Travel Lessons: Real Resistance is Rebellion

The more I travel outside the U.S., the more I realize how uptight Americans are. In fact, a cursory review of American history--if taught well--will emphasize almost all its accomplishments have come from immigrants and minorities. Most people realize Einstein, a German refugee and minority, along with immigrant Leo Szilard, helped America win WWII. Some even know most major American technology companies were founded by immigrants or minorities. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, the product of a Syrian refugee and Catholic mother. No Vinod Khosla, no Sun Microsystems, and no hardware-software behemoth Oracle as we know it today. Tesla? Founded by the son of a rich South African, Elon Musk. The list is endless, and I won't bore you by citing all the companies and products Americans would lack without an open approach to immigration. What does any of this have to with being uptight? 

Almost all of America's genuine resistance post-Vietnam comes from immigrants and minorities. As a Muhammad Ali fan, I've realized America lionizes him so much because he's the most genuine American-born product of resistance. Sure, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden must be placed in the pantheon of resisters, but they were part of the Establishment, and a whistleblower carries a different, softer tune than a rebel. (Ellsberg, by the way, is a "sort-of minority"--he was raised by Jews who converted to Christian Science.) 

Other than Ali, Warren Hinckle and Hunter S. Thompson, modern America lacks native-born rebels. The Beatles? British. The Sex Pistols? British. The famous group who sang, "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control" and railed against the public education system? Irish. Just kidding. British. The best antiwar campaign? John Lennon, a Brit. David Bowie, who challenged gender stereotypes and married a Somalian Muslim? A Brit. (Meanwhile, America's most famous Somali is Islamophobe Ayaan Ali, a role model for nothing except psychological transference, even as Canada's honorable Ahmed Hussen takes the spotlight next door.) Joan Baez? Mexican father. Bob Dylan? The product of generations of Russian Empire Jews. 

Ok, so what if the Brits seem to be better at music than Americans? Do you like art, politics, and comedy? Outside George Carlin, the son of an Irish immigrant, the most astute American commentators have been black aka minorities: Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and Richard Pryor. As for politics, where would we be without Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers? 

In fact, if you remove minorities and immigrants from America, you are left with law, order, and guns, aka cowboys and tough guys posing as rebels. See Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Steve McQueen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. America's non-minority heroes are military, police, and cowboys, and once they exile the corrupt sheriff, they take his place--a paean to law and authority if ever there was one. (Why are Americans so surprised a television celebrity became president in 2016 when Reagan and Schwarzenegger, both movie celebrities, had already become governors of one of the world's top ten economies in 1967 and 2003?) 

America's cultural schism starts to make sense when we realize the American military may have lost Vietnam--and every war thereafter except for Grenada in 1983--but it won the military-industrial complex. If you have a country founded by sexually repressed Protestants too uptight for Britain that then decides to spend more money than any other country on the military, why shouldn't the product be sexually-repressed, violent, confused, and bombastic? What else would form the perfect cocktail for a cognitively dissonant schizophrenia that allows Americans to spend most of their tax dollars on the military and war while going to church every week and praying to a pacifist who never led an army or owned a weapon? And why shouldn't most of its innovation--a form of rebelliousness against the established order--and wisdom come from people outside this system? There are no more Frank Capras, John Woodens, Walter Cronkites, Edward Murrows, Bill Wattersons, or General Eisenhowers from America. The soil today is too polluted for them to prosper. 

Perhaps America is going through its second midlife crisis; if so, we should all welcome the experience. Maybe this time, the kids will get it right. 

Historians in 2255: the Simulacrum Society vs. the Savages

It is now 2255. Two historians review the recent past…

Historian 1 and Historian 2 have been trying to understand why the United States of America began its downward spiral in 2016. At first, when told about the country and its military spending, advanced technology, and two oceans to protect it, along with some of the smartest people in the world, they struggled to understand its collapse in 2166. 

