I have no idea what is going on
Except that Rule 1 still holds
Dear Friends -
Welcome back to Season 2 of Nicco’s Random Writings. It’s been too long. I’d like to say I can explain (not excuse) my absence from writing; but I’m not even sure I can explain it. Regardless, I’m back with many, many things I want to write about… lucky you!
Where does Rule 1 stand, you may ask? (Remember Rule 1? It will get crazier.) The Joe Biden Presidency may seem to offer a moment of relief. But rest assured: it will get crazier. History’s time is shoving us towards a new era with new systems and different configurations of power, whether we like it or not.
The changes are nearly impossible to comprehend. Ask the Crow Indians. They lived in North America for a millennia (give or take), building a civilization that was rich and complicated -- and nomadic. Suddenly white people show up and they’re forced into an entirely new way of living -- sitting in one place, no longer nomadic. Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told the story of his people: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,” he said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”
Jonathan Lear writes in “Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation” that the Crow Indians lost not only their way of life but also "the conceptual resources" to understand their past and present. "The problem for a Crow Indian wasn't just that my way of life has come to an end. It was that I no longer have the concepts with which to understand myself or the world.... I have no idea what is going on."
We are lacking the conceptual resources to understand what’s going on. While Dubai beats the heat with fake rain, China builds insanely fast trains, the Dutch “print” a steel bridge, and Europe takes photos from the surface of an actual comet, in America we’ve run out of hospital beds in a dozen states because a sizable chunk of the population won’t get vaccinated. Or more precisely, won’t get vaccinated against COVID-19; they are (by and large) vaccinated against lots of other stuff (polio, anyone?). Meanwhile, also in America, a person with a college degree makes roughly the same amount today as someone with only a high school education made in 1989.
When I wrote back in 2012 that I would be surprised if America outlived me, I was referencing the fundamental political economics of the country: blue states (more or less) subsidize red states, financially speaking. I live in Massachusetts; about half of my federal taxes go to subsidize poor states. One way of thinking about this is that my hard-earned dollars are going to pay for insulin shots in red states for obese people who reject the science of vaccines and climate change -- with consequences my children must endure.
Of course there is, as Henry Clay would remind us, the matter of justice and equity. But the equation has shifted: that old chaos-theory trope that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing creates a thunderstorm in South Carolina is more true than we know: unvaccinated people going about their business in Texas put my children in Massachusetts at risk, and let’s not even start on climate change. It is into this context that the Supreme Court this week hands a victory to those who oppose abortion, and in doing so provides the seed of the unmaking of the Republic. The law in Texas is almost certainly unconstitutional, and the justices seem to know it. But the vehicle for the law -- the licensing of vigilante justice -- takes advantage of the process of judicial review to effectively circumvent any issues of constitutionality.
I guarantee you that at this very moment legislators in California are busy writing a law that will be nearly a carbon-copy of the Texas state law, but instead of outlawing abortion it will outlaw gun ownership. And so -- although the Court may seek to exert some influence along the way -- we’ll end up in a situation where some constitutional rights are guaranteed in Texas (the right to bear arms) and others are guaranteed in California (a woman’s right to choose). Things are going to get crazier.
In purely short-term partisan political terms, September will itself be a wild ride:
Biden’s giant infrastructure package will come to a final vote in order to be signed into law.
Government shutdown in the midst of a pandemic, anyone? The end of the federal fiscal year is September 30th, so Congress needs to approve 2022’s funding and the debt ceiling will need to be increased.
In the midst of the worst hurricane season ever recorded, the National Flood Insurance Program needs to be reauthorized.
The Arizona State Senate’s “audit” of the 2020 election will be wrapped up, likely declaring Trump the winner… and then what?
This all has to happen with a divided House and Senate. While Sen. Manchin regularly reminds us that the US Senate is 50/50, don’t forget that Speaker Pelosi leads the slimmest House majority since World War I. Given the advanced age of the Democratic Members of Congress, most actuaries wouldn’t insure the Democrat’s majority in the House. Did I mention there is a pandemic going on?
Don’t expect the GOP to co-operate; they have an electoral advantage coming their way and they know it:
Media: There are two media eco-systems in this country, standing side-by-side. If you live in one, you are more likely to hear about liberal cancel culture’s attack on Dr. Seuss than the passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan.
Money: One base is more fired up than the other: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is dramatically outraising AOC: In her first quarter in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene raised over $3.2 million (with an average gift of $32) while in AOC’s first quarter (in 2019) she raised $728,000. That’s right: MTG of “the Parkland School Shooting is a hoax” and “the Holocaust wasn’t that bad” is the GOP’s fundraising power house.
Voting: More than 35 states have passed or are in the process of passing legislation making it harder to vote; as you undoubtedly saw, Georgia criminalized all sorts of things related to voting, including passing out water to people waiting in line to vote. Racism is alive and well in America, and forget it at your peril.
Redistricting: Strategists in both parties agree Republicans have the advantage.
Time for a change! In 7 out of the last 8 elections, the public voted for change; 2012 was the only election when the country voted to maintain the status quo.
I’ve been planning to read Hari Kunzru’s latest novel, “Red Pill”, but a recent interview may have put me off it. He was asked "What is the worst-case scenario for the future?". He answered:
The US becomes an autocracy, and devolves into a weak and fractious patchwork of jurisdictions run by more or less rapacious oligarchs who conduct a losing war with China, first cold then hot. Human rights become a quaint idea. The environment collapses, and the resulting massive migrations of people lead to vicious authoritarian regimes taking control in richer countries.
There’s more, but you get the point: It will get crazier. But don’t give into fear. I have great faith in American ingenuity and our ability to figure our way out of various cul-de-sacs. Amanda Gorman wrote that we are “a nation composed but not yet completed” with “a history written that need not be repeated”. That starts with you and your community. Consider it a chance to rediscover American politics, starting with your neighbor.
If not your neighbors, at least take a look at what your Member of Congress has earmarked in the latest budget bill (scroll down to “Member Requests” and find your Member of Congress. Don’t know the name of your Congressional representative? Look it up.). My Member of Congress has a lot of earmarks with names like “Coastal Flood Interventions Project” which the fine print reveals are actually about preparing for sea rise and climate change. In fact, when I explored what the “Embassy Parking Lot Project” earmark was about, turns out it’s about… climate change mitigation because of the huge increase in storm water.
We need ideas to push, to believe in, to make happen -- not just realities to react to. So get busy. More to come -
Lots of love, nicco
PS. This is a postscript about “P versus NP”. Does this mean anything to you? If not, listen to this podcast. It is probably the most important problem in computer science and has all kind of crazy implications for your actual daily life. But that’s not why it’s in the postscript of this message. A subset of the P vs. NP question is called the “traveling salesman” problem. And huge news in the world of math is that somebody improved the efficiency of the traveling salesman solution. It is the first breakthrough in almost 50 years. And what was the scale of the breakthrough? “[The researchers] were only able to subtract 0.2 billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent [from the earlier solution published in the 1970s]. Yet this minuscule improvement breaks through both a theoretical logjam and a psychological one.” And over the last year, it did in fact do just that: it opened the floodgates. Your conversation with your neighbor, however minuscule, could be the breakthrough your community, your state, your country needs. Get started.