Further Thoughts on Current Events

1. I usually choose not to react to current events, and to do so only with a lag. Also, I do not think people come to this blog, nor should they, for my random political viewpoints. So this is being written with trepidation.

2. Think of three approaches to the issue of Syrians fleeing the war zone.

a. Make them stay where they are, without helping them.
b. Bring them to the west.
c. Try to protect them in Syria.

My guess is that the most politically popular move would be (a). But I think that (a) would be wrong, and it is good for leaders to spend political capital trying for (b) or (c). In my post yesterday, I tried to make the case for (c), although I am not convinced by it myself. The most I will say is that it is possible that (c) is the least worst option.

3. Some points work better as rhetoric than as arguments. For example, “more people are killed by car accidents than by terrorists.” The thing about accidents is that they are accidental. We do not have to worry about car accidents issuing threats to Washington, DC, or developing and using a capability to inflict mass casualties.

Also, saying that it shameful or un-American to treat Christians but not Muslims as refugees is not quite right, either. There are plenty of conflict situations in which we identify specific threatened ethnic or religious groups as eligible for asylum. If somebody wants to argue that Christians are more threatened than Muslims in the Middle East, that is a case that can be made. Having said that, I favor (b) or (c) for both Muslims and Christians.

4. I fear that there is no one close to President Obama who is capable of voicing dissent regarding either his substance or his tone. He needs somebody to to tell him that people who disagree with him are not necessarily evil or stupid. They are just people who disagree with him.

5. President Obama’s situation today reminds me of that of Neville Chamberlain in early May of 1940, when his government was toppling. I think that if we were in a Parliamentary system, Mr. Obama’s government would fall. I think that, as in Britain in 1940, the general public is more bellicose than the elites. I imagine that Chamberlain felt about his opponents the way that President Obama feels about Republicans, but Chamberlain had the self-control to keep such feelings to himself.

6. I predict that the Obama Presidency will end like a bitter divorce. There will be intense mutual hatred between his remaining supporters and the majority of Americans. This mutual hatred will be one of the most significant features of American politics for a long time.

26 thoughts on “Further Thoughts on Current Events

  1. I’ll throw out my own thoughts:

    #2. I dunno about. I’m perfectly happy saying the Syrian civil war is a problem Syrians need to solve themselves. I suspect I’m in the minority here, though. There are an awful lot of progressives in this country who love to imagine themselves as the Ghost of Tom Joad.

    3 and 4 seem right. 5, I don’t know enough about interwar British politics to comment on. #6, I’m curious why you say that. These people already don’t like each other. I can’t figure what’s going to happen between now and January 2017 that will make it any worse. With the window shut for any more major progressive legislation, I mostly expect the Obama Administration to strut and fret their remaining hours upon the world’s stage and then be heard no more.

  2. Boy it is tough situation and you do not want to overreact. Some very small percent (like .05%) of immigrant Muslims’ children may join a radical group but some very small percent of non-Muslims will become killers. I would let them in.

  3. This is such a complicated problem with so many dimensions its hard to know where to start. I will say, though, that the religion and terrorism factors seem overemphasized. That is, pagan Europeans have more in common with us than Arab Christians; and terrorism risk sits in the tail of a “culture” distribution that is “shifted to the right” relative to ours, and that is what really matters.

  4. It seems pretty crazy to say we have to accept random strangers here. If ISIS becomes the routed would we have to accept them too? It seems slightly less crazy that we have to go half the world away to protect them so that they don’t come here. Maybe a little less crazy still would be to incentivize locals to help.

    • On 3. The correct point (mine that is) is that as humans our highly advanced brains end up making really dumb decisions based on extrapolating threats that either can’t get as far in reality as our imagination let’s them or we extrapolate the wrong direction, sometimes creating self fulfillment. This is the point and the main threat of terrorism.

      • Let’s say based on one attack you do something that causes 2 attacks. You’d better keep the rate of those decisions down. The point is not to ignore it, but you’d better think really hard. And you shouldn’t probably make trolling the opposition party in an election year (are we ever not in troll the opposition campaign mode anymore?) your main consideration because maybe both the extreme positions serve the terrorist agenda.

