Michael Prescott's Blog

Politics etc.

I'm not interested in arguing the details. All I know is that several swing states stopped counting votes around midnight on Election Night, and when they resumed, Joe Biden enjoyed a remarkable surge of votes.

I also know that in some precincts, huge numbers of ballots were delivered in the middle of the night, during the vote-counting hiatus, that had no races filled out except the presidency – 100% for Joe Biden. This happened in Philadelphia and possibly other places.

Do I think the election was stolen? Yes, I do.

Biden left his house only (approximately) one out of every three days, attended "events" that consisted of a handful of media people listening to him read off a Teleprompter (very badly), and yet somehow managed to defeat an incumbent president with a huge base of support, a president who attracted more support and more votes, including minority support, than he did in 2016?

I don't buy it.

Perhaps this is just personal bias on my part. 

Nevertheless, I will never buy it. And that's that.

Readers are free to argue about it, if they wish. For the record, here is what I think:

The election was rigged. Moreover, it is likely that all future elections will be rigged. Your vote doesn't matter. The outcome has already been decided. This election was a sham, as it has been in Venezuela and other dictatorships. We have become an oligarchy of rule-by-billionaires. Yes, Trump is a billionaire (or at least he says he is) – but he is a rebel. The other billionaires, such as the software billionaires who are be running things at this point, have no populist instincts and are interested only in squashing the will of the people in order to enforce their own agenda at any cost. We have seen this in the attempts by Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to silence any criticism of the status quo.

The United States of America has entered a post-representative period in its history. In our case, Caesar was able to cross the Rubicon without anyone particularly noticing, thanks in large part to a willfully compliant national media, which certainly includes the highly overrated Fox News. From this point forward, elections will be entirely meaningless. The results will be determined in advance by the powers that be. Voting is no more than a ritualistic act intended to reassure the hoc polloi that their "voice" still counts. It does not.

I do not recommend voting in any future election whatsoever, except possibly local elections, which may (possibly)  not be rigged.

Basically, I would opt out of the political system at this point. This is what I intend to do. I'm no longer interested in politics, nor do I plan to engage in political controversies. I recognize that my opinion and my persuasive efforts are completely useless. We do not live in a country where the individual's opinion counts.

I'm not saying this merely because Trump lost. There were many negatives about the Trump presidency, not least his narcissistic and obsessive use of Twitter. But I think it should be obvious to any reasonable observer that Trump, whatever his (many) defects, was infinitely more popular than Biden, a dementia-addled candidate who was unable to hit the campaign trail two-thirds of the time.

Where we are now, I think, is in the Augustinian phase of Roman history. Augustus, as you may know, took over the leadership of Rome after the Republic collapsed. He permitted a fairly wide latitude in freedom of speech, and he continued the old forms of the Senate and consuls, but in fact he devised a new and quite practical method of leadership from the top down. He was a genius, which distinguishes him from the idiots who profess to know how to handle our political system going forward. The system authored by Augustus lasted for more than 400 years. I very much doubt that the system authored by Kamala Harris and AOC will last for even one-quarter of that time.

The $64,000 question is whether the 70 or 80 million people (who knows how many there really were?) who voted for Trump will accept this "new normal" or will eventually rebel. They are showing no signs of rebellion so far. I admit that this surprises me. I thought that under the circumstances, civil unrest would be much more widespread. I anticipated the kind of violence from the right that we have seen from the left (Antifa, Black Lives Matter) over the past eight months. Then again, I thought civil unrest would be ignited by the ridiculous demands to shut down businesses and wear masks in the face of a "pandemic" that is no more serious than the Asian flu or the Hong Kong flu. I was wrong about that; so apparently the American public, in general, is willing to conform to any level of authoritarian demands, no matter how unsupportable and absurd. And the same goes for our vaunted law enforcement officers, who have disgraced themselves by enforcing these ridiculous regulations, and who no longer deserve our support, even as Antifa and BLM target them for destruction. Let them be defunded and destroyed. 

To be completely honest, I now support Antifa. Their objective is to "burn down "America. I don't see a problem with this. I would rather see us die quickly than in a long, drawn-out, pointless death. There is dignity in national suicide. There is no dignity in the path we're on now. 

In any event, the worrisome complacency of Trump supporters may change as the new reality dawns on them that their votes are of no value. Right now, many of them continue to believe, naïvely, that they can still influence the outcome of elections by voting for the candidate they prefer. This faith will be tested and eventually broken in subsequent elections, probably starting with the two Georgia runoff elections for U.S. Senate. Then the question will be: How will the Trump supporters (i.e., the populist American right) react? Will they accept the road to serfdom, or will they rise up in blind, inchoate rebellion?

On this pivot point turns the future of our erstwhile "democracy." The alternatives seem to be a) willful acquiescence in a "soft" dictatorship of the tech elites or b) an effort at secession that may or may not succeed.

As far as the second option is concerned, I recommend the book American Secession by FH Buckley. This surprisingly levelheaded book presents a number of arguments for secession before ultimately (spoiler alert!) deciding against it. Buckley is a Canadian professor with a longtime interest in American history. His opinions are intelligent, well reasoned, and supported by copious historical evidence and contemporary data. Personally, I think he makes such a good case for secession that his last-minute conversion to a "unionist" standpoint is less than persuasive.

For me personally, I will say that I think some form of secession is the only hope left for preserving any form of freedom on the North American continent. But it is unlikely. We will simply march like lemmings into our 1984-style future. Or is it Brave New World?

I am, by the way, fully aware that by expressing such highly charged political opinions on this blog I will alienate people who don't share those opinions. However, I did not start this blog twenty years ago, when I was a mere lad of forty, in order to cultivate popularity. In fact, it never occurred to me that anybody would be interested in my nattering opinions. So whatever happens, happens.

I am a loudmouthed asshole, and I intend to continue being a loudmouth asshole, the matter what it costs me. Take it or leave it.