2166 was the year of America’s Second Civil War, when nationwide militias banded together, refused the central government’s demands to give up their weapons, and went on the offensive. Many Americans tried fleeing to Utah, but people in Utah had been preparing for such an event for decades and refused entry (but not assistance) to most internal refugees.  By chance, Canada had built a wall several years ago, which now prevented Americans from fleeing north. After the militias were put down, the United States of America existed in name only. The country continued its core strength of security products—no other place protected and transported physical items so well—but there was nothing united about a country where cities and states revolving around academia competed each year with cities and states revolving around military culture, with both factions trying to increase funding each year at the expense of the other. 

H1: I really don’t get it. On the surface, all the data in the year 2000 indicated the United States would continue to dominate for centuries. 

H2: I thought the same as you, but once I did a deep dive, I realized America’s strengths were also its greatest weaknesses. At the same time greater clarity of direction was needed in a fragmented world, America’s checks and balances began working against it. Nothing could get done, and all change became necessarily incremental. 

H1: What’s the problem with incremental change? 

H2: In ordinary times, nothing. One of America's problems was that it had already borrowed money from future generations to pay off senior citizens--or, more accurately, entities serving senior citizens--in ways that distorted federal, state, and local budgets. Today, we’re all under some centralized government—well, most of us are, while others prefer to live more simple lives—but back then, America had to deal with political factions on three different levels. It’s a great system to prevent centralization of power, but Americans didn’t realize that increasingly dangerous cyber-threats plus a reduction in the efficacy of its naval power meant its system of government was less effective than competitors. 

H1: Ok, so America’s engine of progress would have slowed down a bit. That’s the price you pay for checks and balances, isn’t it? 

H2: Sure, but what good are checks and balances if the politicians before you 1) made promises based on artificial financial engineering; and 2) used debt to give their constituents everything they wanted, but in unsustainable ways? 

H1: We’ve solved these problems today with everyone guaranteed a basic standard of living, so why was money such an issue back then? 

H2: Today we’ve realized there’s no point in an economic system that prioritizes labor arbitrage (i.e., currency manipulations, outsourcing, insourcing) when robots can do most of the work for us. Back then, humans were stuck in a winner-take-all system because of technological threats making it harder for small businesses to grow without debt or costly third-party assistance, and also complex cross-border regulations preventing small and even mid-sized businesses from becoming truly global. How do you compete with larger, established players when your website can be subjected to a DNS attack, or when you need import-export permits and connections to make sure your goods aren’t “lost” along the way to the customer? 

H1: Wait, didn’t Amazon offer excellent tech services at a low cost to everyone, including small businesses? 

H2: Yes, and in doing so, it increased its own dominance because it had software to analyze the data coming from those third-party accounts. In effect, America’s technological leaders used data and AI to further distance themselves from their smaller competitors--when they weren't buying out or copying them. 

Think of it this way: today, we see no point in maintaining separate armies in each independent country or community. We realized the costs—both financial and otherwise—for smaller, developing countries to match the technological aptitude of larger countries were prohibitive and counter-productive to world peace. We also realized any war between advanced countries or their proxies would be potentially catastrophic—and by catastrophic, I mean world-ending—not only to residents in each country, but to everyone else. 

Once we agreed the usual models wouldn’t work because human decision-making wasn’t yet developed enough to predict or even prevent human error—the 2018 Hawaii false missile alarm being one example—the only solution was increasing cooperation between all nuclear powers and satellite owners. I’m not saying countries still don’t try to disrupt other countries, but we mostly agree that using resources that could improve residents’ domestic conditions is preferred to an arms race with no end and mutually assured global destruction. 

Developed nations did try to encourage less developed countries to boost infrastructure, but imposing the same regulations of a developed country on a developing country soon proved counterproductive. I read somewhere that a traveler passing through a developing country’s airport had a much easier process than a traveler to a so-called advanced country, which tells you technology wasn’t working the way humans intended. There was even a story where humans replaced retail workers with machines, but there were so many inefficiencies in the software, the human worker experienced more drudgery, obviating the tech’s utility. Initially, developed countries relied on labor arbitrage to fix these gaps, but soon it became obvious having separate systems in each country that weren’t at least minimally compatible with each other made no sense. 

