I found the “talking heads” programs yesterday remarkably vacant. On Face the Nation Margaret Brennan tried her best to get NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte to condemn President Trump’s war against Iran, rephrasing the question multiple times in various different ways, but he refused to take the bait. For example, in response to her observations about President Trump’s scolding NATO countries for being reluctant to secure the Straits of Hormuz, he more or less tut-tutted the question:

So it is only logical that European countries needed a couple of weeks to come together.

and praised President Trump’s conduct of the war heretofore:

And that is exactly why I feel in Europe, that most politicians, it resonates with them. What the President is doing here, which is taking out- degrading Iran’s capability to be, again, an exporter of chaos, sheer chaos to the region, to the world.

She was much more successful in getting the responses she wanted from Colorado Rep. Jason Crow. She just needed to turn him loose:

They started this war without congressional authorization. There’s no imminent threat. They actually have even stopped trying to pretend there was an imminent threat, which is what is necessary for the president to take action without congressional approval. So now here we are spending tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, losing American lives. Congress isn’t involved. We’ve been stonewalled. The American people are not in the driver’s seat here, right? Because Congress has been sidelined in this they are the ones that need to have the voice and whether or not they’re going to send their sons and daughters to go fight this war, whether or not they’re going to finance it. It’s time for this to end.

At ABC’s This Week Jonathan Carl followed a similar pattern. Administration representatives were broadly supportive of the war while the other guests including North Carolina Sen. Thom Thillis and California Sen. Adam Schiff were opposed to it.

Journalists have multiple strategies available to them for shaping the message conveyed about news stories. The first is which stories they elect to cover. In this case they are choosing an important story—the war in Iran. The second is explicit editorializing which, wisely, they avoided.

The third strategy is how they choose to cover the story and that is clearly what was happening yesterday. That strategy may be working. A majority of Americans think the war isn’t going well for the United States. Public understanding is largely a function of what is made salient, how it is framed, and what shortcuts people use to process it. Decades of research on agenda-setting and framing show that what is emphasized in major media becomes what the public regards as important, and how it is presented shapes how it is understood. Most people do not independently verify or seek out competing accounts; they rely on what is repeatedly surfaced.
Personally, I would rather that journalists just report the news and let us decide what to think about it.

As far as I can tell Fareed Zakaria’s thesis about the effects of relatively inexpensive unmanned drone aircraft on warfare is summed up in the closing paragraph of his Washington Post column:

In 1991, the Gulf War taught the world that advanced technology could make war precise. In 2026, Iran is teaching the world something more consequential: Precision will now be mass-produced. The countries that prevail will not simply be those with the finest platforms. They will be those that can combine small numbers of exquisite, expensive weaponry with vast numbers of cheap drones. Human judgment will over time give way to computer algorithms. That is the future of war. And it is arriving faster than most of us imagined.

His implication seems to be that drones erode or even negate the tactical advantage possessed by the United States, China, and other major powers.

Unfortunately for Mr. Zakaria’s thesis, the statistics he cites (along with some he doesn’t) actually point in a somewhat orthogonal direction. Consider the following:

• Since the beginning of the war Iran has deployed about 3,000 drones.
• That has resulted in about 30 total casualties.
• A Shahed drone costs about $25,000.
• The cost to Iran has been around $100 million.
• Ukraine’s STING interceptor drone costs around $2,000.
• Iran’s drone usage have not yet reduced U. S., Israeli, Saudi, or other Gulf state military capability or will to use it.

The available evidence does not yet support the claim that inexpensive drones negate the advantages of major powers. What it suggests instead is that drones shift warfare toward a cost-optimization problem in which defense currently appears to have the advantage. There are reasons to believe that particularly from Ukraine’s use of its fixed geography and detection in its defense. Iran’s experience demonstrates that mass without integration—without targeting precision, coordination, and doctrinal coherence—produces low returns. The future of warfare will not belong to those who simply deploy large numbers of cheap drones, but to those who can integrate them effectively into layered systems of offense and defense. In that respect, drones may reinforce, rather than diminish, the advantages of technologically sophisticated militaries.