Death Race 2000

 

Folks, we've officially entered a dystopian alternate reality that seems to be combination of Mad Max and Through the Looking Glass. It's not even October, and the wheels of our society are coming off. 

In this video from Hollywood, the glamour capital of the USA, a confused driver in a Prius blunders into a BLM-Antifa (aka BLAMtifa) riot. The driver cautiously maneuvers around the rioters, avoiding contact with any of them. The rioters, having none of it, dispatch a customized truck to chase down the Prius and block it off. (This is the Mad Max part.) Rioters then swarm the trapped Prius and try to drag the driver out of his car in the hope of delivering a savage beatdown. After having his windshield smashed, the driver manages to back away in his vehicle and escape the scene. In a charming coda (this is the Through the Looking Glass part), we see him pulled over by L.A.'s Finest, the Thin Blue Line, the brave "men" of the LAPD, who arrest him for the crime of not allowing BLAMtifa to kill him. 

CBS News, "reporting" the story, says that the driver struck several rioters (he did not) and was "stopped" by "protesters" (no, CBS, he was chased down, trapped, and swarmed by a  homicidal mob that tried to assassinate him). 

If you're wondering why the Prius driver didn't just emerge from his car to reason calmly with the "protesters," perhaps it's because, like many Angelenos, he's seen footage of what happened to truck driver Reginald Denny in the 1992 riots. Pro tip: Do not ever let them pull you out of your car. 

Fasten your seatbelts. The next two or three months will be among the most turbulent in American history. Odds are that most of us will come through okay — America is a big place, and BLAMtifa can't be everywhere. Still, it would be a wise precaution to put your personal affairs in order. You never know how far the violence will spread or how many innocents, like the Prius driver, will be caught up in it. And if the angry mobs don't get you, the police (who do not seem to know who they're working for) just might. 

This is a good time to hunker down and stay safe. It may not be the most heroic option, but for those of us who are not action heroes, it's the sensible thing to do. 

1876

It's hardly news that many Americans are nervous about the upcoming election, not merely because of uncertainty about who will win but, more profoundly, because of fears that no clear winner will be determined.  

With mail-in voting to be used on an unprecedented scale, there are questions about the timely delivery and the accurate count of the ballots. Phalanxes of attorneys have already lined up on both sides to challenge decisions made by local electoral boards. There seems to be a real danger that some states will be unable to certify a slate of electors in time to meet the deadline for the Electoral College vote, in which case the election would be referred to the Congress, with the House of Representatives choosing the president and the Senate choosing the vice president.

Complicating matters still further is the fact that it's the newly elected House and Senate that are supposed to make this choice, yet it's unclear how the newly elected bodies can assemble if critical ballots remain in dispute. If the Congress manages to work around this issue, the House will choose the president by a vote of state delegations. At present, Republicans control 26 state delegations, giving them the advantage in the current House, though not necessarily in the post-election House. If no president can be selected by Inauguration Day, the Speaker of the House assumes the duties of acting President of the United States. And there are many more complexities and uncertainties.

It would be one thing if all this drama were to play out in an atmosphere of calm deliberation, but – to put it mildly – that seems unlikely. Instead we can probably expect a wave of demonstrations, many turning violent.

To get some idea of what we may be in store for, I recently read Fraud of the Century, by Roy Morris, Jr., which covers the contested election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. It's an exhaustively researched, generally compelling narrative that perhaps offers a glimpse into the events of the next few months. 

The election took place eleven years after the end of the Civil War. Antagonisms were still strong on both sides. Racism remained widespread and not at all covert. South Carolina politician Edmund Rhett said openly that the goal of his policies was for blacks to "be kept as near to the condition of slavery as possible, and as far from the condition of the white man as is practicable." Florida governor William Marvin told blacks to return to the plantations where they had been enslaved and "call your old Master – 'Master.'"

In response to such attitudes, the government in Washington had imposed federal troops on the South to protect the civil rights (and the lives) of the black population — the defining feature of the policy known as Reconstruction. Southern whites increasingly chafed under this de facto martial law, and many Northerners had grown weary of policing the region.

The Democratic Party, which had been the party of secession, continued to represent the interests of Southern whites, though some canny Democrats were making inroads with black voters. These inroads were made a bit easier by the widespread corruption of Ulysses S. Grant's presidential administration. Sordid scandals involving patronage and kickbacks had led to resignations and indictments, and had made the hapless Grant a figure of ridicule and contempt. 

Corruption was by no means limited to the Republicans. The most notoriously corrupt politician in America was a Democrat, the famous Boss Tweed of New York's Tammany Hall. Morris writes, "With his diamond stick pins, loud checked suits, ruby shirt studs, and bowler hats, the corpulent Tweed was the walking embodiment of big-city corruption." The scale of Tweed's misdeeds is legendary. Morris focuses on the erection of the New York County courthouse, which took ten years to complete:

The building, which was supposed to cost $250,000, wound up costing the city nearly $14 million … Carpenters were paid $2.1 million for $30,000 worth of work; a Tammany Hall [crony] named Andrew Garvey received $1.9 million to plaster the building …; the furniture bill was $1.6 million, including $179,729 for three tables and forty chairs; and the bill for carpeting the courthouse was a staggering $4.8 million – enough to carpet the entire city.

Both Hayes and Tilden ran against corruption and in favor of reform. Tilden in particular had bona fides in this regard. He had been one of the leading voices against Tammany Hall and was instrumental in sending Tweed into exile (eventually followed by extradition and prison).

The presidential campaign was ugly and vicious, as is usual in American politics. The Republican-leaning Chicago Tribune described Tilden as "weazened, and shrimpled, and meanly cute. There is nothing about the man that is large, big, generous, solid, inspiring, powerful, or awakening. He's a small, lazy, odorous, ungainly, trickling stream, winding along and among the weeds ..." and so on.  His masculinity was questioned because he was a lifelong bachelor. The political cartoonist Thomas Nast frequently depicted him wearing a skirt. More worryingly, some of Hayes's supporters adopted the tactic of "waving the bloody shirt" – reminding ex-Union soldiers of the wounds they'd won in battle ("Soldiers," Robert G. Ingersoll would declaim, "every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given to you by a Democrat") and exhorting them to "vote as you shot." The attacks went in the other direction as well, of course. One Tilden supporter urged the candidate to pose the question, "Did Hayes shoot his mother in a fit of insanity?"

