The Dark Side of Internet Discussions

Ain't the Web wonderful? I am no longer dependent upon the mass media to provide me with news. I don't have to rummage past all those stupid stories about traffic accidents, White House press conferences, and the latest political tempest in a teapot. I can go to websites that offer detailed information on whatever topic of interest strikes my fancy. Indeed, the information I can get on dedicated websites far surpasses the quality and quantity of the mainstream media. Hooray for open communications!

But there's a dark side to this: not only can *I* get what *I* want --- *anybody* can get what *they* want. What's so bad about that? When you combine it with the human tendency to prefer what we want to hear rather than the truth, you end up with a very bad trend.

Consider: liberals prefer to go to Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, or Hullabaloo. Conservatives prefer Little Green Footballs, Red State, or Instapundit. There's nothing wrong with these preferences, but each of these information outlets offers up a very slanted perception of the world. On Daily Kos you'll read lots of stories about government corruption, bad news from Iraq, and dirty tricks perpetrated by Republican candidates -- but you'll never read stories about heroic actions by American soldiers in Iraq, Mr. Obama's connections with a corrupt Chicago financier, or the latest crazy far-left demonstration. And similarly with the conservative blogs.

The end result of this is that we have two politically opposed groups that are being fed mountains of completely different information. They live in two completely separate universes, and have no basis whatsoever for discussion.

This is a very dangerous situation. Compromise is the lifeblood of democracy. there will always be disagreements in a democracy, and the only way it works is if both sides are willing to find common ground upon which they agree. However, the new information channels mean that there is no common ground between conservatives and liberals. They have no basis for compromise. Accordingly, our democracy grows more partisan and hence weaker.

We see this right here in this little blog. Try as I may, I cannot get much comment from conservatives. Most of the participants are strongly liberal, so we get one-sided discussions. Both sides like to stay in their home turf.

The great hope here is that the Internet political warriors will remain a small percentage of the overall body politic and that the American center will overrule the two wings and force compromise. I really can't say how important the new information channels are. But there is certainly a potential for democracy-eroding partisanship.

Change in comment policy

Some idiot posting as "Anonymous" has left an absurdly long comment in one of the topics, so long as to damage the utility of the topic. I have therefore decided on a small policy change: I no longer permit anonymous comments. This will not affect any of our regular participants. Here's hoping that I don't have to take stronger measures.

What to do about Iran?

I shall begin with a stipulation that some may disagree with: that Iran is actively pursuing development of a nuclear weapon. At this point we do not have any direct evidence that they are doing so. However, three factors lead us to conclude that they are, in fact, pursuing development of a nuclear weapon:

1. A great deal of indirect evidence in the form of information on the technologies that they have already acquired, some of which are appropriate only for a nation seeking to build nuclear weapons;

2. Their past record of deception, and their current refusal to provide important information to the UN.

3. They would be fools NOT to build a nuclear weapon. Their national interest strongly supports the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

These factors do not constitute ironclad proof of an Iranian weapons program, but I think that, for the purposes of this discussion, we should accept as fact that proposition that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The real question is, what should we do about this?

The most common proposal forwarded by conservatives is that the USA should bring to bear its superior military force to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Most of the ideas I have seen involve a bombing campaign using aircraft and cruise missiles.

Such a strategy is doomed to failure for multiple reasons:

1. It's not militarily possible. The Iranian nuclear industry is dispersed and hardened. That is, there are no central facilities that constitute a critical component of the industry; it's all broken up into lots of small facilities. While this makes the Iranian program less efficient and more costly, it also renders that program less vulnerable to military attack.

Moreover, we suspect many of those facilities to lie deep underground in facilities hardened against air attack. Even if we knew where they are (which we don't), we couldn't get at them with our air forces.

I won't even consider the possibility of an invasion. After our disasters in Afghanistan (population 3 million) and Iraq (population 26 million), the notion of invading Iran (population 70 million) is simply ludicrous.

2. Iranian retaliation would prove devastating. The Iranians have acquired supersonic anti-shipping missiles that are almost impossible to intercept. They could shut down all shipping through the Persian Gulf, creating a worldwide oil crisis that would be economically devastating to many nations, including most of our allies. The anticipation of such an outcome will create tremendous diplomatic pressure against any military action against the Iranians.

3. In the long run, it is necessarily counterproductive. If we merely destroy their installations, all we accomplish is to give them all the greater incentive to build a bomb. They will simply bury their installations deeper into the ground and make them harder to hit. They'll still get the bomb in the long run -- and when they do they'll be that much madder at us.

