US? What in the history of Muammar al-Gaddafi's aggression and turnabout is relevant and useful?

Saddam was irrational: Not true, but it would be relevant if it were. It's fun to think of him as "So Damn Insane", but his actions reveal him to be a coldly calculating self-preservationist. He attacked Iran for personal and national gain and received American backing. He sought and thought he had American approval before invading Kuwait. He turned to the jihadis when that went awry, and then used the profits from oil-for-food to keep French, Russian, and UN diplomats on his side. He got rid of his WMD materials while keeping the scientists under his thumb so that he could revive those programs after the UN declared him to be free of WMDs. The only thing he didn't count on was that W would decide to invade on the basis of faulty intel rather than the reports coming back from Muhammad al Baradei. Otherwise, everything he did was the action of a man who set goals and adjusted his tactics to achieve them. Brutal, sociopathic, evil, yes, but irrational? No more so than the tinpot dictators that run Saudi Arabia, Iran, most of Asia, and half of South America. When irrational people get their hands on nukes, that is a concern.

Would you send your son to Iraq? Definitely not relevant, and hypotheticals are neither true nor false. In fact, this has to be one of the most juvenile "arguments" yet offered. The armed forces of this country are voluntary. Nobody is making anyone else go. At first, the accusation was leveled that the Bush Administration is racist on the basis that minorities are more likely to get killed, but that was a Viet Nam era statistic. In the modern, volunteer army, minorities are more likely to be medics and serve in other support roles, while white men are more heavily represented in the front lines. And once this is pointed out, some Left Wingers dismiss those soldiers as right wing religious rednecks. Apparently it's okay to be callous about human life if they happen to listen to different music or hold different beliefs which you can dismiss as irrational. Well, unless those happen to be non-Christian irrational beliefs. The theory appears to be, "It's okay to kill anyone not considered PC, e.g. white male Christians. They're all known to be evil." This is the de facto position of the self-proclaimed Reality Based Community.

The quagmire is creating flies, not just drawing them: True, but so was the status quo ex ante. Prior to the invasion, al Jazeera was nightly showing images of children suffering from the trade embargo. Oil for Food wasn't working, and it was all the fault of America and England. That is how the al Khobar towers, USS Cole, and 9/11 bombers were recruited. Still, this seems relevant since they are probably recruiting at a higher rate than if Oil for Food was still running.


Oil for Food was a corrupt program that enriched Saddam as well as several French, British, Russian, and UN officials: Yes, but is that grounds for invading a country? US Agriculture subsidies have been a scandal for generations, but we aren't even jailing anyone for them. On the other hand, would we have ever had proof about the scandal without invading the country?

X People are dying every year because of the violence: It seems likely that more people are dying now (how can I really know?), but I'm still unsure whether this is true with respect to how things might have been. I am also uncertain how relevant it is. The opposing view is that we should have let Saddam stay in power because, while some people were dying, at least it wasn't as many. I'm not comfortable with sentencing those people to live miserable lives under Saddam (the case had we not invaded). Is that any different than being happy that Saddam is out of power even if I oppose the means by which he was deposed? Can you love the sin (overthrow) and hate the sinner (invasion)? Furthermore, even if you did believe that fewer people would have died with Saddam still in power, that rests on two assumptions: that Saddam would have continued in the same fashion as before (his killing rate would have been steady), and that civil war in Iraq was not likely if Saddam had been left alone. The first is possible, though we know that he planned on resuming WMD development after getting the clean bill of health from al Baradei, a frightening thought in light of the A. Q. Khan revelations. The second is naive - a naivete which apparently infected the Administration before the invasion, and which infects the anti-warriors today.

There was no plan to win the peace: True, entirely relevant. A related argument is that Bush rushed to war. If they had negotiated at length with the Turks, and brought the 4th ID from the north, the initial looting and insurgency might never have happened, or would at least have been controlled faster. If they had gone in with a plan to prevent the lawlessness, the economy might have bounced back faster and fewer people would now be willing to put up with the insurgents. Had the transition been cleaner on these accounts, we could have pulled out sooner and without as many negative aspects including confirmation of Osama's thesis that the US doesn't have the stomach to fight.