On election night, it appeared that Tilden had won by a slim but unassailable margin. Republicans, however, immediately focused on three key southern states: South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. They asserted that widespread suppression of the black vote in those states had allowed Tilden's victory. Teams of strategists from both parties descended on the states to oversee the certification of the ballots. Though undoubtedly there was some suppression of the black vote, Morris argues that it was insufficient to account for Tilden's margins of victory (I gather that other historians disagree). In any case, hard-working Republican operatives were able to cloud the issue sufficiently that the outcome in all three states remained unresolved.

The general atmosphere of these deliberations was extremely disheartening for believers in democracy. After witnessing some of the behind-the-scenes activities, onetime Union general and Republican politician Lew Wallace, today best known as the author of Ben-Hur, wrote his wife,

I scarcely ever passed a week under such depression of spirits. It is terrible to see the extent to which all classes go in their determination to win. Conscience offers no restraint. Nothing is so common as the resort to perjury, unless it is violence – in short, I do not know whom to believe. If we win, our methods are subject to impeachment for possible fraud. If the enemy win, it is the same thing exactly – doubt, suspicion, irritation go with the consequence, whatever it may be.

This forecast proved accurate. There was never any chance that the eventual winner of the election would be respected by the losing side.

Ultimately, four states submitted multiple slates of electors to the Electoral College. North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana each offered at least two different slates, reflecting ongoing disputes over whether Hayes or Tilden had carried the vote. A fourth state, Oregon, posed a different  dilemma; the state had gone for Hayes by an indisputable margin, but one of the Hayes electors had been retroactively disqualified for being a federal employee, and there was a question of what to do with his single electoral college vote. Should it be awarded to Hayes anyway, or should it go to Tilden, whose elector had received the next-largest number of votes? The matter was more critical than it might appear; Tilden already had a confirmed total of 184 electoral votes, leaving him just one vote shy of the presidency. Should the orphaned Oregon vote go his way, he would be inaugurated. 

To resolve these issues, Congress agreed to set up two electoral commissions, later merged into one, comprised of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. The Republicans' one-seat advantage on the commission – a somewhat accidental result of the selection process – proved decisive, as the commission ruled in favor of the Republicans in all four states. By receiving all the disputed votes, including the one in Oregon, Hayes was able to edge out Tilden, 185-184.

The transparently partisan rulings of the electoral commission left the public feeling cheated. The new president was quickly dubbed "His Fraudulency" and "Rutherfraud" Hayes. Although Hayes overcame this bad beginning and ended his single term in office (he did not run for reelection) as a reasonably popular figure, his reputation was forever marked by the dubious circumstances under which he attained power. 

Hayes's election is often framed as the result of a "corrupt bargain" in which Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction in exchange for some limited but crucial Democratic support. Morris argues that this is an oversimplification. He points out that the North had already grown frustrated with overseeing the postwar South, and that the policy of withdrawing federal troops would have been implemented no matter who was in power. He also thinks the last-minute "bargain" has been oversold and amounted to little more than a ratification of the inevitable. In any event, Reconstruction did end with Hayes, and for nearly a century Southern blacks were left without federal protection and were reduced to the states of second-class citizens as whites implemented Jim Crow laws and turned a blind eye to lynchings and mob action. 

Returning to our present circumstances, it's somewhat reassuring to see that violence in the turbulent post-election atmosphere of 1876 was kept to a minimum. True, there was an assassination attempt against Hayes (an assailant, never apprehended, fired a gun at him through a window of his home), which was hushed up at the time to avoid exacerbating tensions. Even so, the widespread civil unrest that might have been expected did not arise. This was mainly due to the forbearance of Hayes and Tilden, both of whom made every effort to prevent large assemblies that might degenerate into riots. It was also due to the prudence of President Grant, who made sure that Washington, DC, was protected by federal troops to prevent any attempt to seize the White House by force. 

Another factor was Tilden's principled decision to abide by the law. Some of his more hotheaded advisers pressed him to take the oath of office in defiance of the electoral commission and set up a parallel government. Tilden steadfastly refused, saying simply that he had "no warrant of authority." Had he taken their advice, he could have been arrested as an insurrectionist and even shot. The potential consequences are appalling. The country would have risked a resumption of the Civil War. 

Needless to say, the United States survived the contested election of 1876. There was no mass uprising, no confrontation between protesters and federal troops, no parallel government that might have prompted divided loyalties on the part of the military. Hayes was peacefully succeeded by another Republican, James A. Garfield. Garfield, in turn was assassinated six months into his presidency, but the killing had nothing to do with ideology; the assassin was a mentally ill low-level political operative incensed at not having been appointed ambassador to France. 

Looking ahead, it's possible that November's election will be so one-sided (in either direction) that there will be no serious dispute over the outcome. I hope so. Regardless of who wins, I would rather have a blowout that silences all doubts than a squeaker that encourages recounts, litigation, protests, and possibly a spiraling descent into chaos.

If we're not so lucky and we end up with a replay of 1876, we can only hope that the moderation and good sense shown by Hayes and Tilden in restraining their supporters and adhering to constitutional norms will be shown by both of our contemporary presidential candidates and their advisors.

Somehow I'm not optimistic, but when it comes to human nature, I never am.

---

P.S.  If you're interested in reading Fraud of the Century, I recommend purchasing the print edition, rather than the Kindle ebook. The Kindle is poorly formatted; most of the chapters have the text centered so that it runs down the middle of the page. This makes it almost impossible to read. I don't know if ebook editions other than the Kindle suffer from the same formatting issue, but they might.