4. World reaction against us would be overwhelming. The world is sick and tired of watching the USA invade Islamic nations, kill lots of civilians, and then botch the occupation. We have zero credibility for further military adventures. The diplomatic costs to the USA would be gigantic.

So let's dispense with this nonsense about military solutions to our problem with Iran; there aren't any.

So let's look at the diplomatic options available to us. First is the option of dealing directly with Iran. This has no hope of convincing them to abort their efforts to build a bomb. Possession of a bomb is enormously valuable to Iran; nothing we can offer them has comparable value. They will not readily abandon this project.

We could make progress with the Iranians if we could assemble a solid coalition of all the major powers against the Iranian bomb. In such a case, the threat of sanctions would be strong enough to force the Iranians to back down. Unfortunately, we cannot assemble such a coalition; the Russians and the Chinese are the major obstacles. Why? Each has a national interest at stake.

For the Russians, the first national interest is financial: they have already sold a good deal of nuclear equipment to the Iranians and they would like to continue that lucrative relationship.

The primary Chinese interest at work lies in establishing strong diplomatic ties with Iran. China is slowly building a network of strong allies all over the globe. It is especially interested in those countries that are shunned by the West for their domestic policies. China wants to build up a solid bloc of anti-Western countries, and Iran is an ideal candidate to woo.

But for both Russia and China, there is another motivation at work: a desire to cut the USA down a notch or two. They both sense the weakness of the American geopolitical position after its fiasco in Iraq and would very much like to further the erosion of the American position.

Had America not invaded Iraq, it might have been able to assemble enough diplomatic juice to overcome these obstacles. Given our current position, this is no longer feasible. Had we focussed our energies on Iran instead of Iraq, we might have stopped the Iranian bomb. At this point, there is nothing we can do that will prevent the Iranians from acquiring a bomb.

There remains one tiny possibility: an Israeli attack on Iran. I don't believe that the Israelis are stupid enough to try such a thing. If they do, they will surely slow down the Iranians but they will fail to stop them, thereby succeeding only in insuring that they will be on the first target list.

Our policy should therefore shift from active opposition (we're going to lose anyway) to figuring out how to make the best of a very bad situation. We're going to have to accept the fact that the Iranians will have a bomb and will be able to thumb their noses at us.

Yep, it sucks. That's what happens when you make geopolitical blunders.

"Gotcha" Politics

I am really sick and tired of "gotcha" politics. There's a class of advocates and newsmongers who thrive on the latest trumped-up scandal. Few of these have much significance. The most recent tempest-in-a-teapot concerns Mr. Obama's relationship with his pastor -- as if that mattered. Let's be serious -- are YOU willing to accept moral responsibility for all the statements made by your pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi, or mullah --including those not made in your presence?

By the time you read this, Mr. Obama's case will probably have been dumped for some other ridiculous "scandal". Let's consider some of the recent kerfluffles:

1. The most absurd was the complaint against Ms. Clinton that one of her campaign ads featuring a video clip of her out campaigning included in the distance a lawn ornament that is offensive to blacks. Talk about a stupid criticism!

2. Then there was the brouhaha over the darkening of Mr. Obama's face in a Clinton campaign ad. This, I confess, had some small degree of significance -- it really does appear that somebody deliberately altered the original video to make him appear blacker. This was definitely wrong. But I don't think it deserved much attention. We should have chalked it up as yet another example of "Stupid Politician Tricks" and moved on.

3. The wrangle over Mr. McCain's relationship with a female lobbyist was particularly ironic. The issue that grabbed the most attention -- the possibility of a sexual relationship between Mr. McCain and the lobbyist -- was both absurd and meaningless. Who cares if Mr. McCain had sex with this woman; it's utterly meaningless! Besides, I am willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. I really don't think that he engaged in anything sexually untoward. What WAS significant, I think, is the evidence that Mr. McCain awarded government favors to a lobbyist. The special treatment that Mr. McCain gave to the lobbyist's client is definitely unsavory. I don't think any crimes were committed, and I won't make a federal case out of it, but there is some small substance here -- and the press seems to have ignored that in preference to the salacious side of the story.

4. The Rezko case presents us with another remote possibility of something significant, blown all out of proportion. Mr. Rezko appears to have been a possibly shady operator, and is now on trial in Chicago for alleged misdeeds. He supported Mr. Obama in his early years, and provided Mr. Obama with what appears to be some financial assistance. This, by itself, means little; the world is full of shady operators and a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of all their supporters. The only question is whether Mr. Obama reciprocated with any special favors. As yet, there has been absolutely nothing in the way evidence in that regard. In this, Mr. Obama's case contrasts sharply with Mr. McCain's case, for we know that Mr. McCain did favors for his supporter.

