Recommended: Now that Trump’s officially won the White House

Amid the ongoing childish liberal hysteria about Hillary Clinton's loss, there are (finally) beginning to be a few adult liberal voices beginning to think about what the Democrats need to do next. One of the best I have seen thus far is Bryan Dean Wright's opinion piece Now that Trump’s officially won the White House here are 10 ways Dems must drain their own swamp.  And, interestingly enough, considering that Wright is a liberal, it was published on the conservative Fox news website.

For those who can't reach the original story (there seems to be a block on some devices), here are his points:

1. Elites Must Go. We will push aggressively for a constitutional amendment for term limits. We also support a lifetime ban on elected officials serving as lobbyists. You don’t drain a swamp just to let it fill back up again.

2. Fair Trade. NAFTA and the World Trade Organization must be renegotiated. For 20 years, we have shipped jobs abroad with the promise of cheap goods and better jobs in return. Economists acknowledge this arrangement has failed.

3. Economic Vitality. We support rebuilding America’s infrastructure to facilitate job growth and protect the health of our people. This is especially true in rural America and inner cities. Meanwhile, we must address the economic tsunami heading our way: Silicon Valley’s automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

4. Education. We staunchly support public education and recognize the tough position of today’s teachers. Still, there is room for reform. Charter schools are part of that solution.

5. Energy. The elites shipped us off to wars and conflicts for oil. No more. It’s time to rebuild our electrical grid and let the free market develop solar, wind and natural gas projects in its place; no Solyndras.

6. National Security. We embrace the goal of making countries democratic, but not by the barrel of a gun. Wars like Iraq and Libya must end. Next, our fight against terrorism should include a tough line against the radical Islamic ideology that pours from Saudi Arabia. Finally, we must build an aggressive capacity to address asymmetrical threats like cyber attacks.

7. Corporate America. Wells Fargo recently admitted to opening up two million fake accounts in our names. This isn’t an anomaly: big corporations often chase profits at the expense of the American worker. We will fight any efforts to roll back common sense rules to keep businesses honest.

8. Environment. The Iroquois tribe had it right – every decision should consider how it would impact seven generations in the future. Our posterity deserves the cleanest water and freshest air we can give them, even if that means we sacrifice today.

9. Social Issues. The government should get out of our bodies, our bedrooms, and our churches. So long as our choices don’t involve taxpayer money, it’s no one’s business but our own. Next, we reject identity politics and their corrosive effects on the nation. Finally, we embrace individual responsibility and accountability.

10. Social Safety Net. We understand that the government can be a force for good if it’s directed properly. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are prime examples of that. We are amenable to reform but not if it undermines America’s basic protections for the most vulnerable.
 
I think his prescription is right on, and if followed would probably bring the Democrats back into contention fairly quickly, both at the state level and nationally.  But of course it probably won't be followed, because its very first step is to dump the liberal elites who have run the party into the ground over the last decade, and they aren't likely to step aside easily.  Too bad, because the nation is much healthier and much safer when there are two strong political parties in contention.

Still, once the shriller voices die down, if they ever do, perhaps the Democrats will get real and rethink their message and their strategy.  One can hope.

What is it about progressives this election?

What is it about progressives and this election? Donald Trump is right; if Clinton had won and Republicans had marched in the streets, threatened members of the Electoral College to try to get them to be faithless, claimed it was fake news or the Russians or the FBI that lost them the election, and gotten childishly emotional on camera, Clinton followers would be claiming it really did prove they were a “basket of deplorables”.

Hillary, of course, is performing true to form. She simply can’t admit that her election loss had anything to do with her; it had to be (take your pick) the FBI, or the Russian hackers, or fake news, or unfair media coverage..or..or.  It couldn’t possibly be anything to do with her own carelessness with secret documents, or her uninspiring message (whatever it was), or the pay-for-play payments from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation, or her cozy and high-paying relationship with Wall Street, or her failure to pay attention to her Blue State supporters in key swing states. It had, surely, to be someone else’s fault.

But what is it about the rest of the progressive media and Democratic elites that they can’t just accept that they lost because of a weak campaign and a tainted candidate, and turn to the business of correcting their mistakes and preparing for the next election?  I’m an independent, socially liberal and supportive of many progressive causes and positions, and the Democrats could have my vote if they would act like grownups.  But they certainly won’t get my vote if they continue to act like petulant spoiled children who didn’t get their way.

The Climate Change Debate

Climate change has become one of those issues so thoroughly bound up in ideology that there is little reasonable public discussion about it from either side.  There are in fact three separate issues involved:

1.      Is the worldwide climate changing?

2.      If so, to what extent is the change man-made?

3.      If it is man-made, what is the most reasonable response?

1.  Is the worldwide climate changing?

The short answer is almost certainly yes.  Worldwide 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, and this year (2016) looks on track to be the hottest year yet. Worldwide the global temperature has increased about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since adequate records began to be kept around 1880.  But the change is not uniform over the globe – some places have even gotten colder, and local temperature variations can be higher or lower. However the changes are becoming quite visible in the changes in growing seasons, the changes in vegetation, the thawing of permafrost, and the shrinking of polar ice packs and mountain glaciers.  Climate change deniers like to cherry pick the data to argue their case, like noting that the hottest year in the US was 1934 (but that was the US, not global).  But the evidence is pretty conclusive that the globe is warming.

