In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?
“No, not the trans antifa, you fool! The irony-poisoned, terminally online, neonazi groyper types!”
Some days I feel the weight of every nanosecond of the 71.5 years I have spent on this planet.
I’m so old that when some fresh young bit of news rears its pimply head, references from books — yes, books! — leap to what remains of my mind.
For instance, there’s P.R. Deltoid, the “post-corrective adviser” to the ultraviolent 15-year-old Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess:
“What gets into you all? We study the problem and we’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You’ve got a good home here, good loving parents, you’ve got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside you?”
Or the bruiser in the cowboy hat in Thomas McGuane’s “Something to be Desired,” who, upon seeing a used tampon land on his windshield at a drive-in movie theater, steps out to make a few inquiries among the usual suspects, which include the hapless Lucien, who had been preparing to continue a mutual infidelity with a casual acquaintance until a rare burst of discretion — “spraying ancient drive-in gravel” in headlong flight — came to seem the better part of valor.
“I got my fiancée here!” shouts the cowboy. “She don’t want to know about your little world!”
Alas, it seems that to gain some insight regarding the suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing I must leave the library and take a deep dive into the wonderful world of … Helldivers2?
No thank you, please. I just finished an oldster’s breakfast of oatmeal, fresh fruit, and tea. It looks like rain. And I’m feeling the cowboy’s confusion here, with a geezerly side of These Kids Today.
I remember when games meant Monopoly, Scrabble, or just tossing the ol’ pigskin around. I don’t want to know about their little world.
It’s only our bedroom chimney. You go to war with the Barad-dûr you have, not the Barad-dûr you might want or wish to have at a later time.
OK, lemme see if I’ve got this right. …
Pope Naked I, the Unclothed Emperor, Avatar of Peace and Very Stable Genius, elbows into a Middle Eastern pissing contest without checking with Congress, an elite cadre of drunkards, turncoats, lickspittles, ring-kissers, and Keyboard Kommandos at his side.
Next he unilaterally declares a cease-fire — a short while later the belligerents mumble, “Yeah, right, cease-fire, sure. …” — and get right back to murdering each other.
Finally the Warrior Pope finds a convenient camera to holler into, barking that the belligerents “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” when it seems pretty clear to even the most casual observer that when it comes to killing each other, these people are at the top of their class.
Does that about cover it? I think I’m all caught up now.
Q. Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?
A. The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking. — Hari Seldon fencing with the prosecutor while on trial for disturbing the peace of the Emperor’s realm, in the first book of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series
Confirmation bias is real, and not always self-inflicted.
Case in point: Last night some of us were gnawing on current events in an email chain when in a fit of grim despair I wrote the following:
• • •
Call me cynical, but I think the idea of reviving manufacturing in the United States is a pipe dream, pure and simple.
Americans crave cheap shit, and they want to be paid top dollar for doing … something fun. Not living in a city-sized factory cranking out the iPhones and watching their bunkmates jump off the roof when it all gets to be too much. Being an “influencer” means you never have to jump off a roof unless you really need the clicks and there’s some drone down there with a net to catch you.
What are Americans qualified to manufacture in the near future that their fellow Americans (or anyone else) want to buy? Who’s gonna risk their capital building factories, arranging supply lines, finding/marketing to customers? The long view meets the short attention span and the minimalist skillset. Hilarity ensues. Or not.
The developing world is busy making and selling us shit in hopes of becoming us someday so their kids don’t have to work as hard as their folks did.
I can see small-scale stuff happening here. High-priced bespoke artisanal products (Moots comes to mind).
But most of what I see right now, day to day, is white collar and service industries, and a big, big gap between the two.
Also, consider A.I. and the increasing use of robotics in everything from package delivery to surgical procedures. Any domestic manufacturing developing in the next few decades might need humans only to troubleshoot/reboot the System from time to time and calibrate/lubricate the machinery. Until It figures out how to service Itself without the expense and hassle of the dwindling, unreliable and tiresome human element.
• • •
Well. How d’ye like them apples? Mighty pleased with myself I was, too. Especially after I read this analysis by Binyamin Appelbaum this morning in The New York Times. (The link is a gift; no need to subscribe.)
Appelbaum, the lead writer on economics and business for the NYT’s editorial board, did the heavy lifting to confirm my shoot-from-the-lip bias. Well done indeed, Binjy old scout.
He cites French historian Fernand Braudel, who examined the rise and fall of titans like Amsterdam, London, and yes, New York, taking the long view “because he didn’t want to make too much of short-term pain or setbacks.” Appelbaum explains: “It was an approach that he said he developed to maintain his equanimity during the five years that he spent in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II, refusing to make too much of ‘daily misery’ or the latest scraps of news.”
Back in the Day™, according to Braudel, finance replaced manufacturing and merchants became bankers — ““a society of rentier investors on the lookout for anything that would guarantee a quiet and privileged life” — moving hither and yon in search of return on investment, regardless of whichever Napoleon of the moment sat squawking on his papier-mâché throne.
And they didn’t bring everyone along for the ride.
Appelbaum gives a light backhand to the latest monarch who wants the rubes to think he can turn back time with a wave of his scepter: “Expanding manufacturing is a goal increasingly shared by elected officials across the political spectrum, but Trump is trying to overhaul the rules of global trade with all the finesse of a do-it-yourselfer living in a house while renovating it, and the disruptions are shaking the global economy. “
And then from beyond the grave Braudel steps forward to give Beelzebozo the coup de grâce, patting him on that ridiculous combover, shaking his head with a smile, and murmuring, “Putz.”
Again, Appelbaum:
“Braudel, who died in 1985, probably would have regarded the president as nothing more than a cork bobbing on the currents of history. If he was right, no matter the president or policies, America’s era of economic domination is ending and its political hegemony is unsustainable. If he was right, it’s time to accept that our second-rate status is inevitable and irreversible.”
Thus we recall another wise fellow, George Santayana, who in “The Life of Reason” wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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