I'm not arguing here that politicians should not be accountable -- I think they should be held accountable for the actions that matter. All three of the major candidates have served as Senators; why haven't their voting records been subjected to close scrutiny? Let's keep our eye on the ball here: a politician's job is to make political decisions, and the best indication of the political decisions that they'll make in the future is the record of the political decisions they have made in the past. Yet we have seen very little discussion of this in the campaigns, because Americans are too god-damned lazy to pay attention to what matters.

Mr. Obama Versus Ms. Clinton

I strongly prefer Mr. Obama to Ms. Clinton. Many people who do not support Mr. Obama seem confused as to why he has garnered such fervent support. Since they cannot understand the basis of this support, they assume that it must be some form of madness, and call it "Obamania". But projecting one's own confusion onto others is no way to understand the universe; if you don't understand it, you should either shrug your shoulders and let it be or take the time to investigate more closely.

I know why I prefer Mr. Obama to Ms. Clinton, and I suspect that others share my thinking, if perhaps subconsciously. It lies in one's approach to the nature of our Republic. Let me sketch the two opposing schools of thought:

Winner take all
This is the political philosophy that has dominated the American body politic since the inauguration of Mr. Bush. The thinking is very bottom-line oriented: if we can get 50% + 1 of the votes, then we don't need to worry about the opposition. A simple majority permits us to do anything we want. We can cram our decisions down the throats of the opposition, and they can't do anything about it. Every political battle is fought in isolation, with the goal being victory at all costs. If we can't get 50% + 1 with our preferred policy, then we'll water it down just enough to get to that magic 50% + 1 point. If we obtain more than 50% + 1, then we have compromised too much and we need to sharpen the terms. It's all a matter of vote-counting and pushing as hard as we can for the greatest victory.

This approach is almost by definition polarizing. It forces both sides to fight every battle tooth and nail, to treat each and every battle as a matter of simple victory or defeat. It is corrosive to the health of our democracy because it encourages citizens to take sides between one team or the other rather than consider each issue on its own merits. The Republicans played this game better than the Democrats, enforcing what they called "party discipline". In truth, it was not so much discipline as the imposition of the "winner take all" philosophy upon the entire Republican party. The slogan was "You're either with us or against us"; no room was left for minor differences of opinion. This allowed the Republicans to win a lot of Congressional votes. However, the Republicans will pay for their party discipline in November. The sins of Mr. Bush will be visited upon the Republican Party. Every Democrat will rightly accuse their Republican opponent of rubber-stamping the Bush agenda, which is widely perceived as having failed badly. Mr. Bush's sub-30% approval rating will stick like tar to every Republican candidate.

Ms. Clinton seems to accept this "winner take all" style of politics. She's fighting hard, and doesn't seem to scruple at any ploy she can to win the nomination. If she gets the nomination, she will respond in kind to the dirty tricks and nasty smears that the Republicans will surely direct at her. And if she wins the Presidency, she will take full advantage of the Democratic Congress to cram her own policies down the throats of the Republicans.

I can certainly understand the desire for some payback. After all, the Republicans have driven this country so far to the right that we'll need eight years of Democratic payback just to get the country back into balance. But it is likely that eight years of Democratic supremacy will lead to a simple cycling of American politics, swinging back and forth between the extremes of left and right. That's just not healthy.

Compromise
The essence of the Obama philosophy, as I perceive it, is the emphasis on compromise. The fundamental concept behind democracy is the realization that people disagree, and that they have to come up with workable compromises that most people can live with. Without compromise, policy is subject to a tug of war, flipping from one extreme to the other. That's no way to run a superpower.

A good example of how corrosive polarization can be is provided by the abortion controversy. For 35 years now, we've been hamstrung by this controversy. Most Americans accept the basic principle of a woman's right to an abortion, but many would like to place some constraints on late-term abortions. For the most part, the current regime reflects, I believe, a compromise that most Americans can live with. However, a small and extremely vocal minority refuse to accept the compromise, and fight hard to get that compromise overturned. This in turn has a dangerous effect upon American politics. No Republican candidate dares support abortion rights -- they must all cater to the pro-life extremists, because those people can wreck a Republican candidacy. Even though the matter has been resolved in the minds of most Americans, it continues to distort the political process.