I thought that Nate Silver’s take on President Trump’s war against Iran is worth bringing to your attention. Here are some key passages:

On the foreign policy front, Trump didn’t face any particularly adverse consequences for nabbing Nicolas Maduro under cover of night. On domestic policy, the Supreme Court sometimes bails him out.

Indeed, “you can just do things” is often a sound approach when you’re playing on a low difficulty level. In poker, we’d call this an exploitative strategy. Game theory will tell you that, if your opponent is playing optimally, you have to make some effort to balance and disguise your strategy. You can’t always bluff or the other guy will wise up. But some guys do always fold.

and

TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) has become the slogan for the “Trump put” thesis that I described above. Trump does something that imperils the United States’ economic interests, whether tariffs or threatening to invade Greenland. The Dow sheds 1,000 points, and he reverses course. This doesn’t seem like a very stable equilibrium, however. If traders know that Trump is going to chicken out, they shouldn’t sell off in the first place; otherwise, you could always profit by “buying the dip”. But if markets don’t panic a little bit, how does Trump get the signal that he needs to TACO?

A game-theory equilibrium would almost certainly reveal that both sides are supposed to employ mixed strategies. In other words, sometimes they might be bluffing, but they can’t always be bluffing or there would be no deterrence. Some percentage of the time, they have to follow through with their threats: Trump to do the thing that markets don’t want, and the markets to actually get past the “freak out” stage into sustained, full-blown panic that might cause irreversible damage.

That’s a possible explanation for President Trump’s actions and a prediction for what may happen. Nate treats this as a signaling equilibrium problem; I think that underweights structural constraints. This isn’t poker.

I see it slightly differently. There is no shortage of reasons for the United States to go to war with Iran. Iran’s theocracy has been at war with the United States for almost fifty years. Seizing our embassy, near-daily demonstrations of “Death to America”, support for terrorism, the list is almost endless. But I also think that grievances have an expiration date and, as I’ve said before, there are no “do-overs” in foreign policy.

Israel’s situation is quite different yet. Iran’s theocracy poses an existential danger to Israel as long as it’s in power. But our interests are not identical to Israel’s and we didn’t place Israel in the same neighborhood as a mortal enemy. Those are the considerations that give credence to the hypothesis that Israel pushed President Trump into war. I don’t agree with that theory but those are among the reasons it’s credible. I simply don’t think that Netanyahu or anyone else has that kind of influence on Trump.

You only need look at the present situation to see a sufficient reason for the president’s attacks on Iran. Can we allow the Iranian theocracy to hold the world economy hostage at will by blocking the Straits of Hormuz? The issue is not that Iran can permanently close the Strait of Hormuz but that it can impose repeated, unpredictable disruptions on a passage that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s energy supply, creating intolerable economic risk. That would be the implication of “Trump chickening out”.

In yesterday’s primary elections no candidate for whom I voted got even a plurality of the vote other than the only incumbent for whom I voted, Rep. Mike Quigley. In the fall Democrat Juliana Stratton will face Republican Don Tracy in the race for retiring Sen. Richard Durbin’s seat.

The newspapers are referring to her as “progressive Juliana Stratton” but when I look at her I don’t see progressive, moderate, or any ideology other than “footsoldier”. And, honestly, that characterizes Don Tracy, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, too. IMO either of them will vote reliably for whatever their respective party’s leaders tell them to. The real distinction in this race is not ideological but institutional: both candidates are reliable agents of their parties rather than independent actors.

That reliability is not working for Illinois. Both parties take it for granted. Illinois’s population has decline about 2% over the last 10 years and its decline is only that small because of a sharp increase in the foreign-born population, at least some of whom are in the country illegally. The rapid growth of populations outside normal tax and regulatory systems complicates the state’s fiscal picture, particularly on the cost side.. When Illinoisans can’t depend on the state and they can’t depend on the federal government, some of them leave the state.

Neither of those candidates captured a majority of the votes in any county—they were plurality winners. And Juliana Stratton primarily prevailed because of the city of Chicago’s primary voters, 40% of whom voted for her. Although the media are reporting heavy turnout the present statistics are telling a somewhat different story. There are 8.4 million registered voters in Illinois. About a million votes were cast for Senate candidates in yesterday’s primary. 40% of 12% is not overwhelming support.