        • Btw, many if not most of the weapons we use today are advances made on German weapons and some are nearly unchanged except for cosmetics and tweaks. There hasn’t been a time that I know of where Germans looked JV. They seem pretty docile now, but I might even keep an eye on them. The comparison to Nazis seems tailor made to create inappropriate conclusions. There were never, for example, a billion moderate Nazis that we needed to not get the wrong idea from our rhetoric.

  5. ” He needs somebody to to tell him that people who disagree with him are not necessarily evil or stupid. They are just people who disagree with him. ”

    I think this is a much, much bigger problem than merely one of the company the president keeps.

    There’s no way to address it without revisiting some epistemological first principles and philosophical fundamentals, such as in Cowen and Hanson’s “Are Disagreements Honest?” My short interpretation of their answer is, “It’s complicated but mostly they’re not.”

    Everyone divides disagreements into those they can respect and those they can’t. The difference is between someone who disagrees with you on who will win the sports game when the odds are close, and someone who disagrees with you about the merits of flat-earth geology.

    But there is no way to respect someone else’s different opinion unless you are willing to admit (1) You are very uncertain about your own position and they are within that margin of error, or (2) That your position is a matter of preference or taste, or (3), Your position is based on faith in some unverifiable, unfalsifiable metaphysical assertion.

    The main pretense of progressive secular political ideology is that they do not have to admit any of the above features, and so they do not have to respect and disagreement. My impression of most high-brow conservatism and libertarianism is that their adherents are willing to admit these features if pressed, and that there is no possible further reconciliation of opposing viewpoints and desires by means of discourse.

    Because of this, progressives tend believe their positions, morality, and whole teleology of Social Justice are ‘demonstrably, objectively correct’ in the same way that statements about natural law can be scientifically correct, i.e. the best educated guess reasonable and intelligent people can make in good faith when exposed to all the evidence and arguments. And ‘science’ is higher status than ‘religion’ these days. So, they don’t yield to assertions insisting that their political positions are “just your opinion”. They think they are correct in a deeper, more transcendental sense.

    So that hypothetical dissenter in the room would, to their ears, be saying the equivalent of, “Those flat-earthers aren’t stupid or evil, they just disagree.” And since “they just disagree” means, “they are being reasonable and you should respect their position as a valid alternative possibility,” the result would be laughs and scowls.

    • Perhaps part of it is because so much of their insular rhetoric appears to be based on in-group signaling. This is one thing that really draws the parallels between their ideology and religion, and also why they never grok the analogy. Their ideology is built on a foundation of separation us from them.

      Have you ever seen a progressive discussion of global warming in terms of (realistic) discount rates? I have seen close attempts, only in academic attempts, but not to the extent that I see such in discussions between libertarians. Discussion of tradeoffs between libertarians and fine slicing of disagreement usually happens within seconds of the discussion commencing (see above).

      When we get power maybe we will get to be wrong all the time too.

      • “Have you ever seen a progressive discussion of global warming in terms of (realistic) discount rates?”

        That’s missing the point. Only a very tiny minority of people will ever process the details of any scientific or policy claim as rigorously as necessary. Everyone else has to take someone else’s word for it on a lot of stuff. The point is whether an individual trusts that the word their social scene accepts has the imprimatur of ‘objective science’ instead of deriving from mere ‘naked’ politics.

        The issue is the ad verecundiam fallacy problem, which probably can’t be solved without mandatory betting; i.e. “putting your money where your mouth is.”

        All ordinary people have to have is a kind of trust and confidence that the expert authorities have thought through the problem and/or crunched the numbers and this is the consensus of what they say. If the consensus also includes assertions as to the bounds of reasonable positions, then it can also define disagreement as bad-faith or quackery. Whenever politics is implicated, you should expect that assertion to be bunk, but most people won’t.

        So they can imagine that they believe in X because that’s what ‘science’ says. Anyone who says different is obviously evil, stupid, or a quack. They don’t have to worry about discount rates.

        • My point on discount rates is that would be the second thing self-confident believers would discuss if they werent entirely concerned with demagoguing unbelievers and apostates and putting the fear of God in their flock that they risk being cast out as defectors.