What we need to do is hammer out a Constitutional amendment putting the existing compromise down on paper. Yes, we might have to fiddle around with the compromise to get a workable wording. But, if we had a reasonable political system, we'd be able to work something out and settle the matter once and for all, thereby removing this distorting element from American politics. Unfortunately, we all know that this is a political impossibility. There is no way that a Constitutional amendment reflecting the desires of, say, 70% of the American citizenry could pass. We are so divided that we cannot find a solution that 2/3 of the politicians could vote for. And that's not healthy.

Mr. Obama will not solve the abortion question. But he can start us down the road towards a new philosophy of political discourse, one emphasizing agreement through compromise rather than the battle for absolute victory. I think that Americans are sick to death of the Swiftboating, the ugliness, the nastiness, the dirty tricks and Rovian tactics of the last eight years. I think that many Americans want a government that works rather than one consumed in political wars.

The first President Bush promised "Read my lips: no new taxes!" and then famously broke that pledge. The second President Bush promised to be "a uniter, not a divider" and then proved to be the most divisive President in American history. I believe that Mr. Obama will be a true uniter, and Ms. Clinton will end up being a divider.

An odd approach to income redistribution

One of the most difficult social policy issues concerns the redistribution of wealth. On one side, we have liberals presenting an argument based on human decency. It is morally repugnant to contemplate a society in which some people starve to death while others enjoy vast wealth. Conservatives argue the injustice of taking wealth away from those who work hard to earn it and giving it to those who have not earned it. These two basic arguments are both sound, and neither can be dismissed out of hand -- yet they also flatly contradict each other. How to resolve the contradiction?

In practice, we compromise in an ass-backwards kind of way. Conservatives agree that nobody should lack the basics of human survival (food, clothing, and shelter). Liberals agree that we can't confiscate everybody's money. Sadly, conservatives are all too quick to dismiss liberals as "bleeding hearts" or "socialists", while liberals are too quick to dismiss conservatives as "selfish".

However, I'd like to offer a third argument, one that should be able to work for both sides. I will argue that providing some degree of income redistribution is beneficial to all.

My starting point is the Gini Index, an economic measure of the distribution of wealth in a society. A Gini Index of 1.00 describes a society of maximum inequality: one person owns all the wealth in the society, and everybody else owns nothing. A Gini Index of 0.00 denotes a society of maximum equality: everybody owns the same amount of wealth. In the real world, Gini Indexes run from a high of about 0.50 to a low of about 0.25.

There are some interesting trends that can be seen in the distribution of Gini Indexes from around the world. In general, the most stable countries with low crime rates tend to have low Gini Indexes, while the most violent countries tend to have high Gini Indexes. There are lots of exceptions to this generalization, to be sure, but the basic trend seems solid. Moreover, it makes sense: in societies where everybody is equal, there's less motivation for property crimes, while in societies with a lot of inequality, it's all too easy for the lower classes to resent the upper classes, and to express that resentment through crime.

However, I think that actual mechanism at work is a sense of belonging to or identification with one's community. There's no question that the upper classes will have lots of this "community spirit" -- the community they live in rewards them richly. But the lower classes have little reason to feel like a part of a community that, in their view, treats them like second-class citizens. Sure, they may have the same legal and civil rights that the upper classes do, but the fact that they end up getting the short end of the stick rankles and undermines their confidence in the fairness of their society.

Now, it's easy to dismiss these thoughts as incorrect. "Those ingrates just don't appreciate how good they have it! If they'd just get off their fat asses and work for a living, they could be rich, too!" That's the argument offered by conservatives. Although it's possible to offer a reasonable refutation of that argument, I won't bother to, because it's unnecessary. It doesn't matter whether they're justified in their resentment. It doesn't matter if they're logically incorrect. It's what they believe and that's what motivates their actions. Try reasoning with a mugger.

"Well then", the conservative replies, "that's what we have jails for. If the poor want to delude themselves, that's fine, but they are still responsible for their actions and if they commit property crimes, they'll go to jail."

This logic is impeccable. But the economics stinks.

It costs money to run a criminal justice system. Money for police, courts, lawyers, and jails. Money that has to be paid out of taxes. And it costs even more for security: locks and fences and cameras and night watchmen and buildings without windows. Thus, the wealthy will be paying money for security no matter what happens. So the real issue is one of trade-offs. At what point is it cheaper to pay off the lower classes than to wall them off?

You might object that this is a cowardly solution. Real men don't buy peace -- they enforce it! If you really want to increase your tax bill, then follow that path. But if you just want to get on with life and cut your losses, there is a point at which it's cheaper to buy them off with welfare than to scare them off with police.

