Mythbusting

 I’m going to write a few things that will make some people uncomfortable.  So be it.  We’re well past the point of comfort now.  Most people understand that we are in a different place now, that many of our institutional safeguards have given way and many institutions such as the FBI and CDC, instituions that we expected to protect us and be nonpartisan about it, have become partisan tools.   To be sure, some of the erosion has been due to COVID, but much has been due to accepting as gospel myths that turned out to be false.  And I freely admit that to some extent and at one time or another, I bought into all of these. 

No longer.

We need to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. 

This pithy slogan of George W. Bush was used as the justification for invading Iraq and for the 20 year debacle in Afghanistan.  In the shadow of the horrors of 9/11, it seemed to make sense.  We all heard the last calls of the frightened people on flight 93 and those trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center.  We all got behind W’s rationale for doing anything it took not to have that happen again.  But it turned out to be a false choice.  

We spent billions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, only to erode our standing in the world, exhaust our military, increase Iran’s influence in the Middle East and leave the Taliban with a nation state and advanced weapons. 

Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Iraq deserved an appropriate response but our policymakers chose the highest cost option—in blood and treasure.  And an overlooked cost to these misadventures is that we gave our future adversaries a free look at our doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies.  And in the case of Afghanistan, we actually turned our weapons over to them.

If we have free and open commercial trade with China, a more prosperous middle class will bubble up, demand more freedom and the CCP will be forced to moderate, and China will become more like us.

A mere 4 years ago, I sat in the audience while Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama proclaimed this and a year later, I had lunch with libertarian economist Deirdre McCloskey, who voiced similar sentiments.  Enriching China may turn out to be the biggest policy mistake in history.  Our politicians blithely overlooked Tiananmen Square for three decades, pretended it didn’t happen and kept waiting for this sea change to occur.  What we got was exactly the opposite of what was predicted by the “experts” – an aggressive, bullying dictatorship that abrogated its deal on Hong Kong,  is threatening Taiwan, lying and covering up the COVID outbreak, threatening us with hypersonic missiles, and exercising hegemony in the South China Sea.  Our political, cultural and business leaders grovel before the CCP.  The NBA fears being shut out and disciplines people that criticize China.  Congressman Eric Swalwell openly cavorts with Chinese spy Fang Fang without serious repercussions, and the leader of America’s largest banking institution, Jamie Dimon obsequiously issued a public apology for offending the CCP.  Pope Francis had no reservations about openly criticizing Donald Trump is silent about China’s Uygher concentration camps and did a secret deal that purportedly gave the CCP veto power over appointments in China.  University of Chicago’s John Mersheimer has a must read article, The Inevitable Rivalry  in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs and I highly recommend it.  All this will be very difficult, if not impossible to reverse.  Since allowing China to join the WTO, I would argue that we have become more like China, rather than the other way around.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-10-19/inevitable-rivalry-cold-war

Mass incarceration is a problem.

Yes, we have been told that mass incarceration is a problem.  The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a lot of it is due to our draconian drug laws, which affect minorities disproportionately.  Because they are poorer and can’t afford bail, they are condemned to sitting in prison.   This has been drummed into us for a couple of decades.

Well, we loosened or eliminated drug laws, went to cashless bail, and, in cities like Chicago, dramatically raised the standards for prosecution.   We are seeing the results of all this with the flow of blood on city streets and the ravaging of a retail industry by looters—an industry that is already reeling because of Amazon and COVID.

As with China, it turns out that mass incarceration was the solution, not the problem.  And this doesn’t mean harsh prison sentences for minor drug offenses.  This means keeping dangerous felons away from productive members of society.    I tweeted this comment:

“Exploring the ‘root causes’ is a useless academic debate and focuses on the needs of the perpetrator sometime off in the future, if ever, rather than the innocent victims today.”

Meanwhile, population will just bleed off, literally and figuratively.”

Ironically, it is the black community in places like Chicago that are bearing most of the suffering due to the propagation of this myth.

Immigration is an unalloyed positive for the country.

Our country needs immigration and I am hardly anti-immigrant, having been reared in a largely immigrant community. Yet, a sane immigration policy would take into account the needs of the country.  There are only 3 squares an immigrant can land on upon arrival:

1.      Employed, self sufficient and productive.

2.      The social welfare system.

3.      The criminal justice system.

That’s it.  We want lots of people on square number one.   We have plenty in squares 2 and 3 already, thank you very much.  A sane policy would filter out as many individuals likely to occupy squares 2 and 3 as possible.

Other factors which make unfettered immigration undesirable is that the demand for unskilled labor is projected to decrease in the future.  We simply do not need lots of people with strong backs and nothing else to bring to the table as we did a century ago.   Yet another problem is that our school systems and other institutions have gone Woke, which means that rather than being fully integrated into our society, new immigrants, particularly those of color, are being told that they are oppressed.  This is not good for a cohesive society.

Sticking blindly to these myths have wreaked tremendous damage to our nation and both Republicans and Democrats share blame for peddling them, along with the so-called “experts.”  We need to make adjustments to them and make them sooner, rather than later.   It’s past time to change course.