I find it fascinating that George Friedman’s take on critical theory, carried in RealClearWorld, closely tracks with my own, which is undoubtedly because his frame of reference is not unlike my own:

I entered graduate school in 1970, determined to study two things. One was political philosophy, the consideration of the nature of justice, particularly as presented by German philosophers. The second was called comparative communism, the study of communist states and movements, particularly contemporary ones. The choice of subjects wasn’t random, if perhaps presumptive. I wanted to understand Germany, the place that had defined my origins. And I wanted to understand communism, which had defined and would define much of my life. I was hostile to Marxism but deeply believed in understanding your enemy.
The more I studied, the more confused I became. Marxism seemed to have little to do with Marx, and communist regimes were rarely Marxist. Marxist movements around the world rarely consisted of workers, but rather of intellectuals and soldiers, and sometimes criminals. Similarly, Hegel and Nietzsche could be considered proto-Nazis only if you closed your eyes. The intellectual life I sought was far more coherent than the political realities around me. Since I crave order in all things, and since Marxism was more pressing at that moment than Nazism, I dove into the history of Marxism and of Marxist terrorism and MiG-21s.

How did Marx miscalculate? How did Lenin try to compensate for Marxism’s shortcomings? Why did Lenin fail? What caused the Soviet Union to fall? All is explained in the linked piece.

Here’s his conclusion:

The stubbornness of the human soul, for bad or good, transcends both a failed historical model and failed enthusiasm for change. The world is stubborn.

To understand the present moment it’s probably more helpful to understand Augustine than to understand Marx and that is to understand that the aspirations of today’s revolutionaries will crash on the rocks of their own humanity.

At The Hill Joe Concha reports that Americans just don’t trust the news media, darn it:

The U.S. media is the least trustworthy in the world, according to a comprehensive new Reuters Institute survey encompassing 46 countries.

Yes, you read that right. The country with among the most resources in this arena – human, technical and otherwise – finished dead last. Finland ranked the highest, with a 65 percent trust rating. In Kenya, the trust rating clocked in at 61 percent.

But here in the U.S.A., the home of global media giants including the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, we’re trusted by a whopping 29 percent of those reading and watching.

There are any number of possible explanations, including

• Trump (or Obama, Biden, Bush, or Clinton, depending on your political views)
• Fox News (or CNN, the NYT, etc. depending on your political views)
• Social media
• Media consolidation
• We’re deluged with infomation
• No man is a hero to his valet.

and so on. But I think it’s more basic.

First, declining trust in the news media has been going on for some time—at least 40 years. That’s before Trump was elected president or Fox News or Facebook even existed. Second, the Brits, French, and Taiwanese don’t trust their own news media, either.

I think it’s more basic than that. Years ago the 5Ws and an H (who, what, where when, why, and how) stopped being taught in journalism schools in favor of point-of-view reporting. Every story had to be an unfolding narrative with a clear point-of-view. IMO that’s a formula for biased reporting and loss of trust in the media is a predictable outcome.

What’s a person to do? If you’re a news junkie, you can cast a wide net, become aware of the biases of your sources, and take those biases into account. In reality most people don’t have the time or interest to do that and recognizing bias can be darned hard. It include not only what you cover and how but what you don’t cover, what you don’t say.

There are relatively unbiased news sources. These include Reuters, the Associated Press, Axios, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. Note I said news sources. Some of those sources are unbiased in their news reporting but have clear biases in their opinion reporting. Also, be aware that the bias you detect may be your own.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal analyze the American Families Plan:

Our analysis shows that the American Families Plan would add 21 million Americans to the list of federal entitlement beneficiaries. With these additional recipients, 57% of all married-couple children would receive federal entitlement benefits, and more than 80% of single-parent households would be on the entitlement rolls.

The share of households receiving assistance would be higher in some areas of the U.S. than in others. This is primarily because federal eligibility for many of the American Families Plan’s programs, particularly its refundable tax credits, don’t account for geographical differences in incomes and living costs.

We estimate that most of the Biden plan’s entitlement benefits would go to middle- and upper-income households. Households in the upper half of the nonelderly income distribution would receive 40% of the new entitlement benefits.

Our estimates are for a full-employment economy, not one in recession. So the percentage of U.S. households receiving benefits from at least one federal entitlement program would only increase if the U.S. economy were to falter.

Where will the money come from to finance this largess? Mr. Biden claims that taxes on the rich will entirely finance his American Families Plan. But his proposed revenue heist falls woefully short of the plan’s true cost. Presidential budgets for years have been littered with gimmicks to hide their true expense. The American Families Plan is no exception.

I think I can answer that question. The money will be obtained by issuing ourselves credit, i.e. by expanding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. However, as the graph I published the other day suggested, we are at an inflection point in that process. What happens next is anybody’s guess. I think the editors closing assessment is about right:

Improving the safety net is one thing, but spending more than $1 trillion on mainly middle-class entitlements and financing this expenditure with debt robs future generations while enriching today’s.