          As long as they can keep doing this they never have to deal with the details.

          • Maybe more simply, “how are people so militantly confident in something they have been told?”

            To assuage anxiety?

  6. Arnold, as long as you are commenting on current events, what is your take on the University of Missouri events?

    I can’t make heads or tails of it unless you just say authority is losing its grip or that maybe nothing really makes any sense bit we used to have a higher news editorial to news flow ration to craft the narratives for us.

  7. 5. President Obama’s situation today reminds me of that of Neville Chamberlain in early May of 1940, when his government was toppling.

    Is that a really strong position here? Since the attacks were in Paris, the impact may not be that strong in 30 days or so. And the majority of the attackers were French citizens that connected with ISIS. For all the problems of the Obama, there has not been a significant foreign terrorist attack during his entire administration. The closest would the Boston bombers who were US citizens. The Obama has kept us safe almost as long as the Bush administration after September 11th. (Of course if a major event occurs all bets are off.)

    Chamberlain was leading a nation that was losing to the Nazis in 1940.

    • Ummm, you said it so I have to address it. They did basically nothing, have been lucky (if you don’t belive in the blowback theory), and people call it “keeping us safe.”

  8. Perhaps I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell the civil war in Syria really grew some legs when Washington sided with the rebels and chose to overthrow Assad. Maybe I’m wrong.

    If this is the case, it seems to me that nobody wants to talk about having the West quit doing the things that are making Syrians need to flee in the first place — specifically, engaging in a war with Assad.

    I hate options that all involve tending to the wounds of a bad policy, all while continuing to adhere to the bad policy.

    • They certainly made it hard to claim plausible deniability. The CIA was there. Obama’s red lining. Vague insinuations that successes would be reinforced. Clinton’s and continued assurances that Assad will be regime changed (to what?).

      It reminds me of how The Fed supporters claim that they rescued stability by sewing the perfect amount of chaos.

  9. I have a problem with your A, B and C. Why can’t they go to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, China, etc….

  10. C is more humanitarian, but would it impair A, where A is what ultimately has to be accomplished? It usually seems to end up that way.

    Obama popularity 49%, within the margin of error of a majority, not as good as Clinton, but better than Bush at the same point, which just goes to show how low a bar Bush was.

  11. Yes, why can’t the refugees go to some other Muslim country, which has plenty of room? We’ve already taken in thousands of Syrian refugees.

    The American born children of refugees are eligible to bring in any relative they want, with far less vetting. My father is married to a Moroccan, and they’ve brought over her sister’s family and her father. Multiply that by millions. We already have plenty of Muslim citizens radicalized by events. Why make it worse?

    • Exactly. When one seeks refuge from a storm, one goes to the nearest safe place to wait it out. You don’t keep driving past 1,000 miles of safe places so you can get to the cushier one with free coffee and donuts, and with the intention of never going back. That’s something different.

      • And why would you go to the place that sent the storm? Well, I can think of a couple reasons.

  12. I read “The New Colossus” yesterday. Beautiful sonnet, that. And I’m ashamed to say yesterday was the first time in my 60+ years that I’d read it in its entirety.

    In any event, it seems the Mother of Exiles has the answer you seek, Arnold. More of a promise, really. And I suspect now is the time for the 300+ Million of us to make good her promise, just as millions before us have made good her promise for those who live here now.

  13. hopefully Paul Ryan and Hillary can b like Newt and Bill

    Dem foreign policy advantages might b smaller, nowadays, because even tho R rhetoric is insane, Putin seems to have prohibited the low hanging poisons in the Middle East

    nice foreign policy vs Russia and OPEC would b Japanese land use policy transplant (or Berliner or at least Texan) and deregulation of autos so that every family can afford a 50 mpg Suzuki

    subsidy for Jordanian refugee camps would b nice gesture to Israel and would encourage sanctuary enterprise in future refugee crises. subsidy for Turkish refugee camps would demonstrate some return on nominal alliance with the US. these acts might also cool the spillover of the refugee crisis to Europe, and help people in the near term

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