A journal of the plague year

I guess enough time has passed since the start of the great COVID-19 epidemic of 2020 that I can stop and assess what I may have learned and how I may have changed, for better or worse, as a result of this unprecedented disruption of our national life.

A lot of the changes, for me, have been surprisingly positive. I would not have expected this when the whole thing started. And I'm certainly not trying to downplay the inconvenience, frustration, and – at times – depressing nature of the lockdowns. Still, I seem to have come out a little bit better for it in some ways.

For one thing, I'm doing a lot more writing than I did before. With less to distract me and fewer excuses to procrastinate, and driven in part by simple boredom, I made it my business to work on a writing project for at least a half hour every day. A half hour doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, but once I got started, I usually would go much longer than 30 minutes. I found that getting just a little bit into the project was often enough to fire my interest. I was able to write a 20,000 word novella much faster than I normally would have, merely by making a point of working on it every single day. And I'm still doing this on my new project, with good results.

the novella I wrote – a historical fantasy

Another positive change is that I found myself going back to paranormal literature and either reading new books or rereading old ones. I really hadn't done much of this in the last few years, and I feel that it does help to "raise my vibrations" and put me in a more upbeat frame of mind. I can actually feel the daily headlines and Twitter posts dragging me down in energy, focus, and willpower, while concentrating on spiritual subjects has the opposite effect. I think politics in general attracts low-vibration people who are often motivated by the "will to power" and who are happy to lie, cheat, and intimidate in order to get it. Getting too deeply involved in that area of life can be soul-deadening. This is a lesson I had probably learned before, but not quite so vividly.

Finally, I think – probably like many other people – I now have a renewed appreciation for some of the simpler things in life. Just going to a restaurant, even if I have to dine outdoors (indoor dining is not yet permitted in my state), now seems like an exciting change of pace. I'm impressed by the resilience of shopkeepers who found a way to maintain their businesses by offering curbside pickup services or, in the case of restaurateurs, setting up tents to serve customers. In some cases, these improvised outdoor dining areas are nicer than the indoor dining they've replaced – although I doubt this will remain true when the weather turns cold.

In fairness, I have to balance these positive changes with some that are not so positive. I admit I've become more cynical and less trusting of my fellow human beings, especially my fellow Americans. People seem awfully quick to accept government mandates delivered by the unilateral edict of a mayor or governor. Worse, many law enforcement officers are awfully keen to enforce these mandates in an unthinking "I'm only following orders" way. I used to think Americans would instinctively resist tyranny. Now I'm not so sure.

And I can't help but feel that a lot of people are good at sabotaging their own lives. They were remarkably quick to cast aside one of the strongest economies we've had in the last 50 years for the sake of temporarily beefed-up unemployment checks. I have the strong impression that a lot of folks just don't think very far ahead, which may explain why they don't get very far in life. And I'll confess that, while in the past I've given pretty generously to charity, more than maxing out my federal tax deduction for charitable contributions several years in a row, this year I have not been inclined to give anything at all to charity, because I'm not sure it really helps. If people are dead set on short-term thinking and self-sabotage, I doubt there's anything that I or anyone else can do for them.

The "novel coronavirus" is not likely to be the last infectious disease to hit our shores, and I wonder if this kind of extreme overreaction will become the new normal. If it does, it will be exceedingly hard to maintain our standard of living and the civil liberties we've historically taken for granted. I also wonder if our friends in Isis and Al Qaeda have noticed our growing national germophobia and are planning to take advantage of it in their own way. 

So my final report is mixed. Some of what I learned from our not-yet-completed plague year has been positive and uplifting, while some other lessons have been less edifying.

How about you? Has the pandemic made you a different person? If so, on balance, has the change been for better – or worse?

Best meme ever

Coping with chaos

Right now I think many people have the sense that society is coming apart at the seams. It's like the famous WB Yeats poem, "The Second Coming": 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats's Second Coming is not an event to be celebrated. It is not Christ, but the great Sphinx of Giza, who is lumbering toward civilization, with nothing good on its mind.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

In the past few months we've seen mass hysteria over a virus that, according to the CDC's "best estimate," has a lethality rate of 0.26%. (That's 0.4% of those with symptoms, adjusted for the CDC's estimate of 35% infected without symptoms.) Then we saw new hysteria over a suspect who died in police custody and whose death was captured on video. George Floyd's death should not have happened, but the officer responsible has already been charged and is being held in custody, so what exactly does "justice for George Floyd" represent? A lynching? Perhaps. In any event, the tragedy is being used to justify looting, arson, murder, and the destruction of inner-city neighborhoods that won't be rebuilt for a generation, if ever. In the meantime, so-called "medical authorities" are telling us that, while the virus makes it incredibly dangerous to gather together for a picnic or sports event, it is not only safe but morally necessary to assemble for protests.

 

It would be nice to think that things will soon return to normal, but I doubt it. With every presidential election, the national mood becomes more feverish and agitated. This is partly because presidents have acquired too much power – the imperial presidency is all too real – and partly because the country is so deeply divided that each side, left and right, is moving to an increasingly extremist position. In this context, we can reasonably expect a long, hot summer and an equally divisive autumn. I doubt things will get any better after the election, either. No matter which side wins, the other side will feel disenfranchised.

 

In these circumstances, preserving one's peace of mind becomes a paramount concern. It's been reported that suicide hotlines have seen a significant increase in calls. Domestic violence – both spousal abuse and child abuse – is said to be way up. Tempers are short, and people's psyches are frayed, or maybe fried. These are dangerous times, and they're not likely to get better anytime soon. How can one cope?

 

The ancient Romans, or some of them, found a solution to the instability and chaos of their own times in the philosophy of Stoicism, which originated in ancient Greece but migrated to Rome in a heavily modified form. Recently I've been reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, who probably came as close to Plato's ideal of a philosopher-king as the world will ever know. Marcus was not an original thinker, but he was serious in his study of philosophy, and the notes he left for us – notes jotted down during military campaigns for his own use, and never intended for publication, nor even given a title (the name Meditations was added later) – give us a glimpse into his inner mind as intimate as that afforded by Cicero's letters, and more philosophically profound.