H1: I understand what you’re saying, but even today, we have tech issues. I’d like to think we won’t collapse just because we have technological issues. 

H2: Yes, but because we can manipulate our DNA, we don’t have similar social problems. If you want to be a different skin color, a different body type, etc., you can accomplish that—as long as you consent to 24/7 neurological surveillance so researchers can gather biological data that helps improve our systems. 

In 2016, unlike now, artificial differences separated humans, who put up artificial barriers to protect themselves. Almost every so-called legal advancement served only to increase segregation and inequality, which led to social strife. 

July 1979, National Geographic

As lawyers were busy discovering new ways to segregate their clients’ interests from political unpredictability, people post-Snowden realized they had unwittingly sacrificed privacy for little to no increase in efficiency or security. Governments tried to recapture credibility by becoming more transparent and encouraging open debates, but in an age where knowledge and the ability to absorb it logically was highly dependent on multiple factors outside an individual's control, these attempts backfired. 

In short, Western governments in the 21st century found themselves outmaneuvered by the more nimble private sector, hamstrung by union and other rules prioritizing politics over customer service and merit, and generally at a loss on how to deal with the vestiges of prior administrations, which had made promises based on economic assumptions no longer necessarily true. Would China continue to buy debt denominated in U.S. dollars? Would the U.S. consumer accept a free trade paradigm where a strong dollar improved their quality of life while shifting production to other countries? How would “most-favored nation” status work fluidly in an age of multiple superpowers, each possessing proprietary technology and particular special interests? 

H1: [chuckles] Ok, you’re getting too wonky for me. So the old ways weren’t working for everyone. Why didn’t the leaders change things? 

H2: If only it were that easy. Remember we said all political change was incremental? Once you include massive, multi-generational debt into the equation, change becomes even more tricky. In the United States, the majority of the federal budget was on autopilot after 2001. Its government kept funding operations, including foreign overreach, through a legal maneuver called appropriations, which had been designed only for short-term use. 

Lacking fiscal discipline, even basic changes such as legalization of drugs and reducing the ROI on long-term obligations couldn’t be done uniformly, much less internationally. For example, why would a country like Singapore, which could actually control drug imports due to its small size, sign up for drug liberalization? In Singapore's case, the cost-benefit analysis fell firmly on the side of drug enforcement, whereas in America, police were outmanned and often outgunned against drug enterprises, starting as early as Miami in the 1980s. 

[Editor's note: America's comparatively strong dollar and its failure to eliminate cartels meant that civic institutions--and therefore progress and opportunities for arm's length collaboration--south of the border were hamstrung. For instance, how could any Mexican police department, even if funded properly, attract ambitious employees when it faced a stronger currency next door and less employment flexibility (i.e., no "access to cheap skilled labour and a strictly anti-competitive use of lethal violence"), especially if cartels functioned as de facto welfare and jobs agents in local communities? Also, in the absence of competent local police, why wouldn't the logical progression be a military-industrial complex? From Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security: "You almost had a shadow government that controlled huge amounts of economic activity in a totally unaccountable way." (Inside the American Mob, S1:E1, 2013)] 

H1: Why do you focus on drugs? Today, we can get any drug we like, and scientists are working on even better ones. 

H2: You have to remember that our economic system today is different from the ones around Earth in 2018. Today, when we are born, we all receive a pre-set allocation of BlockCoins that can last us our entire lives if we are reasonably careful. Different pods and different countries have rules on how we can spend these BlockCoins, but they are universally transferable, though prices are different depending on one’s location. Most countries provide a staggered number of BlockCoins until the age of 40 (the age limit increases as more anti-aging advances are discovered) to promote prudent spending. If someone runs out of BlockCoins today, they will most likely relocate to a less expensive pod or country or even go “savage” and move to a non-technologically advanced pod. As we know, under this economic system, women gained much more political power and wealth, and now dominate most high-level non-military governance positions. 

