Monthly Archive for November, 2010

For the last few years I’ve enjoyed revisiting this Thanksgiving piece by Christopher Hitchens. I looked for the link but it seems now to be entombed somewhere deep in the sepulchral bowels of the Wall Street Journal paywall. So I’m just reprinting the whole thing. Rupert Murdoch won’t mind. Seems a giving sort of fellow….

Anyway I hope everybody enjoys their delicious "feathered, flapping, gobbling and flightless product of evolution" this afternoon. And thanks for reading.

‘The Turkey Has Landed’
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
WSJ; November 23, 2005; Page A16

Concerning Thanksgiving, that most distinctive and unique of all American holidays, there need be no resentment and no recrimination. Likewise, there need be no wearisome present-giving, no order of divine service, and no obligation to the dead. This holiday is like a free gift, or even (profane though the concept may be to some readers) a free lunch — and a very big and handsome one at that. This is the festival on which one hears that distinct and generous American voice: the one that says "why not?" Family values are certainly involved, but even those with no family will still be invited, or will invite. The doors are not exactly left open as for a Passover Seder, yet who would not be ashamed to think of a neighbor who was excluded or forgotten on such a national day?

Immigrants like me tend to mention it as their favorite. And this is paradoxical, perhaps, since it was tentative and yet ambitious immigrants who haltingly began the tradition. But these were immigrants to the Americas, not to the United States.

You can have a decent quarrel about the poor return that Native Americans received for their kindness in leading Puritans to find corn and turkeys in the course of a harsh winter. You may find yourself embroiled, as on Columbus Day, with those who detest the conquistadores or who did not get here by way of Plymouth Rock or Ellis Island. ("Not for us it isn’t," as the receptionist at Louis Farrakhan’s Final Call once glacially told me, after I had pointed out that her boss had desired me to telephone that very day.) Even Halloween is fraught, with undertones of human sacrifice and Protestant ascendancy. But Thanksgiving really comes from the time when the USA had replaced the squabbling confessional colonists, and is fine, and all-American, too.

As with so many fine things, it results from the granite jaw and the unhypocritical speech of Abraham Lincoln. It seemed to him, as it must have seemed in his composition of the Gettysburg Address, that there ought to be one day that belonged exclusively to all free citizens of a democratic republic. It need not trouble us that he spoke in April and named a regular calendar day at the end of November, any more than it need trouble us that he mentioned "God" but specified no particular religion. No nation can be without a day of its own, and who but a demagogue or a sentimentalist would have appointed a simulacrum of Easter or Passover? The Union had just been preserved from every kind of hazard and fanaticism: Just be grateful. If there were to be any ceremonial or devotional moment at Thanksgiving, and I am sure that I wish that there were not, it still might not kill the spirit of the thing if Lincoln’s Second Inaugural were to be read aloud, or at least printed on a few placemats.

Any attempt at further grandiosity would fail. To remember the terrible war that saved the Union, or the Winthropian fundamentalism about that "city on a hill," would be too strenuous. And there are other days, in any case, on which one may celebrate or commemorate these things. I myself always concentrate on the dry wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, who once proposed that the turkey instead of the eagle should be the American national bird. After all, as he noted, the eagle is an inedible and arrogant predator whereas the turkey is harmless to others, nutritious, thrifty, industrious and profuse. Pausing only to think of the variable slogans here ("Where Turkeys Dare"; "The Turkey Has Landed"; "On Wings of Turkeys" and, by a stretch, "Legal Turkeys") I marvel to think that a nation so potentially strong could have had a Founding Father who was so irreverent. I also wish that I liked turkey. But there is always stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy — to be eked out by pumpkin pie, which I also wish I could pretend to relish.

Indeed, it is the sheer modesty of the occasion that partly recommends it. Everybody knows what’s coming. Nobody acts as if caviar and venison are about to be served, rammed home by syllabub and fine Madeira. The whole point is that one forces down, at an odd hour of the afternoon, the sort of food that even the least discriminating diner in a restaurant would never order by choice. Perhaps false modesty is better than no modesty at all.