2. To what extent is the change man-made?

The short answer is that almost certainly some of the change is the result of human activity. We know enough about the chemistry and physics of greenhouse gases to know how they operate to trap heat, and we have good enough instruments to be able to measure pretty accurately the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere. There is no question that greenhouse gas concentrations have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and by techniques like analyzing air trapped in pocket of ancient glaciers we can map the increase over time pretty accurately. Before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide (one of the greenhouse gasses) was about 280 ppm (parts per million) – now it is past 400 ppm. Unless all we know of chemistry and physics is completely wrong, (pretty unlikely) this is having a significant warming effect on global temperatures.

There is a legitimate debate about exactly how much of the warming effect is man-made and how much might come from other sources, but climate change deniers have proposed no other likely source that would account for any significant part of the observed rise. The best they can offer is the observation that random variations do occur, which is true but not very convincing.

3. What is the most reasonable response?

This is the question that ought to be getting the most public and policy debate. It is not as simple as simply replacing all fossil fuels with renewable energy. For one thing, carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide accounts for around 80% of the greenhouse gasses emitted by industrialized nations, but methane, while only around 10% of emitted greenhouse gases, is about 20 times more potent in trapping heat, and it comes from things like cows, rice paddies, and rotting vegetation and sewerage, and methane being released from frozen deposits on the ocean floors, not things so easily controlled.

Then there are the economic issues: about 70% of US power and electricity comes from fossil fuels, far more than can be replaced any time soon by renewable energy sources. Any significant cut in that energy source will have profound impacts on the economy, on transportation, on food production, and on industrial output. The result might well be more disastrous than climate change.  I think most people are unaware of how dependent just about everything in their daily lives is on energy. Without adequate energy we wouldn’t grow enough food to feed everyone, nor could we transport what we did grow to where it was needed, nor keep it from spoiling, nor cook it. We couldn’t run most of our offices and factories and stores.  We couldn’t heat and cool our homes, nor make many of the products we use every day.

There are things that can be done, of course. We could shift to more nuclear energy, which can be made pretty safe if we adopt some of the newer approaches (for example, subcritical accelerator-driven reactors; turn off the flow of neutrons from the linear accelerator and the nuclear reaction stops instantly). We could try to capture more of the carbon dioxide from combustion processes. We could reduce the amount of beef and milk we produce (there are an estimated 1.3-1.5 BILLION cows in the world, producing about 25% of the methane emitted into the atmosphere). We could undertake a massive reforestation project around the world, since trees absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide.

What I am suggesting is that simply reducing carbon dioxide output may not be the only solution, nor even the best solution.  The issue is far more complex, and deserves a far wider, and more rational, debate than it is getting now. Climate deniers won’t even acknowledge the problem. Green advocates are too focused on a single “silver bullet” solution – reducing carbon dioxide emissions - and seem oblivious to the economic consequences.  The problem is more complex than that, and the solution will be too.

Recommended: Flashpoints – The Emerging Crisis in Europe

The current problems in the European Union have their roots far, far back in European history. George Friedman, author of other good books on geopolitics (see, for example, the 2009 book The Next 100 years in my booklist) has written a book the first third of which sets the context of today’s Europe by examining its past since Henry the Navigator set Portugal first on the path to empire. Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe argues that the EU papered over, but didn’t eliminate, the longstanding tensions in Europe, especially in the borderlands that separate, for example, Russia from Western Europe, or France from Germany.

With the current crisis in the EU, and with the rise of Germany once again as the pre-eminent power in Europe, these old tensions are coming to the surface again. Russia, much weaker now than when the Soviet Union existed, is doing what it thinks it must to rebuild its influence in the buffer states to protect itself from the future possibility of yet another French or German invasion. Britain is doing what it has always done – keep itself separate from the continent while trying to influence the balance of power there.

This is a good book, and an important contribution to trying to understand the dynamics of Europe these days.

Trump’s nominations and Russia

It seems to me a pattern is emerging in Trump’s cabinet and senior staff picks – he is picking people who are experienced in dealing with Russia. The Obama/Clinton years have been filled with constant media and diplomatic attacks on Russia, casting them back into our old Cold War advisories. Obama/Clinton tried a “Russia Reset”, but it was doomed from the beginning.  Perhaps we might have guessed that from the “Reset” button Clinton presented to Russian Foreign Minister Lavror in 2009. It was supposed to say “Reset” (perezagruzka) in Russian but the State Department got it wrong and put the word peregruzka (overcharge) on it. It seems to me the State Department under Clinton continued to get it wrong with Russia from then on.