H1: I dislike the savage pods. They receive our protection and some  of our medical advances without contributing biological data. Some of them come around when a child gets sick, and even I felt sorry for the savage who received CRISPR treatment for his son in exchange for a lens implant that unwittingly allowed a BlockCoin billionaire to secretly spy on sector B6. 

H2: [Cocks one eyebrow] Interesting. Well, humans in the 21st century worked all their lives to gain enough wealth so they could finally pursue their passions and dreams in old age; in contrast, we go to school to learn what most interests us and then receive training to help us choose occupations based on our specific abilities and desires. 

Personally, I'm surprised earlier humans agreed to have their data mined without compensation while paying for medical care, education, housing, and so on. Many people even went in debt for such essential items. 

The reason we're able to enjoy such a high quality of life today is because we voluntarily provide constant, real-time biological data to the pods and central research unit. Most of us accept the tradeoff between a lack of privacy and the goal of a perfect singularity, i.e., a human being with at least the same level of abilities as the most advanced machines. Data is anonymized before being sent to the pods and central research unit, but you and I are able to access results and CRISPR suggestions based on individualized data. Rogue actors pose no threat because central military command can freeze and/or obliterate any specific area immediately with the unanimous consent of the revolving 7-member Security Council, chosen every three years based on the countries producing the most innovative breakthroughs in science, music, math, and engineering. Members with conflicts of interest must abstain from voting, but generally speaking, since everyone is born with the same number of BlockCoins, persons in all countries are somewhat valuable to other countries, so cross-border violence and aggression are counterproductive. 

Sadly, our ancestors created a suboptimal system in which they delayed their passions and dreams until old age. 

By Stephan Pastis (12/5/17); notice of fair use provided to licensor June 20, 2019.

To assuage their neuroses, they engaged in terrorism, violence, illegal drugs, and other diversions we find anachronistic. Such improper behavior necessitated large budgetary outlays for police and military forces, obligations which grew larger every year. Funding such expansion required debt at levels that would never be paid off completely as well as non-financial complexity like infiltration and surveillance. 

For example, it was not uncommon for a police unit to pay undercover officers to infiltrate or surveil a gang dealing in drugs. In other words, while the police were infiltrating drug dealing gangs and sometimes even running drug operations themselves, they were spending money trying to stamp out the same operations, which were busy expanding into other areas of business, even going so far as stealing donations to nonprofit centers for online resale. Illegal drugs formed the core of the revenue that allowed crime to expand, which led citizens to authorize more funding for crime-fighting, which then allowed more surveillance, less overall privacy, more segregation, and so on and so forth. At some point, humans realized they needed to decriminalize drugs, fix immigration laws to mitigate human trafficking, and not waste funding on self-defeating strategies, but until that moment occurred, citizens bickered over a lack of funding for other areas even as most local tax revenue was going to public safety operations. 

H1: Violence, debt, crime, not being able to pursue one’s passions until old age…and you haven’t even mentioned disease and sickness yet! I don’t mean to be rude, but why did these people even bother? 

H2: Many of them didn’t. Suicide rates and depression were highest in the most developed countries. You despise the savages, but they mock us, too. When they’re not calling us a “Simulacrum Society,” they’re comparing us to the pods in The Matrix (1999). 

H1: I’ve heard those criticisms before, and they’re evidence of the savages’ lesser developed tastes and intellect. In The Matrix, the machines were using us, but we are using the machines. 

H2: Are you sure about that? If the machines took over, wouldn’t they be advanced enough to use neuro-data sets and AR/VR technology to make us think we were still in charge? Anyway, to answer your original question, why did humans endure under such counterproductive systems? A review of literature would lead you to the answer of love. No matter how low or damaged someone was, it was normal to persist in the belief that someone, somewhere loved him or her or would love him or her. 

H1: Ah, so gender relations were optimal then? 

H2: [Sighs] Actually, in America, they were quite low in 2018. 

H1: Surely you’re joking. 