Never mind all that. I am quite sure (indeed, I know) that many a Thanksgiving table is set with vegetarian delights for all the family. And never mind if you think that Norman Rockwell is a great cornball as well as a considerable painter. Many people all over the world, including many members of my own great profession of journalism, almost make their livings by describing the United States as a predatory and taloned bird, swooping down on the humble dinners of others. And of course, no country would really wish to represent itself on its own coinage and emblems as a feathered, flapping, gobbling and flightless product of evolution. Still and all, I have become one of those to whom Thanksgiving is a festival to be welcomed, and not dreaded. I once grabbed a plate of what was quite possibly turkey, but which certainly involved processed cranberry and pumpkin, in a U.S. Army position in the desert on the frontier of Iraq. It was the worst meal — by far the worst meal — I have ever eaten. But in all directions from the chow-hall, I could see Americans of every conceivable stripe and confession, cheerfully asserting their connection, in awful heat, with a fall of long ago. And this in a holiday that in no way could divide them. May this always be so, and may one give some modest thanks for it.

Allow me to affiliate myself with Jeffrey Goldberg’s entire portfolio of writings on airport security, particularly on the inanity of the new back-scatter irradiation machines. A few weeks ago Goldberg chose to opt-out of this particular indignity and undergo a different sort of indignity: the "enhanced" manual grope-fest which has been all over the news recently. TSA screeners can now touch passengers’ genitals and breasts. And if Goldberg’s experience is typical, TSA has really embraced the theater in security theater:

Apparently, I was the very first passenger [at T.F. Green Airport in Providence] to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, "Get new gloves, man, you’re going to need them where you’re going." The agent snapped on his blue gloves, and patiently explained exactly where he was going to touch me. I felt like a sophomore at Oberlin.

Another time Goldberg opted-out, the TSA agent yelled conspicuously to no one in particular, "We got an opt-out!" which was part of the same public shaming motive. This is theater because only normal law-abiding people would seek to avoid being singled out like that, or be fearful of earning the scorn of fellow passengers for holding up the line. A real terrorist would of course be immune to such a transparent tactic.

So ok, the real terrorist chooses the pat-down. The new invasive genital groping leaves nowhere to hide any contraband, right?

I asked [the TSA agent] if the new guidelines included a cavity search. "No way. You think Congress would allow that?"

I answered, "If you’re a terrorist, you’re going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina." He blushed when I said "vagina." […]

"Yes, but starting tomorrow, we’re going to start searching your crotchal area" — this is the word he used, "crotchal" — "and you’re not going to like it." […]

"But what about people who hide weapons in their cavities? I asked. I actually said "vagina" again, just to see him blush. "We’re just not going there," he reiterated.

So once again we have a new security procedure designed only as a simulacrum of actual security. It will further inconvenience and frighten and degrade and debase non-terrorists, and do absolutely nothing to deter or catch committed, smart terrorists who want to smuggle aboard explosives or small weapons.

And it may be even easier for them, depending on the which airport they choose. Jim Fallows, another staunch critic of ineffectual security theater, wrote about his own recent brush with the new TSA guidelines. He got to the security line prepared to opt out of the electonic disrobing device and accept a friendly genital pat-down instead:

But as I got near the head of the line, I saw that it split in two. If you took the left fork, you went through the regular old metal detector. If you took the right, you had to raise you hands over your head, hold that position for ten seconds, and get the enhanced scan.

So I went to the left.

Someone tell me how this makes sense. It’s so important to check every single passenger for every single thing he or she might be concealing under the clothes — unless the passenger decides to take the left fork.

So are these new machines an indispensible part of countering the evolving terrorist threat, or are they not? Are we any less safe because we scanned Goldberg in DC but didn’t scan Fallows in San Diego? If this is truly a matter of life and death, why all the exceptions and the patchwork implementation? I submit that San Diego airport is just as safe as DC’s, and air travel was just as dangerous before the back-scatter revolution as it is after.

At Salon, airline pilot Patrick Smith has an excellent essay in which he reminds us that the dangers of post-9/11 air travel are in fact nearly identical to the dangers of pre-9/11 air travel. He notes that the world endured a string of hijackings and airline-associated attacks in the 1980s, none of which precipitated a manic collective freakout on the part of the populace or the government.

Yes, I remember the underwear bomber. But where do we draw the line? Do we turn our airports into fortresses and surrender our freedoms and privacy, in the name of something that is ultimately impossible: total safety?

"What have we done?" is a chilling enough question. But here’s a scarier and more important one: What will we do when they strike again?

Because they will, and I shudder to imagine our response. […]

In the 1980s we did not overreact. We did not stage ill-fated invasions of distant countries. People did not cease traveling and the airline industry did not fall into chaos. We were lazy in enacting better security, perhaps, but as a country our psychological reaction, much to our credit, was calm, measured and not yet self-defeating.

This time, thanks to the wholly unhealthy changes in our national and cultural mind-set, I fear it will be different.

