Month: February 2025

The Old Man and the Afternoon

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So, the tax accountant got back to me today and told me I owed Uncle Sam a couple of thousand dollars and because of that I had to pay some kind of penalty.  Well that really sucked and I had to go adjust my deductions on my paycheck and blah, blah blah … it ate up half my morning.  So, I was out of sorts today.

Because of all that, I needed to do something fun this afternoon.  Camera Girl and I decided to watch a movie we both like and haven’t seen in a long while; Ernest Hemingway’s, “The Old Man and the Sea.”  It’s the one with Spencer Tracy as an old Cuban fisherman who catches swordfish.  He’s recently become “unlucky.”  He hasn’t caught a swordfish in 85 days and the boy who used to help him has been told by his father to find a luckier boat.  So, the old man is all alone and he goes out to try his luck one more time.  And the story is a folk tale about a three-day odyssey to land and bring home a giant swordfish, bigger than his little sailboat.

In a way it’s a meditation on life and old age and fate.  It’s a simple story and mostly takes place between the old man and his mythic prey.  Most of the dialogue (or soliloquy) is the old man talking to the fish (or himself).  Occasionally he remembers (or dreams about) his past, when he was a valiant man of great strength and skill.  And often as the strain of fighting the fish becomes unbearable, he exclaims, “I wish the boy was here.”

And slowly and painfully the story unfolds and the old man finally plays the fish in and kills it with his harpoon.  But because of the size of the fish, he must lash it to the outside of his boat and eventually sharks are drawn to the smell of blood.  The old man fights them off the fish with his harpoon until it is lost, then a makeshift spear, then the gaffe hook and finally a club.  But as his weapons become cruder and less effective the sharks increasingly mutilate his prize until finally all that is left is the head, tail and a naked backbone.  When he reaches home on the morning of the fourth day, he is utterly exhausted and defeated and barely crawls back to his hut to sleep.

That morning the other fishermen are astounded at the colossal size of the carcass and remark to the boy how amazing the fish must have been.  The boy brings coffee to the old man and tells him that despite his father’s order not to fish with the old man he will defy him and bring his luck to the old man’s boat.  So, the story ends with the continuity of life as the torch is passed from the old to the young.  But in this case youth partners with the heroic efforts of the past instead of pushing it out of the way to replace it.

It’s a very strange story and plays out as something of a fairy tale.  Mercifully, the fish never speaks but the old man treats it as if he wouldn’t be surprised if it did.  The old man taught the boy to fish and so they have a mentor/pupil relationship but it appears more like a grandfather/grandson bond between them.  And that is the only major character dynamic going on in the story.

There really isn’t that much to this story.  Most of it takes place in a boat on the water with only one person present.  I really don’t think I could justify why I like this movie that much.  Maybe because I like watching it with Camera Girl.  Her father was an avid salt water fisherman.  And I think the movie is evocative of that connection.  Well, anyway it brightened up our day.

We All Better Hope He Can

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“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”

This to me seems to be a wise policy.  Based on the fairly frequent bubbles and panics occurring in our economic environment I’m fairly convinced that the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing.  So, I’ll assume that’s what the problem is.  The people running the economy just don’t know what they’re doing.  And maybe, all things considered, they’re doing as good a job as is possible.  After all, human society is a dynamic system with an enormous number of factors contributing to the output of goods and services and a big random universe throwing everything from hurricanes and droughts to wars and plagues at us in an almost completely random manner.  Alright, I’ll grant that too.  It’s a maelstrom of causes and effects.  So then, what’s a leader of the United States to do?

I believe there is some guidance that can be used.  All the way back to Aristotle and all the way up to our own nation it has been observed that the most successful, stable and the most pleasant nations to live in are the ones with the largest middle class.  Not the one with the most billionaires and certainly not the one with the most poor people, but the one with the largest number of people who work for a living and live well enough to keep their families well-fed, well-clothed and with enough money to do something for fun every now and then.  When the majority of the country can be described in that way you are living in as close as life on Earth can come to a paradise.

And up until about the 1970’s that was a reasonable description of post-WWII America.  People thought they were well off and that their children would be even more prosperous in the future.  But since the 1970’s the proportion of Americans who felt this way has been steadily shrinking until now only the elites feel this is true.  The working class has slipped out of the middle class and the white-collar jobs that were the hallmark of the upper middle class are disappearing from the United States through automation and through off-shoring of the manufacturing industries that used to provide both blue-collar and white-collar jobs for the majority of the nation.

Well, all of this is old news.  We all know all about it.  Now we see Donald Trump trying to use tariffs to get American (and foreign) corporations to manufacture their products here and thereby provide Americans with relatively high value employment.  I applaud Trump for doing this.  He needs to do as much of this as possible.  In fact, this will need to be the policy of the United States government for the foreseeable future.

But this is just a band-aid.  Forcing these companies to bring some part of their manufacturing capacity back here is a small part of what’s needed.  America needs a “Marshall Plan” to identify the industries and infrastructure that will produce a re-invigorated middle class.  All the super-geniuses who have created artificial intelligence and advanced automated systems need to put their supposedly infallible business acumen to the problem of how to engineer an economic order where the maximum percentage of Americans are prosperous and usefully employed.  Call it a Marshall Plan or a Manhattan Project or just a survival plan.