H2: Humanity many centuries ago recognized that men and women comprised two sides of the same puzzle that needed union for happiness, but in practice, men and women could rarely get along unless the male met a female when he was starting out or not successful, and the female stayed with him even when she could have chosen someone more successful. The best case scenario was stated most aptly by comedian Chris Rock: “You can be married and bored, or single and lonely!” 

H1: I’m not going to say we’ve solved gender issues, but at least it’s much easier to keep occupied and motivated without a significant biological other. Very few humans today think love is the central goal anymore. We live too long, and it’s not difficult to find people who accept short-term relationships. 

H2: But that’s exactly why the savages mock us. They say we’ve discovered every innovation except the most important ones. Do you remember their last line in the most recent debate? “Give me a life difficult enough to value the important things, enough time to find them, and enough life to enjoy them—no more, no less.” They say the difficulty is the point. In the struggle is my salvation, and so on and so forth. 

H1: They have all kinds of ideas. One of them argued that although we can better analyze specific DNA sequences or identify harmful strands, we still don’t know the total impact of modifying one DNA sequence on all the other sequences ad infinitum. But of course the researchers have accounted for this issue and use AI to run simulations on all possible outcomes. 

H2: I think the argument was that AI only knows what data it receives under a specific rule set, so if a human being programs the AI with data only known up to x date, what if the human being is unintentionally eliminating mutations not in the data as of x date? 

H1: Once again, the researchers account for these possibilities by running all possible sequences. 

H2: But how can AI know what it doesn’t know? Are we correct in assuming biology follows very specific rules like chess or that the simulations can account for all possible mutations? 

H1: [Cocks eyebrow] Are you getting wonky on me again? 

H2: Fine. Back to relationships. The correct answer is, “I don’t know.” Some couples worked out, some didn’t. Our lives are far more predictable than theirs, but we are less likely to engage in permanent relationships or reproduce naturally. 

"Pat" Boone, one of America's most famous personalities, in a magazine from 1957.

I remember reading an author discuss his time watching couples on the London Underground. He said he didn’t know what love was, but he could always see it when it was there. According to him, love wasn’t at all abstract—it was literally there in the quickness and shape of a smile and the subtle ways happy couples subconsciously mimicked each other’s body movements. Once he realized he could see love, that’s what he aimed to achieve, but right after he set the goal, he realized his silliness. He could not accomplish such a goal on his own, and he could not predict when or if it would happen. There was probably an equal chance in his life of never finding love as seeing it. 

Yet, realizing he could see love, that it wasn’t entirely abstract, encouraged him to spend more time on people and to try to see why they behaved the way they did. Why was that woman wearing that brand, that color? Did she believe it helped present a better version of herself, and she wished to attract a specific someone? Or had she saved up for months to get an item so she’d have an easier time being spoken to with respect? What did she intend to convey by choosing this color, this dress, over another?

H1: Perhaps it was the only clean laundry that day. One never knows with the savages. 

H2: Maybe that’s the point. 

[Part II is here.] 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2018) 

On Midlife Crises

It is now clear the United States is a shell of its own values. It admires freedom of speech but not tolerance. It showcases the Statue of Liberty while ignoring the inscription on her pedestal’s lower level. It blames foreign powers for election interference, a charge Mossadegh, Castro, and Chavez would find interesting. It believes globalization is responsible for at least some of its economic woes, even as it has benefited handsomely from globalized trade, especially in oil. It claims to honor freedom of religion while making it difficult to donate to Islamic charities or to build or attend mosques. Above all, it loves freedom itself, more so than any other nation’s people--while having the most student loans, incarcerated criminals, and credit card debt.

We can certainly argue about all of the points above. For instance, America is around tenth place, not first, in worldwide debt rankings if we view household debt as a percentage of its GDP. It may have the most student loans, but international students clamor to attend its universities, indicating value. It has massive debt but also considerable wealth, ranking in the top twenty-five worldwide in median wealth per adult. It houses the most criminals, but outside of St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans (one of my favorite cities), and Detroit, most American cities are far less violent than international counterparts. (So far, I’ve only been mugged in Paris, France, where a French police officer refused to assist me, blaming the Moroccan mafia.) On average, Muslim-Americans are more educated and make more money than average non-American Muslims, an effect we can attribute to selective immigration, but no less true.