 

Stoicism, as the Romans understood it, consists of the view that the universe is fundamentally rational and good. Therefore, anything that happens, aside from acts of human agency, should not be resisted but instead embraced. If your house is struck by lightning and burns down, you are free to regard it as a tragedy, but you need not. The objective facts do not force any particular emotive conclusion. You may – and according to Stoicism, you should – go with the flow of events, not resisting, not objecting, not finding fault. To say that nature or the world has done you wrong is irrational, because the world cannot be irrational. Only you can be irrational by making an incorrect inference, an emotional value-judgment.

 

Human action, the Stoics admit, can be irrational and evil. Even so, the only victims of these actions are the actors themselves. You cannot be hurt in any meaningful way by the behavior of other people. The integrity of your intellect, the purity of your soul, cannot be sullied by any outside force. If you fail to live up to your own standards, the fault lies with you, not with others.

 

This is a hard philosophy, one might say a pitiless philosophy, a philosophy that takes no account of ordinary human emotions and weaknesses. Perhaps the Romans liked it for that reason. They were not known to be sympathetic to what they saw as weakness. The image of a man who can be shaken by no external events, who is secure in himself and indifferent to accidents of nature (although the Stoics would say there were no accidents) and the misdeeds of his fellow man, was deeply appealing to many of them.

 

I think we can see why this philosophy became prevalent in later years of the Empire, when turmoil at home and unrest abroad created an atmosphere of chronic uncertainty. If you can't count on the stability of the world around you, then you retreat into a private world and convince yourself that you cannot be touched by anything that happens. If the Emperor orders you to commit suicide, or if your estates are ravaged by barbarian hordes, you merely acquiesce and say that it is rational and necessary. In this, there is a bit of Voltaire's Professor Pangloss (satirizing Leibniz): Everything that happens is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

 

The mindset of Stoicism might well let us cope with the escalating chaos of our society. But I have to say, I don't think I'm up to it. I don't believe that everything does happen for the best. My suspicion is that events unfold in a way that reflects both a higher-level plan and random accident/unpredictable free will. Or to put it another way, I think that each person's life is planned before birth, but that the person, once born, is at the mercy of his own egoistic will, which can make serious mistakes, and also at the mercy of events that were not foreseen and cannot be controlled. This is probably why more than one incarnation is necessary; if we could get it right the first time, we wouldn't need to come back. Having incarnated without conscious knowledge of the roadmap that our higher self intends for us to follow, we are all too likely to blunder into a dead end. And when enough people blunder into a dead end, the result is societal breakdown, such as we're seeing now.

 

What, then, is the solution? If we can't believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, where everything happens for a reason, can we at least believe that we personally have some reason for being stuck here?

 

I can't speak for anyone else. The answer to this question is necessarily personal, subjective, and individual. For myself, I've come up with an answer, one that has been germinating in me for some time. To explain it, I have to briefly recap my last few years.

 

Around 2016, I largely lost my sense of purpose in life. My family was all gone. My career as a writer was winding down. There didn't seem to be anything much to live for, and I was honestly perplexed as to why I was still here. It seemed pointless, just a waste of time. Since I do believe there's a higher self in charge of my incarnation, I was baffled as to what this higher self expected me to accomplish. In my own "meditations," so to speak, I asked this question and did not get a satisfactory answer. Frankly, this annoyed me. What the hell do your people want from me? I would ask. My mission is over. Where's my goddamn extraction? 

 

I was frustrated because I seemed to get no answer. But now I think I have one. 

 

Even as a child, and throughout my life, I've found myself emotionally and intellectually drawn to end-of-the-world scenarios. For instance, I've read a great deal about the last days of the Roman Republic, and a fair amount about the end of the Western Roman Empire a few centuries later. The idea of the world breaking down and civilization falling apart has always haunted me.

In addition, I've had a long-standing interest in social manias or mass hysteria, as discussed in the famous 19th century study Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. (I wrote a little about this book here and here.)

 

Now these two lifelong interests of mine have converged in real life, as we see Western civilization increasingly under stress as result of repeated episodes of mass psychosis. I expect this trend to continue.

 

And this leads me to my epiphany. I believe my purpose, at this stage of life, is to observe the breakdown of society under the weight of hysteria and divisiveness. As an infinitesimally tiny offshoot of the Cosmic Mind, I have a front row seat at one of the great events in history – the collapse of Western civilization in the 21st century. Assuming there is a future for humanity, historians will be writing and speculating about these events forever. But I get to see them firsthand.

 

I don't pretend that I can play any role in this unfolding catastrophe, much less delay or prevent it. I believe my role, as planned by my higher self before I was even born, and as prepared for me by my interest in relevant subject matters, is simply to observe and record what happens. Not to observe and record for others, but for myself. 

 

Naturally, this newfound conviction of mine will not carry much weight with other people. As I said, it's subjective, and it can be dismissed as arbitrary and self-serving. But no one can dictate the meaning of another person's life. What's meaningful to you may not be meaningful to me, and vice versa. Some people find meaning in throwing Molotov cocktails at police cars. That is, I suppose, their destiny. As for me, my destiny is to watch everything spiral down the drain.

 

The present chaos will end, but it will be replaced by new outbreaks of mass panic and mass hysteria. Some archaeologists maintain that the great cities of the Mayan people were simply abandoned; the population moved out and never returned. I suspect that a contagion of panic and hysteria infected those populations. Something similar is happening now. Most of those who are actively involved in this epidemic of insanity have no real understanding; as Jesus said, they know not what they do. That, too, is fine.

 

I know what they do, and I am watching.

 

That's my job. It's the reason I'm still here.

Guest post: The mirror and the light

I really enjoyed this well-written and thoughtful comment that appeared in a thread on my Facebook page, and with the permission of the author, Emiliano Pardo Saguier, I'm posting it here.