Here we come to the best argument against this line of reasoning: we don't know where that point is. We don't know if an extra dollar spent on police will yield twice as much security as an extra dollar spent on welfare -- or vice versa. This is interesting theory, but without numbers, it's hard to find any utility in it.

However, there are some indicators. The Gini Index of the USA is well above average -- and the USA has higher rates of street crime and higher costs for its criminal justice system than most of the countries with low Gini Indexes. The overall cost of crime in the USA is estimated by various sources to be somewhere between $500 billion and $1.7 trillion per year. The total cost of all welfare programs in this country -- including Social Security and Medicare -- runs to maybe $500 billion per year. If we spend more money on the latter, will the former costs go down by an amount equal to or greater than our increment in expenditures on welfare? I don't know. In fact, nobody can know -- it's simply too complicated to calculate. However, we do know that there are societies on this planet that spend a lot more of their GDP on welfare and also spend a lot less of their GDP on crime. It's certainly feasible.

I haven't proven that this idea will work. I have only demonstrated that there is a feasible alternative way of thinking about crime and income redistribution. We don't need to choose between being the stern punishing father, or the forgiving nurturing mother. We can instead buy social peace -- if the price is right.

Moral Equivalence

Moral equivalence

One of the oddest aspects of the conservative approach to foreign policy is its insistence upon the moral superiority of the USA. They place great weight on the notion that the USA is the good guy and its enemies are bad guys. They express deep contempt for what they call "the assumption of moral equivalence". They get quite emotional over this issue.

I don't deny the basic moral superiority of the US over many tyrannies in this world. There's no question that the USA is a better and nobler country than Mr. Kim's North Korea, Mr. Hussein's Iraq, or Mr. Putin's Russia. My objections are three:

1. That doesn't make us lily-white. While the USA has done many fine and noble things, it has also perpetrated some heinous crimes. We practiced ethnic cleansing against the Indians. We have broken treaties, tortured and murdered innocent people, invaded small nations for invidious reasons, and subverted legitimate governments whose foreign policy we oppose. We're still better than a lot of other countries, but we shouldn't get carried away polishing our halos.

2. That doesn't give us the right to commit crimes. Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that Mr. Hussein killed a million Iraqis doesn't justify our killing a hundred thousand Iraqis.

3. But this is my most important objection: it's irrelevant. Every foreign policy decision we make must be decided on its own merits. It doesn't matter whether the shooter wears a white hat or a black hat; the only way to judge the shooting is by its actual results, not the moral worth of the shooter. If a policy decision is stupid, our virtue does not override its stupidity. Even if the murderer is a saint, it's still murder, and the past holiness of the saint does nothing to excuse the present iniquity of the murder.

Twenty years ago, my geopolitical game, Balance of Power, was criticized by conservatives because it didn't take into account the moral superiority of the USA over the USSR. Both sides had the same set of policy options: sending weapons to support governments or insurgencies, providing economic assistance to weak governments, and so forth. Both sides pursued their geopolitical goals using the same methods. And conservatives were indignant about this symmetry. They seemed to want the USA to have some special "Moral Superiority" magic wand that it could wave to make evil communists cringe in defeat. None of them ever articulated any suggestion as to how the fundamental moral superiority of the USA should be factored into a geopolitical simulation game. They just complained that I hadn't done so.

Another symptom of this is the refusal to compare the unintentional killing of innocents by friendly forces with the intentional killing of innocents by enemies. When American forces bomb a village in Afghanistan and kill innocent civilians, conservatives shrug their shoulders and dismiss these deaths as "collateral damage" -- excusable because it was unintentional. But they deceive themselves when they claim it was unintentional. The pilot who dropped the bomb didn't launch it accidentally; he had every intention of dropping that bomb on that village. His commanders intentionally ordered him to fly that mission. And their political masters intentionally ordered the military to carry out the operations that led to the killings. There was no accident here -- everything that happened was intentional.

It is true, of course, that none of the participants in the decision-making process desired to kill innocent civilians. They desired to kill evil terrorists, not innocent civilians. But that doesn't eliminate their moral culpability in the deaths of the innocents. Any reasonable person knows that, when you bomb a village, you will probably kill innocent people. The act does not constitute murder, because there was no desire to kill innocents. It does, however, constitute manslaughter: a disregard for the safety of other people that leads to their deaths. Of course, I don't blame the pilot, because he is obeying the lawful orders of his superiors. I blame the body politic that sent him on that mission. I blame the USA.

So yes, I acknowledge a distinction between terrorists and the USA: they are guilty of murder where we are guilty only of manslaughter. But conservatives insist that we are entirely innocent, that there is no blood on our hands. I disagree.