In Illinois Democrats, mostly in Cook County, outnumber Republicans 2:1 so it is assumed that Ms. Stratton will win in the general election. While primary turnout is always limited, to win in November, she will need to build a coalition far broader than the narrow, Chicago-centered base that secured her the nomination.

My wife and I went to see Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly at Lyric Opera on Saturday evening and I’m sad to report that it was probably the one of the most misguided stagings I’ve ever seen. The performances were good enough with soprano Karah Son’s Cio-cio-san (Butterfly) and baritone Zachary Nelson’s Sharpless (the U. S. consul) particular standouts. The costuming was lovely. The orchestra was great. Puccini’s music, as usual, was glorious.

What made this production awful was director Matthew Ozawa’s revisionist high concept production. I’m not opposed to revisionist productions on principle. I’ve seen some good, e.g. As You Like It set in the 1890s, Rigoletto—staged in a men’s club, and some bad, e.g. Flying Dutchman in which Senta does not sacrifice her life for the Dutchman.

In this production a T-shirt clad modern Pinkerton escapes from his less-than-perfect marriage into a virtual reality 19th century Japan and VR Butterfly. Only Pinkerton is aware of this. My objection to this device is that it completely eliminates the stakes involved for the characters. Butterfly has no agency—her actions are meaningless; there is no pathos. Pinkerton becomes a victim rather than the cad he is. This design concept literally tore the heart from what is normally a very moving opera.

I’m not entirely sure what Mr. Ozawa was trying to accomplish. Did he object to Puccini’s lack of knowledge or connection with 19th century Japan? That is suggested in the Director’s Notes in the program. That would be to reject art itself. Every work of art springs from the imagination of the artist. Wagner had never been to Valhalla (Die Walküre). Verdi knew little of ancient Egypt (Aida). da Vinci did not witness The Last Supper. That did not diminish any of their works. This production doesn’t reinterpret the opera. It negates it.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Of course, who is to say what is real and what is fantasy in any “Madama Butterfly” at any point in the opera’s history? The production will strike some as having one’s cake and eatingt it, or, if we want to mix metaphors, as bait and switch. But this is, to my mind, a consistently potent and challenging evenging, which I mean asa compliment.

Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Music Review

Ozawa claims his “boldly relevant” production “rescues the opera’s narrative” by employing “an entirely female [and] Japanese design collective,” which solves the problem of the story being seen “through the lens of a white man, Pinkerton.” Finally Ozawa professes his love for Puccini’s opera yet modestly states that the opera has “made me, as an Asian American, feel ostracized, and I have felt a duty to reclaim its narrative.”

It takes a certain brand of jaw-dropping hubris and solipsism to cast oneself in the role of the courageous hero who will “rescue” an operatic masterpiece from itself. How did millions of audience members ever enjoy Puccini’s opera before Matthew Ozawa came along?

I hate to break it to the director, but It’s not about you!! Nobody buys a ticket to see Butterfly because the stage director is half-Japanese or to see him work out his personal identity issues onstage. And no one in the audience cares about your background, biography, where you grew up, or why an opera makes you feel sad and neglected.

Thank goodness for Mr. Johnson’s review. I was beginning to think that opera criticism was dead. Today I have seen multiple articles on multiple subjects, the common theme of which is that everything is a videogame, nothing has any consequences, choices are not important. I don’t think this is an accident.

Well, I went and did it again. I voted in the Democratic primary elections. A remarkable number of candidates were running unopposed. I only voted for candidates who were not running unopposed and I only voted for a single incumbent.

The primaries are likely to be more significant than the general election in November. I’ll be interested in seeing the actual turnout. They’ve been saying that the volume of early voting has been high.

The single best thing about the elections is that we’ll have a several month respite before the next wave of political ads. I suspect that there were will be an enormous amount of negative campaigning in this week’s general election.

A day or so ago I received an article from Seeking Alpha in my mailbox that raised my hackles. The article was about testimony from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel. The gist was that the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Trust Fund will be depleted by 2031, just five years away. What raised my hackles was this:

The fundamental problem with Social Security, though, is a demographic one. We have an aging population, and the ratio of workers paying taxes to retirees receiving benefits is shrinking.