Without Saddam, Iran will have a free hand to dominate the region: Oops. True and relevant. What were they thinking? It's a little cynical, but we would have been better off, and quite possibly everyone in the region would have been better off, had we left Saddam in power to oppose Iran's designs on hegemony.

Rumsfeld and the Republicans supported Saddam in the 1980s: Another one from the kids. True, and relevant, but not the way intended. Yes, we provided support to Saddam. It seems unlikely that Rumsfeld knew the Kurds were being gassed at the time he was in Iraq since it wasn't exactly an open country and the stories didn't come out for months afterwards. Yet we probably knew or should have known what they were doing with "dual use technology" agricultural chemicals. Still, does the fact that you made a mistake (if it was that) mean that you can never try to fix it? I think this is one of the better examples that true arguments may only be argumentative without providing any real illumination. At the same time, it is worth contemplating why they were supporting Saddam. He was fighting Iran; it's called realpolitik. Cynical? Yes. Unethical? Definitely. The best solution? No, but possibly the least bad solution. Children shouldn't play geopolitics; someone could get hurt. Unfortunately, the adults now in charge haven't shown themselves to be much better.

If we cut and run now, it will only encourage the jihadis: Possibly true, probably relevant. It may only encourage them to expend lots of resources fighting each other for control in the wake of the power vacuum (Wahabists vs. other Sunnis vs. Shiites). It may also encourage them to attack us here to obtain further pullouts; however, by pulling out and using the Department of Defense for defense, we may be doing ourselves a number of favors.

So the list of relevant true arguments (of varying strengths, and not all working in the direction hoped by the arguers) consists of:

• Saddam was exporting terrorism
• The quagmire is creating flies, not just drawing them
• X people are dying every year because of the violence
• There was no plan to win the peace
• Without Saddam, Iran will have a free hand to dominate the region
• If we cut and run now, it will only encourage the jihadis
  

I think they mostly support the conclusion that W was right in the 2000 election: we should stay out of nation-building. Too bad he flip-flopped on that. But it also supports the conclusion that global politics are complex enough that the least bad solution -- which may be a cynical, unethical, shameful course of action -- may be the best alternative available. You leave Saddam in place, keep your thumb on him with no-fly zones and UN inspectors (which, by the way, Clinton pulled out), play him against the other regional terrorists and dictators, and support insurgents against him (some of whom may be the sock puppets of the regional terrorists and dictators). Of course, this all assumes we could go back to 2002 and change history from there - but why stop there those circumstances? Why not go back to 1990 and let Saddam have Kuwait and avoid the whole no-fly zone problem? Or the 1980s, and let the Soviets keep Afghanistan while Saddam and Iran slug it out? Of course, at each stage a set of hard choices have to be made and someone will suffer no matter what decision is made.

I think this frame of reference is useful for analyzing complex problems. The only points worth contemplating are those that are both true and relevant. Unfortunately, in most public discourse, so few of the resonating points meet both tests.

Truth, relevance, and topology

The set of all arguments, consisting of both "truth" and "not truth" consists of boundless Fiction and a circumscribed subset, Truth. A further subset of true arguments are those which are relevant. This is illustrated below as concentric rings outside which fiction exists.

The arguments favored by the three groups from last post (and there may well be more, for it is also artificial to consider every question as having two sides between which we must choose) may be placed into that framework, giving rise, as I count them, to twenty-four possible regions (The sketch below may not accurately depict them all - it was tougher than I thought, and I'm tired of messing with it. Apparently, topography is not for the meek).

• Non overlapping Pro fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Non overlapping Con fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Non overlapping 3rd party fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Overlapping pro and con fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Overlapping pro and 3rd party fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Overlapping con and 3rd party fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Overlapping pro, con, and 3rd party fiction, truth, relevant truth
• Fiction, truth, and relevant truth that nobody has yet laid claim to

Of those, we should reject all but the relevant, true arguments. We should especially concentrate on those areas in which two or more groups have overlapping true and relevant points of view in order to build a common framework for working through difficult problems. Unfortunately, that is far easier said than done.