As security expert Bruce Schneier says, only two things have made air travel safer: "the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers." The rest of this theatrical nonsense is not TSA’s fault. It is the fault of our pusillanimous lawmakers who so eagerly give in to the political incentive of the perpetual one-way ratchet of invasiveness and indignity, and who peddle fake security because they’re afraid to tell us the real thing is a mirage. And it is our fault for being so easily corralled and benumbed and servile, like zoo animals; and in fact, demanding it be so.

I’ll be opting out of the back-scatter when I fly at Christmas, if only because I am quite sure there will soon come a time when there is no longer an option to do so. I fear that the great security ratchet is nowhere near its mechanical limit. And boy it ain’t gonna be pretty. 

David Brooks and George Will have very interesting companion pieces in the NYT and Newsweek respectively, both dealing with the dawning of the truly globalized information economy and America’s place in it.

George Will makes the very important point that the global economy is not a zero-sum game, and the continuing ascendancy of developing countries like China and India does not herald a dystopic American future blighted by decline and decadence. Instead this global growth represents both the greatest poverty- and privation-alleviation scheme in human history as well as a massive economic opportunity for those producers and innovators who stand to benefit from world markets that are expanding exponentially in size.

Will rattles off a few of the impressive statistics:

[The auto industry] is not dying, it is moving: In 2004, emerging markets (China, India, Brazil, etc.) had 32 percent of global auto sales; in 2014 they will have 51 percent.

Ten years ago, China and India had 13 percent of the world’s middle class; 20 years from now they will have 44 percent. Today they have few credit cards. India, with 1.2 billion people, has fewer than 20 million. (America has 1.4 billion.) By 2030, cards will be ubiquitous. […]

The world is going to eat more, more frequently, and more healthily. In 2014, Brazil, India, and China will spend about $2 trillion on food, about double what they spent in 2009. This augurs well for the value of Midwest farmland. […]

Three million iPods were sold in 2.5 years; 3 million Kindles were sold in two years; 3 million iPads were sold in 80 days; 3 million iPhones were sold in three weeks…

The welfare enhancement packed into that short exerpt is overwhelming. For his part President Obama has been somewhat muddled on this topic in his public statements. Famously photographed on the campaign trail in 2008 holding a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, Obama surely intuitively understands and cheers Will’s points. Just today in a press conference with the Indonesian president, when asked a question about China’s growing strength, Obama answered, “We think China being prosperous and secure is a positive. We’re not interested in containing that process.”

Yet while campaigning in Boston last month, he succumbed to a fever of populism when discussing the recent domestic achievements of countries like China, India, and South Korea:

They understand that whoever is able to train their young people will be able to out-compete any other country in the world. Those countries are not playing for second place. And the United States doesn’t play for second place. We play for first.

Now I don’t begrudge him a little populism on the campaign trail, but one can’t argue in favor of a policy just by using the rhetorical equivalent of a “We’re number one!” chant. (And all this talk of first and second place makes me think that just preceeding the End Times, we’ll first have a nice podium medal ceremony for the countries that, I don’t know, had the highest PPP-adjusted per capita income or the best year-over-year GDP growth or the lowest dropout rates or crime rates. I hate most all sports metaphors in politics, and they are particularly inapt and clumsy in foreign affairs.)

The 2010 campaign season was rife with ads that demonized China and accused political opponents of ignoring this or that grand looming China threat. The best executed was this one, in which our new Chinese overlords chuckle at our demise (though the factual content couldn’t be more wrong):

In his NYT column, David Brooks also talks about the mechanisms of the new innovation economy, but he focuses more on how America is positioned to benefit, rather than on the unmitigated boon represented by the “rise of the rest.”

[C]reativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks. It happens when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.

Now imagine you are this creative person in the year 2010, 2025 or 2050. You are living in some small town in Ukraine or Kenya or some other place, foreign or domestic. You long to break out and go to a place where people are gathering to think about the things you are thinking about, creating the things you want to create.

If you are passionate about fashion, maybe you will go to Paris. If it’s engineering, maybe it’ll be Germany. But if you are passionate about many other spheres, I suspect you’ll want to be in America.

He goes on to talk about the myriad social, political, and cultural reasons that this future innovator will want to be in America. His final point:

The crucial fact about the new epoch is that creativity needs hubs. Information networks need junction points. The nation that can make itself the crossroads to the world will have tremendous economic and political power.