There is an argument to be made for borrowing to finance improving infrastructure defined as roads, bridges, sewer systems, network connectivity, and so on. The argument is particularly strong when what’s being financed are public goods, defined as goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. That argument doesn’t apply to personal consumption expenditures. Why create middle class entitlements? As George Bernard Shaw put it a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

I want to commend to your attention Glenn Loury’s lengthy and excellent disquisition on what he calls the “bias narrative” and the “development narrative” at Quillette. Here, for example, are his remarks on the suit against Harvard University brought by some Asian students:

Medical school is hard. Law school is hard. It requires real intellectual mastery to be done effectively. Unfortunately, a proportionate number of African Americans have not achieved that mastery. We can go into the reasons why. History has not been entirely kind to black people. There is blame enough to go around. But the fact remains that, relative to population, fewer blacks have developed this mastery, so we are fewer in the venues where the intellectual work is difficult.

Now, there are two things you can do in the face of that. One is to lower standards so as to increase the representation of African Americans and call that “inclusion.” The other is to face these developmental deficiencies and address them, and I mean address them from infancy. So, this is not laissez-faire. I’m not saying there could be no public initiatives; no educational enrichments, and so on. No summer programs, whatever. We can talk about what things need to be done, but can we first understand what the problem is? If our kids are testing poorly, it is because they do not know the material. If a poor Asian kid living in a three-room apartment with four siblings can ace the test, our kids can do it too. Anybody who does not think so is a racist. They have the “racism of low expectations” about blacks. They write us off. They think we are defeated by history. They patronize us, presuming that we can’t actually perform? “Yes, we can’t” becomes their motto.

But black Americans can perform. We just need to do the work. Give us an opportunity to confront the deficits and redress them, maintaining a level playing field. Do not lower the bar for us and we will measure up in the fullness of time. It may not happen tomorrow, and it may not happen the next day, but it will happen in the fullness of time. I say this as a matter of faith.

Although I am in material agreement with just about everything he says in the piece, I also recognize that there are many people who disagree and I wanted to suggest why that might be. When Dr. Loury writes:

So, I am left wanting to know just what they are talking about when they say, “systemic racism.” Use of that phrase expresses a disposition. It calls me to solidarity while asking for fealty, for my affirmation of a system of belief. It frames the issue primarily in terms of anti-black bias. It is only one among many possible narratives about racial disparities, and often not the most compelling one.

I think I can explain how that might be. When you have been radicalized with respect to race every incident in which something bad happens to a black person, the only possible explanation is racism. That is the nature of radicalization. It’s not puzzling. It’s political.

At any rate I recommend you read Dr. Loury’s thoughts.

As I read this discussion of the framing of the narrative on climate change by Jamie Milton Freestone at Areo it occurred to me that there is a spectrum of opinion on the subject, from hard global warmist alarmists at one end to climate change denialists on the other. From this passage:

Unlike the roadmap to nuclear disarmament, which is inscrutable, the way to avoiding climate catastrophe is, though steep, surprisingly well lit: abandon fossil fuels, especially for generating energy; invest in carbon sequestration (reforestation and new technologies); and vote out politicians who oppose this agenda.

I gather that the author leans toward the former. I am, as usual, more in the center than that. I think we should use resources more prudently than we do, we shouldn’t subsidize sprawl, and should be working harder on mitigation strategies rather than prevention strategies. I also believe that the rejection of nuclear power on the part of many of those who profess deep concern about global warming calls their entire program and intentions into question. I would add that there is no such thing as a green container ship.

IMO the best criticism that those at the rejectionist extreme have levied on the activists is “when they start acting like it’s an emergency I’ll believe it’s an emergency”, pointing to environmentalists boarding their private jets to attend global warming conferences. I think that goes a bit farther than pointing out hypocrisy which, indeed, is rampant.

I wish those on the two extremes were willing to give fairer hearings to those at the opposite end of the spectrum.

One of the things I have wondered about for some time is the relationship between morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 and obesity. Apparently, I’m not the only one who has been thinking about that as this CDC report confirms:

Among 3,242,649 patients aged ≥18 years with documented height and weight who received ED or inpatient care in 2020, a total of 148,494 (4.6%) had ICD-10-CM codes indicating a diagnosis of COVID-19 (Table). Among 71,491 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (48.1% of all COVID-19 patients), 34,896 (48.8%) required ICU admission, 9,525 (13.3%) required invasive mechanical ventilation, and 8,348 (11.7%) died. Approximately 1.8% of patients had underweight, 28.3% had overweight, and 50.8% had obesity. Compared with the total PHD-SR cohort, patients with COVID-19–associated illness were older (median age of 55 years versus 49 years) and had a higher crude prevalence of obesity (50.8% versus 43.1%).