The free-traders or the globalists or whatever you want to call the people who deindustrialized America from the 1970’s on have demonstrated how to destroy the middle class.  Now it’s the federal government’s job to undo that process using the levers of power they control; taxation, tariffs and the anti-trust laws.  But as I said it’s not enough to just bring back the old industries.  Innovation will always drive prosperity.  Silicon Valley currently represents that innovation.  What must be done though is to force the innovators to reckon with the dislocation that their innovation can cause to the lives of regular people and come up with a way to make change work for all of us.

A hopeful sign is that Donald Trump has enlisted Elon Musk into his administration.  Granted, right now Musk is entirely a disruptor of the established order.  But he is also capable of building up new constructs.  The challenge is to see if Trump and Musk can produce a vision that includes the restoration of the American middle class.  I hope he can.  We all better hope he can.

25FEB2025 – Quote of the Day

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I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:

By the known rules of ancient liberty.

The word ancient emphasizes the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice.

George Orwell

Super Power Relations

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Glenn W sent an email with a link to a podcast where Jeff Nyquist and Alex Benesch discuss how Donald Trump’s election impacts the global power struggle between the United States, Russia and China (link below).

https://youtu.be/OOiVNxt9I0M?si=bUOHY_mfan-wEOGu

It’s an analysis of the Chinese strategy to undermine Trump’s domestic political coalition.  There is also discussion of how Trump’s handling of the Ukraine war will impact Chinese/Russian relations.

Thank you, Glenn for passing this along.  It’s interesting to know how much the Chinese think about and plan to undermine the American domestic political situation.  And if the CIA were any good at their job, they’d have all of this intel available for Trump in a useful and convenient form as soon as it is available.  But, of course, they’re so busy trying to undermine him themselves that they can’t get around to something like that.

Watching the video made me think about how American domestic politics is viewed in such different places as Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China.

But it didn’t change my belief that almost all the problem in our country and most of the problems in the world are a result of the dysfunctional and even destructive system and culture that has taken hold of our country and by extension is being imposed on the rest of the world.  The adoption of a culture that celebrates above all else aberrant sexual identities and practices, but also emphasizes the vilification of European peoples and cultures and the need to eliminate their identity from their own countries, is singlehandedly bringing about the destruction of Western civilization.

I believe that most of the problems in this country stem from these two cultural projects of the Left.  And I think if these programs are eliminated it will cure most of the social dysfunction, we see around us today.

And that is why I believe that if Trump continues on with his program to eliminate things like the recognition of multiple “genders” and DEI and other affirmative action programs from the US federal government he will single-handedly solve the majority of societal ills that we find ourselves engulfed by.

Now as far as foreign policy goes, I see a clear linkage between the war in Ukraine and these same cultural dysfunctions.  Russia is a pariah for the Left because it eschews the LGBTQ movement absolutely and refuses to accept the “white shame” culture within its borders.  Whereas Ukraine was willing to accept the rainbow flag as the price it paid to get CIA and State Department funding for its color revolution.  And you can see a similar dynamic in Hungary where Orban refused to bend the knee to the homosexual mandate and so he also became an enemy of the left.  They tried to overthrow him in a recent election, pouring in all kinds of USAID money into the effort.  But he won and now he’ll benefit from Trump’s reform of the State Department and foreign relations in general.

It was heartening to see JD Vance meet with the AfD candidates for parliament in Germany and confront the government there with their refusal to stem immigration and their anti-free speech polices and attitudes.  It’s this kind of confidence in the advantages of a free and populist society that will advance our point of view in many places.

And that brings me to the question of what I think American policy should be toward the powerful countries like China and Russia.  We should be neither fearful of nor bellicose toward them.  The United States has ample enough stockpiles of nuclear tipped ICBMs to ensure that neither Russia nor China will attack us or our allies.  But by the same token, what business have we rattling sabers at Putin or Xi?  Our neocons in the State Department initiated the color revolution in Ukraine and then provided massive military aid and convinced the Ukrainians that the Russians would just capitulate to Ukraine joining NATO.  Up until Obama’s administration it was understood that attempting to bring Ukraine into NATO would be crossing a glowing red line that Putin would retaliate against.  So, they did it anyway and he invaded.  Now he’s been bloodied by our Ukrainian proxies using our most sophisticated weapons systems and so we’ve turned this into a war of attrition where Russia will lose a million men and Ukraine will lose two million men and a third of their country and we’ve possibly made the Russians our bitterest enemies for generations to come.  And they’ve embraced China because of it.

If Trump can figure out a way to blunt some of this damage, he should get a Nobel Peace Prize for sure.  But in general, I hope Trump’s foreign policy is guided by the precept that our foreign policy should be primarily concerned with improving the security and prosperity of the American people.  That’s it.  We’re not out to spread democracy and we’re not trying to save the world.  Climate Change and Ending World Hunger are not our priorities.  Evicting the illegal aliens and bringing the price of a dozen eggs down are.  So that explains my myopic vision of foreign policy.  If the Chinese try to get involved in undermining the Trump voter coalition, I’m guessing they’ll be a lot less effective than the Democrats are.  The Left knows the American lingo better and they’re much better liars than the Chinese are.

So, Donald Trump, just keep pummeling the Left and everything else will follow along like a master plan.