He then says that America is well-situated to be that crossroads nation. This may be true, but we should never fail to recognize that there can indeed be more than one world creativity hub, and several global crossroads, and multiple complementary junction points; and in fact it is this arrangement that holds the greatest potential to maximize human well-being.

As you are bombarded with electoral predictions today, along with expert analysis purporting to predict how today’s events will change the behavior/incentives/hair style/diet of this or that politician, or herald the realignment or ascendancy or domination of this or that political coalition, or alter the trajectory of public policy for the next decade in some specific inexorable way, please remember this Jonah Lehrer column.

Jonah reminds us of the research of Berkeley psychologist Philip Tetlock, who in the mid-1980s started noticing that the predictions offered by professional political commentators and analysts didn’t seem to be very accurate. In fact, they were awful:

The dismal performance of the experts inspired Mr. Tetlock to turn his case study into an epic experimental project. He picked 284 people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” including journalists, foreign policy specialists, economists and intelligence analysts, and began asking them to make predictions. Over the next two decades, he peppered them with questions: Would George Bush be re-elected? Would apartheid in South Africa end peacefully? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits rated the probability of several possible outcomes. By the end of the study, Mr. Tetlock had quantified 82,361 predictions.

How did the experts do? When it came to predicting the likelihood of an outcome, the vast majority performed worse than random chance. In other words, they would have done better picking their answers blindly out of a hat. Liberals, moderates and conservatives were all equally ineffective. Although 96% of the subjects had post-graduate training, Mr. Tetlock found, the fancy degrees were mostly useless when it came to forecasting.

Just as every foreign policy specialist in 1984 was wrong about the Soviet Union because they were unable to predict glasnost and perestroika, and anyone who opined about the likely policy priorities of George W. Bush in early 2001 was made foolish by the interjection of 9/11, so too will today’s experts be spectacularly wrong due to a combination of cognitive bias and the outsized impact of highly improbable events. Of course, the experts will then explain retroactively how the improbable event was destined to occur all along for reasons only they can delineate, in an upcoming book.

This obsession with prediction is fascinating and seems to be universal. I’m certainly not immune to it: I’ve checked Nate Silver’s site with increasing frequency the last few weeks, and I find myself inexplicably animated when he makes some minute change to his official House prediction, or if he downgrades some obscure race from a likely to a lean. Now maybe it does matter in some substantive way if the Republicans pick up 52 vs. 53 vs. 61 seats tonight. But my question is, why do we care so much about it this afternoon?

We will have all our answers—barring recounts—by tomorrow morning. Unlike so many other spheres of political behavior and social scientific analysis, in the case of elections, empirical results are coming. So what is the instinct that makes us elevate Charlie Cook to some sort of indispensible Delphic oracle today, as if absent his tip-off we would all just wander directionless in the pre-dawn streets, bumping in to one another, clueless how to respond to events?

Part of our predictive affinity is just the increased sportification of politics. We like competition and competition is enhanced by anticipation and narratives of the underdog and the thrill of a surprise outcome. Also, I realize my perspective is skewed. Most people have no clue who Nate Silver or Charlie Cook is, and actually couldn’t care less how many seats change hands today. But I notice that these people will just have other spheres in which they indulge their predictive neuroses, such as those who always know what the weather forecast is for the next two weeks.

If you are betting on any of these outcomes for money, well then I can see the importance (and economist Robin Hanson believes the quality of our predictions and beliefs would improve dramatically if we submitted them to the judgments of financial prediction markets.)

But otherwise: What’s with the human desire to know about relatively mundane things slightly ahead of time?

I can certainly see the early evolutionary advantage in being able to make accurate predictions about near-future events: Will there be a large predator lurking in those bushes? What are the chances he will eat me? Shall I go forage elsewhere? But while we’re pretty evolutionarily optimized to make those sorts of basic survival assessments, we are not so well-adapted when faced with the complex uncertainty we encounter in the modern world. If I take this job will it be good for my career trajectory? Will this complicated investment opportunity help or hurt my finances?

Since the problems of adequate food and physical safety no longer vex us, most of the assessments we are forced to make deal with anticipating our future happiness and well-being. We do this by mentally simulating future events and then trying to predict whether that simulation will be good or bad for our happiness. But turns out we are absolutely terrible at both the simulation and the happiness prediction. Simulating being eaten on the savannah, and predicting the unhappiness of that, is easy. But for anything much more complicated, we run into the same biases and blind spots that the professional pundits do.

Seriously though: Bennet takes Colorado, and Reid finds a way in Nevada.