That observation is true as far as it goes. But it is not the fundamental problem. People get old and retire. But that’s not the “fundamental problem” that will result in the fund being depleted in five years. And the real lesson here is broader than Social Security. Demographics matter, of course. But the erosion of the taxable wage base has played a much larger role than is commonly acknowledged.

We have known there would be a “demographic hump” for the Social Security system starting around 2011 and continuing until roughly 2029 for 75 years. It didn’t just sneak up on us suddenly. The fundamental problem is somewhat different: the assumptions that guided the reform of Social Security in 1983 have not held true.

Under the 1983 reform 89% of wage income was subject to Federal Insurance Contributions Act withholding (FICA). Today only 83% of wage income is subject to FICA. Keeping the system solvent would have required only one adjustment: indexing the payroll tax cap so that roughly 89% of wages remained taxable. Because wage growth has been concentrated above the taxable maximum, a growing share of national wage income escapes the payroll tax entirely.

That shouldn’t have been politically impossible or even controversial. Any assumption worth making is worth defending. It was assumed that the mean wage income would rise at roughly the same pace as the median wage income. The 1983 reforms were explicitly designed so that roughly 90% of wage income would be subject to payroll tax. That ratio has steadily eroded as wage growth has concentrated above the taxable maximum. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of this post.

As it true of so much in public life we can’t take a mulligan on that. Now any solution adequate to solve the problem would be politically painful and even impossible.

The point of this post is not to propose a solution to the problem but to point out something different. In making public policy we need to check our assumptions and ensure that they continue to hold for the expected life of the policy. That isn’t just true of Social Security. It’s true of trade policy, immigration, tax policy, and much of what government does.

I began posting The Glittering Eye on March 15, 2004. That means that as of yesterday this blog is 22 years old.

Nearly 22,000 posts later I plan to keep posting here as long as I live which I hope will be a few more years. Given family history I doubt the blog will be around long enough to celebrate a 30th birthday but who knows?

An enormous amount has changed over 22 years and yet nothing has changed. There was once a flourishing blogosphere of thousands of individual voices arguing, speculating, linking, and responding to one another in realtime. Much of that world has since been absorbed into legacy media or platforms like Substack in attempts to monetize blogging. Monetization has never been a goal of mine and I have never seriously pursued it.

Partisans still reflexively bicker back and forth. We are at war in the Middle East. China remains our primary global competitor.

The technology changes. The arguments mostly don’t.

I keep posting.

While President Trump declaims that the war in Iran is materially over, he also asks Japan to send warships to the Gulf, something that will take one to three weeks to accomplish in the event that Japan actually sends the ships, something I doubt it will do. The price of gas at the pump is whipsawing—we have observed prices raised 10%, lowered 10%, and raised again at the same stations in the course of a single day. This morning one of the major “talking heads” programs interviewed the Iranian foreign minister, something hard to imagine in war time. Another program had one guest explaining that everything had been planned while the next reported that nothing had been planned for and then showed videos taken on smartphones of people rejoicing over the war in the streets of Tehran.

With the primary elections just two days away everyone is lying, everyone is corrupt, no one is competent to perform the offices to which they are aspiring or likely to accomplish any of the things they’re running on. Ideally, they would all lose.

I am still recovering from watching one of the worst productions of Madama Butterfly I have ever seen, redeemed primarily by a couple of good performances and Puccini’s beautiful music. I’ll post on this in more depth later. On our way to the performance we walked across a bridge over a Chicago River dyed green a few hours earlier. Tonight the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy Awards will be televised. One of the movies expected to be a top pick for Best Motion Picture has been characterized by some of those who’ve seen it as the “worst movie they’ve ever seen”. I have seen none of the films nominated and I probably will never see most of them.

It appears inevitable that the Chicago Bears, who’ve played in Chicago since 1921, will leave Chicago.

In the weather today we expect clear, pleasant weather, rain, thunderstorms, “wintry mix”, and snow.

I am surrounded by a swirling kaleidoscope of irrationality.