Emiliano was responding to my downbeat remarks about the psychological toll that this extended period of national house arrest is taking on me.

(The title of the post is mine, and is a reference to Hillary Mantel's latest [and final] book in her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell.)

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These recommendations are not meant to make light of your intellectual acumen, nor are they made in jest. With the assumed proviso that you will take this with good cheer, I say:

Go outside. If you have a yard, or an open private space of any kind, sunbathe in the hours between 10-12 PM, or so. Expose as much unprotected skin as you can to maximize vitamin D production — to be frank, twenty-or-so minutes in the midday sun should prove more than sufficient if you're bone-white like me.

There are myriad unknown benefits to sun exposure. Many of the mechanisms of the benefits that are known are a mystery too, but it's been theorized that vitamin D (which is notably useless as a supplement) is not the cause of all the benefits from sun exposure, but rather one of its byproducts. It's indeed a marker that you're getting enough of it, but not the only net positive.

For one, you'll be in much better spirits, and have improved focus and concentration. Having increased vitamin D levels won't hurt either; there's pretty strong evidence to suggest that most in the Western industrialized world are lacking in it. Your immune level will improve by leaps and bounds, which you would want in any old year, but especially in 2020. There's solid epidemiological data that backs high vit D as one of the greatest barriers against COVID-19 complications.

These may seem like painfully obvious suggestions, and you may already be following them, but they've worked wonders for me. I've been soaking up more rays than I had ever gotten in my 36 years, and I've found sun exposure to be the silver bullet against an all-abiding state of dejection and depression. I've also been on more flights since this whole crisis started than I'd been in the past five years combined, and I haven't had more than a few sniffles, or a couple coughs back in March.

For human stupidity and irrationality, I have nothing. We're just a bunch of apes, too afraid to die, too afraid to live, it seems. The world is now stuck in this stupid, useless, deadly paralysis.

And while people blindly follow the official story, even revolutionaries and Bernie-bros, we continue to circle the drain, ever closer to the big gulp.

My only solace in this situation is the few contrarian, non-conspiratorial voices rising from the din and being reasonable. Maybe one day, voices like yours will be hailed as the actual heroes in all this mess.

Don't hold your breath, though. We know this is all the fault of Trump, global warming, the Left, the Right, the Pope, the Church, CO₂ emissions, climate skeptics, climate believers, SJWs, alt-righters, and that guy who sneezed on me at LAX.

Never of the stupid, gullible asshole in the mirror.

Cassandra shrugged

I'm weary of arguing about the dreaded coronavirus, so I'll sum up my position here and let it go. Feel free to be as disputatious as you like in the comments, while staying civil, as always.

When the virus became known outside of China, there were few data points, and the info from China was either incomplete or intentionally misleading. As a result, authorities had to rely on computer models and their projections. These models are only as accurate as the data that are fed into them, and without adequate data, the projections could only be speculative. But the models were all anyone had, and governments can't be blamed (too much) for acting on them. The models predicted mass death and the breakdown of hospital systems under an overload of ICU cases, even with severe countermeasures in place. 

As a result, drastic "mitigation efforts" were undertaken in most developed countries. The idea was to "flatten the curve" — not necessarily to reduce the overall death toll significantly (though some lives might be saved), but to  space out the cases and prevent hospitals from collapsing under the strain. The nightmare scenario was Italy, where demand for ICUs exceeded the supply and ventilators had to be rationed. Lost in all this was that Italy has a chronically underfunded healthcare system that is prone to shortages and rationing even in normal years, and that the Lombardy region of Italy was in many ways a worst-case scenario because of demographics, air pollution, and a large influx of Chinese workers. 

Now enough time has passed to see that the models were very inaccurate. The virus is significantly less lethal than originally believed. No one argues with this. The initial estimate of a 3.4% mortality rate has consistently dropped. Current estimates range from 0.1% to 1% — still a wide range, but even the upper limit is well below the initial assumption. The models have been revised downward accordingly. 

Despite fears that viral hot zones would be overwhelmed, no metro area in the US has seen its hospitals so swamped that they cannot provide care, even in the ICUs. New York City constructed a tent city to handle hospital overloads and also had a Navy hospital ship brought in; neither contingency was needed. The city also requested 30,000 ventilators and complained when fewer were delivered, but ended up not using all of the ones it had, and is now sending ventilators to other metro areas, which also don't seem to need them.

In short, the data were incomplete, the models were wrong, and the anticipated overflows didn't happen. And this is true in countries that practiced severe mitigation efforts, moderate efforts, or minimal efforts. It's true pretty much everywhere except in Italy, Spain, and perhaps some less-developed countries like Iran and China, which are not providing reliable data. In fact, by all accounts the flu outbreak of 2017-2018 stressed the US hospital system much more severely than the novel coronavirus. 

 

Cassandra, by Mila Strugatsky

 

The intelligent thing to do at this point would be to gradually ease up on the lockdowns. Immediate lifting could well lead to a spurt in new cases, which in turn would trigger calls to reinstate the lockdowns — calls that politicians would find difficult to ignore. Moreover, the public is so panicky about the virus that even if all lockdowns were lifted overnight (not a good idea), many people would not return to work or want to eat out or attend crowded venues. 

The worry is that political paralysis will delay the phased-in reopening that's needed. This in turn will have ever more severe consequences for our economy, our national psychology, and possibly civil liberties and civil order. Already we've seen a spike in new unemployment claims that dwarfs any numbers on record and makes the so-called Great Recession following the 2008 financial crash look like a blip on the charts. Some analysts believe US unemployment will hit 20% by the end of this month, a stunning turnaround from the full employment we enjoyed at the start of the year. (3-4% unemployment is considered full employment, because some people will always be changing jobs at any given time.) Small businesses are facing bankruptcy, potentially in record numbers. No amount of stimulus, even assuming that Congress can agree to provide more, will be sufficient to save all these businesses, each of which represents the livelihood of its employees and the life's work of its owners. The ripple effects from these numbers could be catastrophic, as once-prosperous communities see a cascade of business closures and as unemployed or bankrupt people lose their homes. For the moment, foreclosures have been put on hold in many states, but at some point they will resume. 