Despite the availability of reasonable counterarguments, no reasonable person today believes America is on an upswing at this juncture in its relatively young history. One astute British journalist says America is experiencing a horrific midlife crisis and how it emerges from this period will determine its fate. I think it’s much more complicated than a midlife crisis, and I say this while arguably going through one myself.

1.  Unstable Job Markets, More Debt, and Fewer Permanent Relationships in Developed Countries are Causing Unintended Consequences

I promise I won’t generalize too much if you agree to hear me out. Prior to the age of 40, men tend to be more prone to risky behavior. In some instances, young men become calmer and less interested in risky behavior when women take an interest in them. As men age, they generally reduce risky behavior on their own, meaning a woman’s influence on a man at a young age is often immeasurable—whether positive or negative. (Note: one premise behind America’s incarceration of so many young men is to age them out of unstable behavior.) I don’t mean to imply men are total or unilateral winners in relationships, or that all relationships follow gender-based patterns. Obviously, everyone benefits if two people meet, fall in love, and have a lasting relationship.

But does the relationship last? In modern society, very few people are romantics, especially if they've read a Family Code. The world is filled with divorcees who will share fiendishly unique parables of woe and arbitrariness—and that’s before they discuss their experiences in divorce court.

In an era where almost nothing is permanent, risk management causes most people in developed countries to marry later and have children later, which requires governments and communities to find new ways to occupy people’s time. It turns out there are only so many taco trucks and outdoor music festivals one can visit before searching for something more meaningful. Indeed, almost all of the Western world’s culture wars come down to this simple fact: people are no longer busy influencing their children so they seek to influence others and society. Case in point: what sane American counter-protests neo-Nazis in a town unheard of pre-protest unless s/he genuinely believes s/he’s influencing society in a positive way?

Of course, nothing is inherently wrong with attempting to influence others and your own community, but the shrillness behind such attempts feels new. If you spent 140,000 dollars buying a law school diploma, I suppose you’d better believe you can use it to change the world in your own image, or you’re a sucker. Problematically, someone down the seating chart also spent the same money as you and thinks she can influence society too, and if her community doesn’t validate her belief system, the forecast calls for social strife or self-imposed segregation—both with a high chance of stormy weather. And that’s just within one law school, not even one community, nor an entire nation.

2.  Where Do We Go from Here?

As some of you know, I’ve been traveling since two years ago, when I sensed a disturbance in the Force. Just kidding. (For the record, I’m a Star Trek fan. Picard, not Shatner.)

In any case, I bought several one-way tickets and went around the world with no set plan. I came back to California—home to the most active hate groups in America—to vote, casting my lot with a candidate who failed to capture even 5% of the national vote—then left town again.

I’m now in Cebu, Philippines—a wonderful place—and excited to be able to visit the Middle East soon. For now, my next stop is Brunei. I’m most excited about Qatar, and it's not only because their basketball play in the recent FIBA Asia tournament reminded me of the San Antonio Spurs. By coincidence, I’ll be there during World Tourism Day—yes, that’s a thing—and I’m especially pleased to see and support Qatar when it's going through some challenging times. (If the United States is going through a midlife crisis, then Qatar, founded in 1971, has yet to reach puberty.)  No one knows what the future holds, but maybe the secret to happiness is finding a young, rebellious country and convincing it to have a lasting relationship with you. Let's make it so. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

“The day we stop looking, habib, is the day we die.” – Lt. Colonel Erfan Saad 

Unilateral Action in a Multi-Polar World

Right before our eyes, the world has lost its goddamned mind. America's agencies are reducing resources to counter cyberattacks, which is problematic for our allies because we created the systems they're using, along with the backdoors and security deficiencies. To make matters worse, America is dissuading anyone flying on certain Middle Eastern airlines from bringing laptops, which basically shuts down all business class travel--the most profitable seats--on those airlines unilaterally deemed unsafe. Journalists everywhere discuss America's reduced role in the world, and all seems lost for non-isolationists.