It is true that Russia is not governed the way we would like America to be governed.  It is not a democracy, but rather a rather more refined Mafia-like kleptocracy, in which President Putin and his friends are getting quite rich. On the other hand, that seems to be the sort of government that the Russian public chooses, perhaps because they care more about stability under a strong leader  than about individual freedom. And given their history, who could blame them?

It is also true that the Russians are a proud people, with a rich history, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a humiliating experience for them, which we didn’t make any easier by our actions and inaction. Instead of stepping in and magnanimously offering a helping hand (as we did to Germany with the Marshall Plan after we defeated them in World War II), we largely ignored them when we weren’t gloating in the media about having won the Cold War. So I can understand why the Russian people respond to President Putin’s constant attempts to make them proud again, to give them some dignity.

As a practical matter, Russia is no threat to us. They are a regional power, not a global power, and cannot project significant force beyond their immediate neighborhood.  Yes, they have nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, but the ruling regime knows that using them would bring immediate destruction to the regime, so they are a matter of national pride and national status, not effective military threats. Their economy is too weak to sustain a major war. They can stir up trouble in their near neighborhood, but not much else.

And the Russian regime is paranoid for quite understandable reasons, after invasions in recent times by neighbors France (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler). I think we Americans don’t appreciate how the ever-closer encroachment of NATO to their borders makes them nervous. We may know that NATO is just a defensive force, but with the Russian’s recent history, I can see why they don’t see it as such a benign force, and why they would like to have buffer states between themselves and the West.

One way to turn an enemy into a friend is to stop treating them as an enemy and start treating them as a friend. I suspect that may be what is in Trump’s mind. Give the Russian people the dignity and respect they deserve as a nation with a rich history and tradition, and legitimate security and economic concerns of their own.  Stop trying to replay the Cold War with them, and stop bitching that they aren’t a democracy. Certainly there are issues we disagree on – just as we disagree on various issues with other nations – but there are lots of issues in which we have common interests and should be working together.

Trump’s efforts here may not succeed, but it seems to me worth giving it a try. Certainly the path we have been on with Russia up to now under Obama hasn’t worked.   Of course the old Cold War hawks in America’s political class – liberal and conservative alike – will be up in arms about this, and the liberal media will continue to “view with alarm” Trump’s moves (but then they seem to kvetech endlessly about anything he does, so what else is new?).

I’m encouraged that we seem to have a president-elect who appears willing to step out of the old Cold War mindset that has dominated the professional Washington foreign policy community, and that hasn’t been working, and try something different with Russia.

Too many generals?

 The latest round of kvetching by liberal media figures who still can’t get over Hillary’s losing is about the number of generals Trump has been selecting for his top positions. The worry, apparently, is that so many military leaders in the administration will tend to make the administration more prone to military action.  In my experience, however, it is the non-military politicians who seem most prone to military adventures; the experienced military leaders understand all too well the uncertainties and the immense cost and the logistical nightmares of war. Generals like Colin Powell were the reluctant warriors, and civilians like Donald Rumsfeld were the ones who thought a small, highly mobile force was all that was needed to conquer Iraq.

If anything, I am encouraged that the administration will have some experienced military people in it to keep the naïve politicians from getting us into any more unwinnable military adventures.

Recommended: Trump, Taiwan and an Uproar

There is a wonderful 1993 movie called Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, involving the investigation of a murder in a newly-opened Japanese corporate office building in New York. In it there is an early scene in which the young detective (Wesley Snipes), guided by the old Japan hand (Sean Connery) suddenly realizes that he is completely out of his depth, and that in the Japanese corporate culture around him there are layers and layers of complexity well beyond his simple American concepts.  I think the mainstream American press and the blogosphere and the TV talking heads are about at about that point right now. Ideologically blinded, they still think of Trump as dumb and naïve despite the now overwhelming evidence that he is in fact a pretty bright guy, a lot brighter apparently than the political establishment and media that were so sure he would never win the primaries, and certainly never win the presidency. And in fact, anyone who really thought clearly about it might suspect that anyone who could become a billionaire with a private 757 jet in the rough, dog-eat-dog high-risk New York commercial real estate market is probably a pretty clever cookie!

Trump’s call with the President of Taiwan set off a predictable cascade of editorials and stories about how this was yet another naïve move by a foreign policy amateur. Now of course it has been coming out that this was instead a carefully planned strategic move, orchestrated in part by ex-Senator Bob Dole over several weeks.  To understand the background and probable significance of this move, read George Friedman’s article Trump, Taiwan and an Uproar.  Friedman, CEO of STRATFOR, the world’s largest private intelligence agency, is a very astute geopolitical student. (I highly recommend reading STRATFOR’s free weekly geopolitical summary articles, and Friedman's books).

Since the mainstream press (and the administration) has been wrong-footed for some years now with ISIS and the Middle East, China, Putin’s Russia, Brexit, and now the primaries and the election, one wonders how much more it will take before they realize they need to re-calibrate their thinking. Or maybe they are so in thrall with their ideology, or so smug in their supposed superiority that they are simply incapable of learning and changing!