A more immediate concern is the breakdown of the daily delivery of goods. Supply chains appear to be increasingly stressed. Shortages of staple food products are now common in many parts of the country, although these shortages seem to be intermittent for now. The longer the full lockdown continues, the more difficult it becomes to maintain supply lines. Shortages that are temporary could become permanent. Shortages that are localized could become more widespread. 

If food starts running out, the next stage in the process is civil unrest. Hungry, scared, angry people are unlikely to sit at home and starve. Authorities will then have to use ever more repressive measures to keep the populace in line. Already some local and state authorities have overstepped their bounds with nonsensical and Kafkaesque prohibitions, which have ignited protests. If the authorities feel compelled to go even further, they will probably trigger more protests, not necessarily peaceful ones.

In short, the situation is volatile. The future I've laid out may be a worst-case scenario. It's possible that supply lines will remain sufficiently intact to prevent more serious shortages, and that civil order will be maintained without unduly authoritarian measures. Americans are resourceful and resilient people, and we may figure out innovative ways to keep our economy running well enough to stave off chaos. The checks and balances of our system may keep any authoritarian tendencies from running too far out of control.

But even if we come through the lockdown period without the crises I've sketched out, there is no way to avoid the psychic toll. Children are locked up in households with abusive parents. Wives are trapped with abusive husbands. People who've lost their jobs may turn to liquor (alcohol sales are way up), opiates, violence, and suicide (some suicide hotlines report record call volume). Anxiety and depression are sure to skyrocket under these circumstances.

The longer-term outlook is not good. The IMF foresees the worst global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, though they hold out hope for a relatively quick turnaround. The UN says hundreds of thousands of children will die as a result of a sharp decline in living standards, especially in the developing world, where there is less margin for error. No one can foresee the full ramifications of the worldwide shutdown, but anyone who minimizes them is whistling past the graveyard. 

What to do? The lockdown strategy, I believe, was a mistake. It would have been wiser to follow the course set by Sweden, which pursued a more moderate policy of some social distancing (restaurants could not be at full capacity, for instance) while eschewing any general closure of businesses or any stay-at-home orders. Sweden's fatality rate from the virus is in line with rates reported by countries that implemented much more severe measures*, and their economy and society have not suffered to the same degree. But since we did not follow that course, we will have to reopen by degrees, trying to minimize a "second wave" of infections, while intelligently balancing the health risks against the equally real socioeconomic risks. I don't have great confidence in our ability to walk this tightrope. But it's what we can hope for. 

This thing has been a clusterfutz of epic proportions, a perfect storm of limited data, unreliable modeling, an impulsive and panicky political class, sensationalistic media, technocratic tunnel vision, and public germophobia. We have dug a deep hole for ourselves, and now we need to stop digging and try to climb out. It will be a long, slow process, complete with much finger-pointing as the dimensions of our economic apocalypse become clear. 

That's all I have on this subject. I've prophesied enough doom for a while; my voice is tired. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, and future generations will look back on this whole episode as a shining example of public policy.

Yeah. Maybe. 

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*Deaths per million as of April 19:

Worldwide: 21

Germany: 54

Denmark: 61

Portugal: 70

USA: 120

Sweden: 152

UK: 237

France: 302

Italy: 391

Spain: 437

Source:Worldometers

Sweden's strategy is to accept more deaths at the onset of the outbreak in exchange for more rapidly achieving herd immunity. Some countries do have markedly lower death rates. Norway's rate is 30, which is seen as something of an anomaly; tentative explanations include more widespread testing and fewer problems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria (antibiotics are used to treat complications from COVID-19). 

Strange days

In a comments thread, I recommended a Twitter feed by a contrarian journalist named Alex Berenson, who's covering the coronavirus outbreak and its ramifications. Berenson can be a little snarky, but I guess snark goes with the territory on Twitter. He seems to have libertarian leanings and may overstate his case at times, but overall I find his point of view refreshing and the facts that he digs up and highlights quite revealing. (Rather than link to posts supporting each point made below, I'll just refer you to his Twitter feed, where you'll find all of them.)

Berenson's focus lately is on a) the threat to civil liberties and b) the damage to our economy, but his predicate is that the virus has not come close to matching the modelers' projections. He points out, among other things, that outside New York City, many hospitals are furloughing staff because admissions are way down; that the models have consistently been revised downward even though "full social distancing" was assumed from the start (contrary to some media apologetics); that children are at virtually no risk, and most people under 50 are at minimal risk: that in many states the number of people hospitalized is stable at around two or three hundred, yet increasingly draconian and even Kafkaesque measures are being taken; and that the epidemic seems to have plateaued throughout most of the world, including the US. He also links to preliminary studies suggesting that the virus is already widespread throughout the population, which would imply that many of us already have immunity.

Some people say that government lockdowns are no big deal because people would be taking precautions anyway. If this is true, why do we even need the lockdowns? Clearly, people would take precautions; equally clearly, they would not allow their lives to come to a complete halt. They would steer a middle course – something that governments at all levels are apparently incapable of doing.

Just this morning, I read a report that the supply of pork and other meat products is running low, and there may be shortages soon, because lockdown orders have closed meatpacking plants. Food shortages in the US in 2021 isn’t something I expected to see. I wonder how complacent people will be about "the new normal" when they realize the food is running out.

Even the New York Times is starting to worry about the rise of authoritarianism in respond to the virus. A little late, since they helped fuel the panic ...