Except it's all a brilliant ploy--if Machiavelli is your role model. Without "free" government cybersecurity help, foreign governments have to pay American security companies more money to help them, increasing American economic strength. Those airlines that aren't up to "code"? Well, they'll just have to hire American defense contractors to help them--for a major fee and multi-year servicing contract, of course. Oh, and if certain Middle Eastern countries don't want to play ball in the foreign policy department, we'll demand our more compliant allies bar their airplanes from flying the friendly skies, and just for good measure, institute an economic blockade (here's looking at you, Qatar). 

America is going to rule the world again while shifting costs to our allies. Take that, China. (Don't worry, Mexico, we haven't forgotten about the wall we want you to pay for.) 

Except it's all a terrible idea. At a time when we desperately need more, not less global cooperation, America has chosen to increase hostility. Does anyone know the rules of engagement for cyber warfare? One expert writes that as long as the costs of cyber warfare, including from North Korea and China, don't exceed 2% of GDP, America will not escalate to the physical realm. I imagine the day will come when a politician moves the bar to 3% because we can't predict the outcome if we actually act on our threat to directly attack countries that violate the stated threshold. What's the point of NATO and all the long-term defense contracts being bought if no one can figure out how to create a basic framework for cyberdefense with every ally and customer on the same page? 

What happened to the idea that corporations can think short-term because of rapidly changing competitive issues, but governments exist to act as a counterbalance, to impose order and institutional long-term knowledge? Without being able to formulate the "rules of the game," even in areas that are dead center in the American government's bailiwick, what is the use of government anyway? 

Also, does anyone in the current administration realize unilateral action no longer works in a multi-polar world? America's current Middle Eastern ploy is to encourage China to buy American LNG rather than Qatari LNG by making China's status quo contingent on interfering with a Saudi-led economic blockade against Qatar. (Say that five times fast.) 

If America and its allies try to isolate Qatar, NK, and Iran in 2017, they can still go to Russia or even Turkey, and that's where global politics becomes really interesting. Once major countries get involved in other major countries' political maneuvers in unexpected ways, there's no set playbook. China has wisely decided to use economic statecraft rather than military force to increase its influence, and it appears America will try to make China's economic alliances more complex. What's the endgame here? 

I don't know if any major country has good answers to the current chaotic situation, but chaos, even at a slow burn, should not be the status quo. Perhaps less assurances of stability will spur other countries to beef up their own cybersecurity and military prowess or to pay American corporations more money to do it for them. Maybe it will reduce the need for America's involvement as the world's police patrol, though with most commercial goods still needing transport across various oceans, I doubt the U.S. Navy will be less necessary. 

The problem with chaos as politics is one never knows the end result with any reasonable certainty. Greater disorder may act as a virus compelling white blood cells to multiply--resulting in better protection against the same or similar issues--or it may overwhelm the entire system, creating more and more splinters (Syria, anyone?). It seems current American officials are betting chaos will promote independently prophylactic behavior, or at least an admission that following America's military--and paying for the privilege--is better than going at it alone. Let's hope they are smarter than we are.

Bonus: from Kamrava's Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (2013). 

Mind the Gap: Individualism in Modern America

I recently had a strange dream. I was telling a colleague's child that he was very smart, but he had to pick a group to join to really make an impact. His mission in life, in addition to earning money and staying out of non-dischargeable debt, was to find his "tribe."  

He asked, "Isn't America about individualism?" 

"Not anymore, unless you have access to millions of dollars." 

If that sounds dystopian, you're right. In the old days, when life was simpler--and more harsh, with limited options--if a group of people had an idea, they could go to the town hall or a local event, discuss it, and implement it. Taxes didn't need to be raised--people contributed their time. More often than not, there was nothing to implement. You had a family--a large one--and your life revolved around taking care of them and avoiding disease. 