Obesity was a risk factor for both hospitalization and death, exhibiting a dose-response relationship with increasing BMI category: aRRs for hospitalization ranged from 1.07 (95% confidence interval [CI = 1.05–1.09]) for patients with a BMI of 30–34.9 kg/m2 to 1.33 (95% CI = 1.30–1.37) for patients with a BMI ≥45 kg/m2 (Figure 1) compared with those with a BMI of 18.5–24.9 kg/m2 (healthy weight); aRRs for death ranged from 1.08 (95% CI = 1.02–1.14) for those with a BMI of 30–34.9 kg/m2 to 1.61 (95% CI = 1.47–1.76) for those with a BMI ≥45 kg/m2. Severe obesity was associated with ICU admission, with aRRs of 1.06 (95% CI = 1.03–1.10) for patients with a BMI of 40–44.9 kg/m2 and 1.16 (95% CI = 1.11–1.20) for those with a BMI ≥45 kg/m2. Overweight and obesity were risk factors for invasive mechanical ventilation, with aRRs ranging from 1.12 (95% CI = 1.05–1.19) for a BMI of 25–29.9 kg/m2 to 2.08 (95% CI = 1.89–2.29) for a BMI ≥45 kg/m2. Associations with risk for hospitalization and death were pronounced among adults aged <65 years: aRRs for patients in the highest BMI category (≥45 kg/m2) compared with patients with healthy weights were 1.59 (95% CI = 1.52–1.67) for hospitalization and 2.01 (95% CI = 1.72–2.35) for death.

Criticisms of “fat-shaming” upset me. Social sanction can be a powerful force in regulating behavior and of the factors involved in obesity which include behavior, heredity, and acquired factors only tangentially related to behavior, is the easiest to address.

I found this opinion piece at RealClearDefense by Khang Vu on reopening negotiations with North Korea interesting. Here’s a snippet:

Détente-sceptics often criticise the approach taken by South Korean liberal presidents to the North as naively rewarding it “hundreds of millions of dollars” via the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Mount Kumgang Resort without demanding enough in return. Kim’s summits with Trump have not brought in any significant financial gains directly from Washington, but Kim received international recognition surpassing what his grandfather and father ever achieved. All Kim did to secure the summits was to simply stop carrying out nuclear and missile tests.

By this logic, Kim will expect more or at least equal rewards from Biden for restarting diplomacy. North Korea has been frank. It wants the United States to stop its “hostile policies,” which includes lifting international sanctions, before talks can begin. Biden’s “calibrated” approach, however, emphasises limited reward at the outset and slowly increases it as the process goes on, to hedge against North Korea’s cheating.

Moreover, since the use or threat of sanctions is central to Biden’s North Korea policy, dropping all of them before diplomacy begins deprives Washington of its leverage at the table. So while the U.S. seeks talks, the sanctions remain.

It all amounts to a dilemma. Upping the rewards for dialogue might increase chance of diplomatic success. But it also gives North Korea an incentive to drag its feet, then ask for more in future. Cheap rewards are safer, but may not jumpstart talks.

It should never be ignored that there are actually four parties negotiating over North Korea with wildly diverging, even opposing goals: North Korea, South Korea, China, and the U. S. We have by far the least stake in the situation. Indeed, I don’t understand why we should have an urgent interest in North Korea at all. IMO we would be much better served by “strategic patience” than by frantic activism, just considering the two extreme poles.

One of the problems is that South Korea has too many fantasists who long for reunification. The reality is that the South cannot afford reunification. German reunification cost $2 trillion euro and Korean reunification is projected to cost twice or more that sum and South Korea’s economy is a fifth the size of Germany’s. And the Chinese very much do not want a reunified Korea.

In a piece at The DispatchThomas Joscelyn outlines how fraught the situation in Afghanistan is. He points to recent gains by the Taliban, how many districts they presently control, and the likelihood of provincial capitols falling to the Taliban. What he doesn’t mention is how any of that would change without a massive, permanent military commitment to Afghanistan by the U. S. or why we should do that.

None of this represents a change. It has always been the case and would always be the case as long as we were committed to leaving, which four consecutive presidents have claimed.

There’s a good article accompanied by an eye-catching graphic on nuclear weapons at Sandboxx by Stavros Atlamazoglou. Here’s its kernel:

There are nine countries with a nuclear capability (U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea). Combined, these countries have approximately 13,500 nuclear warheads, including deployed, reserved, and stockpiled, with the majority of them distributed between the U.S. (~5,800) and Russia (~6,375).

However, of that number, approximately 3,825 are “deployed,” or placed in missiles or located on operational bases for immediate use. And only the traditional four countries (U.S., Russia, U.K., and France) maintain that readiness.

If you wonder why I repeat that the most important bilateral relationship in the world is between the U. S. and Russia, that should give you a hint. 12,000 nuclear weapons with almost 4,000 deployed remains desperately dangerous. I’m also concerned about the possibility of North Korea seeing its nuclear arsenal as a source of ready cash but that’s another subject.