Meanwhile the federal response is being orchestrated by the estimable Dr. Fauci, a man who believes we should never shake hands again, and who ponders the idea of people carrying immunity certificates to produce for the authorities. ("Show us your papers, citizen!") In other words, he is a fanatic on the subject of germs. This perhaps is to be expected in an epidemiologist, but it's the kind of tunnel vision that doesn't make for good public policy. Nevertheless, because Fauci is an "expert" who's climbed the greasy pole of the federal bureaucracy to its summit, he can put the entire country under indefinite house arrest. Isn't democracy wonderful?

Did you know there are drones in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that overfly public areas and, when they spot people outside, reel off a recorded order to disperse? The looming food shortages remind me of Soylent Green; the drones remind me of Robocop. Both movies are dystopian, and I don't want to live in either of them. I’m 59, which puts me at higher than average risk, but what scares me is not the coronavirus but the sheeplike compliance of the American public. A country that can be frightened this easily by a disease that mainly affects the elderly and will probably have a death toll comparable to, or lower than, a severe strain of seasonal flu can no longer call itself "the home of the brave." A country that allows itself to be quarantined in perpetuity on the basis of computer models that have already proven wrong is hardly "the home of the free."

Incidentally, for three years we’ve heard from the left and the media that Trump is itching to institute martial law, suspend the Constitution, and rule as a dictator, if only he can find a pretext. Well, he’ll never have a better chance than he has now. Why hasn’t he taken it? Could it be that he never wanted to be a dictator? Is it possible that the left and the media have been hyperventilating over nothing? Is there a chance they're doing exactly the same thing about the virus now?

I continue to think we're in the grip of a social mania precipitated by a hysterical press and panicky (or sometimes maliciously destructive) politicians. It's like other manias I’ve witnessed, although more far-reaching in its effects. Remember the hysteria over millions of children being kidnapped by strangers? (Nearly all of the so-called kidnappings were routine custody disputes.) Remember the widespread terror about satanic rituals and sexual abuse at preschools? (The impressionable tots were only repeating tall tales that police and prosecutors suggested to them.) Remember Y2K? Or bird flu, which the esteemed Neil Ferguson of Imperial College predicted would kill 200 million worldwide? (The actual number was less than a thousand. So he was a little off. Nevertheless, the media continue to describe him as "the gold standard" of computer modeling.)

We live in strange, and deeply stupid, times. But perhaps this has always been true.

The upside of the apocalypse

First things first. There's a huge downside to the current pandemic and the measures taken to contain it. Thousands have died, and more will die. The economic damage is potentially massive. The toll on people's psyches is impossible to calculate, but I've read that some suicide hotlines are flooded with calls. All this is obviously bad.

But few situations are entirely bad, and even here, I can see a bit of an upside. What follows is a list of some things to be happy about. Most are small things, but each is at least something. 

Less traffic, more parking. I know how trivial this sounds. Still, it's true. The streets have not been this empty in my part of New Jersey since I was a small boy visiting the shore in the off-season. And it really is much less stressful to get around when you're not fighting traffic and dodging other drivers. This country was a calmer place when it was less crowded. 

More people out and about. Cars may be scarce, but pedestrians and bicyclists are not. I see many more people than usual strolling, jogging, walking their dogs, riding their bikes, and practicing with skateboards, even in chilly weather. And I see family groups out together — families that may not have been spending so much time together before everything shut down.

Friendlier people. In New Jersey it is not de rigueur to say hello to strangers. But these days, people are doing it. They're smiling and waving from across the street or even from their cars. 

More appreciation for the under-appreciated. A situation like this makes us take notice of the people who work behind the scenes to keep things going: the truck drivers, railroad crews, stock boys, cashiers, sanitation workers, package delivery people, mail carriers, and cops on the beat. It also makes us appreciate the skill sets of plumbers, electricians, and repairmen. Right now I have no idea how I would fix (say) a serious plumbing problem, a fact that makes me realize how dependent I am on the technical skills of others.

More appreciation for small business owners. The fact that so many local stores and eateries are faced with possible bankruptcy drives home the importance of these places in our daily lives. And people are doing what they can to keep these businesses afloat — ordering takeout meals and using the Internet to shop locally. 

More appreciation for medical workers. This one is pretty obvious, but it deserves its own category — especially when we consider that healthcare professionals are at greater risk not only of contracting the virus but of being exposed to a high viral load, with potentially much more serious consequences. 

More appreciation in general. The old saying "less attitude, more gratitude" applies here. Many things we took for granted are now temporarily off limits, difficult to come by, or suddenly more necessary than ever. Need I mention toilet paper? But it goes beyond household goods. I've seen some people say that the shutdown shows how unimportant celebrities are, but I disagree. Without Hollywood to keep me occupied, I'd be having a heckuva more difficult time in solitary confinement. I'm appreciative of quality TV shows and other entertainments that make self-isolation more bearable. 

Less triviality. Many of our national arguments are frankly silly — heated debates about which pronoun to use, for instance. A lot of that stuff has gone straight out the window for now. 

A break from partisan politics. Although efforts are still made to score partisan points, most people aren't playing that game. This is good, because politics is often a dirty business that attracts some pretty lousy people; the more immersed we are in it, the more we lower our own vibrations. 

Getting off the treadmill. I used to multitask a lot more than I do now. I used to have long to-do lists. Now I'm content to do less. And I don't beat myself up for not doing "enough." 

A chance to take it slow. This is slightly different from the last point. With less to distract us, we may be more inclined to settle in for the long haul. A small example: Turner Classic Movies recently aired Seven Samurai. This is a three-and-a-half-hour movie, in black-and-white, with subtitles. Ordinarily I might have passed on the opportunity to sit through something like that. Now, without much else to do, I devoted three nights to watching it, roughly one hour at a time. Parts were kind of slow, but I just went with it. I find I'm not as restless and impatient as I was. 

A national reset. I've heard this term used, and in some ways it's a good one. Our lives probably had gotten too hectic, too crazed. Shutting everything down is a dramatic way of reminding us that too much of what we do is unnecessary, too much of what we stress over is unimportant, and too much of what we aim for isn't worth having.