Today, as more adults in developed countries have delayed having children because of the high cost of homes in good school districts; greater unpredictability in relationships; and the need to go in debt to gain access to decent-paying careers, societies have struggled to replace the family with some other equally meaningful "work." In fact, many modern communities are tasked with filling in the gap that religion and family used to occupy and are learning Facebook, food trucks, specialty coffee, and Netflix don't provide the same ability to bind people together. 

If we have to go and "find" our families instead of creating them organically, we can see attending the "right" middle school, high school, and college counts. We can also see it's easier to exclude people when we or our parents choose private schools, stay within our "found" social networks, and don't take public transportation. 

Once we "choose" our new tribes, especially when we start working full time, it's easier to let social media and television influence how we feel. We've all seen videos of government officials in the 1960s destroying Beatles records. You might not know that even England banned Sesame Street, with the BBC's chief of children's programming calling the show "non-democratic and possibly dangerous for young Britons." Television was a game-changer, even when its programming was innocuous because societies understood that for the first time in history, an element other than family and school was vying for influence over their children's lives. The old conservatives weren't wrong to feel threatened. As the 2016 American presidential election showed, television's and media's influence sometimes overwhelm everything else. 

A few decades ago, if we disagreed with someone not in our social group, we might go and talk with him. We couldn't google a person's name and make assumptions. We might have gossiped about someone different, especially in smaller cities, but having different political or other beliefs didn't seem to impede social lives because so many other factors brought the community together and allowed opportunities to see an individual's integrity or work ethic. Without credit card or other consumer debt being widespread and with lawyers and the law serving local interests, the community could also assume a person in a neighborhood was there on his or her own merit. 

Today, many native-born Americans and Europeans might exclude or denigrate others based on political affiliations, whereas in the past, Jacklyn might see Miguel and grow to like him based on his capacity for hard work--political differences be damned. (True story, by the way--that's how Amazon.com was eventually created.)  Although it's easier to date interracially now than in the past, which increases possibilities on paper, we've managed to make relationships harder by excluding persons who don't share our opinions--even if they have a strong work ethic or character. 

Humanity seems to have a special capacity for shooting itself in the foot with every technological advancement, but the "meaningful relationship" gap isn't just about greater possibilities a la Tinder and Happn. With debt everywhere and laws giving certain groups preferential status, determining a person's character at a young age or combining lives becomes much more difficult. There are too many moving parts. Do you work a dead-end job to help your wife go to medical school, only to see her split up after she starts getting paid well? Do you stay at home, lower expenses by cooking at home, and take care of the kids while your husband moves up the corporate ladder, only to see him run off with the secretary? When we are unable to use information to establish character and instead use it to divide ourselves based on superficial differences while powerful groups form political alliances to protect themselves against change and consequences, why shouldn't things not to fall apart? 

Humans have never been a very tolerant species, but we were intolerant on our own dime in the past, not OPM and certainly not with money we borrowed from our children's yet unborn next generation. If someone bought a new car, we could look at it and assume s/he sacrificed and saved up to buy it. Sure, the car was shiny and had useful new features, but the real attraction--whether we realized it or not--was that we were lucky to know someone who made an effort to convert his time into something tangible and share its unique experience with us. If the car broke down, the neighborhood felt the owner's anguish, and the car manufacturer or dealer would lose his reputation unless the owner--our owner--was made whole. If a police officer was shot or attacked, we all felt the blow because we saw him walking our streets at nighttime. At the same time, if he committed excessive or unnecessary violence against a member of our community, the mayor and police chief answered to the neighborhood, not the union, not an MOU, and not a lawyer authorized to use every procedural trick in the book. 

I was never very good at algebra, but here's a formula you may want to consider: excessive debt + a lack of tolerance + a dearth of ways to show character and integrity - trust = dystopia. In short, the American president is the least of our problems. 

Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace (1991)