A Touch of Optimism: Viewing the Pandemic from Another Angle

This is real world.  The event that people warned us about has come to pass.  We have had a couple generations of relative peace but that has now ended.  The shots fired during the Cold War were fired on foreign soil.  Our wars since 1945 have been offshore and have been removed from day to day American life, and not materially affecting it, other than those of the families of the casualties.  Suddenly, we are all living like Londoners during the Blitz.  And that’s no hyperbole.  We know people will die.  We are hunkered down and disrupted.  We don’t know the outcome or when it is going to end.

Markets are crashing and stressing; retirement plans obliterated in weeks.  JP Morgan announced the closing of 1,000 branches.  Most of retail is closed.  Toilet paper is scarce. Courts are closed.  Lines at grocery stores are long.  Within a matter of weeks, we are all living like Venezuelans.  COVID-19 is touching every American.

Even though we are early in this maelstrom, I found some things that give me some measure of optimism and good things that will come out of this catastrophe.

·        China has been unmasked.  Contrary to what “experts” like Richard Haass are asserting, COVID-19 and the atrocious handling  of it by the CCP will NOT expand its world leadership.  The coverup of the outbreak was well documented.  What we do not yet know is whether the outbreak was an intentional bioweapon.  The market turmoil is in part a result of the realization that 25 years of developing China as a reliable business partner have come to an end.  I will have much more to say on this in future posts.  But after COVID-19 shrinks in the distance, the world will not look upon China in the same way again.  For all his faults, Trump saw this early, and was very Churchillian in that regard.

·        We have not yet heeded the warnings for catastrophes of this nature.  We will learn from it.  I read Laurie Garrett’s book, The Coming Plague which warned of an event like this almost 25 years ago.  Others have been warning of the dangers of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack, which would fry the grid and all electronics.  Congress has done nothing about it.  We are learning how to coordinate between the federal and state governments.  We are learning about the soft spots in our systems.  The last official report estimated that 90% of Americans would perish in the months following an EMP attack.  This real world experience will cause us to take these warnings more seriously and engage in real upgrades and disaster planning.

·        Private industry and education are adapting and learning.  Businesses and schools are learning how to function remotely and still get things accomplished.  Restaurants are offering curbside service.  Millions are interconnected to their offices.  Museums and zoos are doing things online. The Met offered free streaming of its operas.  On St. Patrick’s Day, Dropkick Murphys streamed a concert with fans commenting the entire time.  It’s still a little awkward and we miss “real” presence and connections, but we are learning how to function in this world.

·        Yes, there has been some bad behavior.  Fights at Costco.  Kids refusing to stay away from large beach gatherings on spring break. The usual political sniping.  But we have also seen real episodes of the human spirit.  The Italians singing from their balconies.  Young Spanish men playing Battleship by yelling coordinates across the courtyard from where they are sequestered. Yo Yo Ma streaming a comforting performance.  People pitching in to shop for elderly people.  And even some of the political sniping has died down.  Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo and, gasp, Ilhan Omar all complimented Trump on his leadership.  Expect to see more of this as people rise to the occasion.

COVID-19 gave us a forced time out.  I have talked to several people who see this as a blessing in disguise.  We are so stressed, rushing through our commute like so many cattle, eating out, delegating supervision and educating our children to a teacher or day care worker.  Speeding through the avalanche of emails, phone calls, memos that MUST BE DONE NOW, only to get to a weekend to watch an NBA or NHL game.   All of this is gone now.  Parents are forced to spend a lot of time with their children.  Restaurants and fast food joints are closed so we must develop a modicum of cooking and food preparation skills.  With no commute, there is more time for reading, reflection and other things that are more meaningful.  As one friend of mine put it, “We have to learn to live in 1850 again.”  And because of the dreaded uncertainty.  We simply do not know how this will end or weather one of us may become victims so we are forced to live in the moment.  All of our 2020 goals have been smashed to bits, the year not even ¼ way through and we don’t know enough to write new ones.  We are being forced to live in the moment because we simply do not yet know what tomorrow may look like.

We have a long way to go through this crisis.  There will be times of  cold, darkness and despair yet to come  We cannot avoid it. But early on, I see some green shoots that tell us that summer will be here eventually.

Death, Sex, and the Apocalypse

“We are always on the edge of catastrophe.  It is the human condition.”

Nathaniel Philbrick, speaking on the central themes of Moby-Dick, January, 2019, Newberry Library

Coronavirus has ravaged through markets more than the population so far, but it has disrupted our lives and cast a pall of fear upon us.  It is almost certain to sweep through the country and cause misery and death.  We just do not yet know just how bad it will be.  Coronavirus is the 3^rd horseman of the apocalypse.  9/11 exposed the fragility of our nation’s defenses.  The Great Recession exposed the fragility of our financial system.  Coronavirus will expose the fragility of our health care and financial systems.  As the great historian William H. McNeill chronicled in Plagues and Peoples, microbes have the power to change the course of history and civilizations.

These disruptions and upheavals, caused in part, by the rapid advancement of technology and globalization are putting forward some fundamental challenges to what it means to be human, and how to think about it.  My generation (tail end of the baby boomers) and later have largely been spared the wrenching and devastating events of WWII and the Great Depression.  The long, relatively tranquil period permitted us to develop a more casual attitude toward two of the most fundamental aspects of our humanity—death and sex, and peel away some of their meaning.  Now, more than ever, we need to think about those parts of our humanity.

In part, because I have gotten older and have begun to lose mentors and friends, I have begun to think about death and its meaning more.  Because we have been spared the great catastrophes of large scale wars and pandemics, lifespans have increased and child mortality has diminished,  it has become infrequent visitor.  But that is no longer guaranteed.  Coronavirus has stoked the fear that we will see death in widespread waves. 

Death is part of our humanity.  Yet we have attempted, somewhat successfully, to expunge all forms of it from our consciousness.   Even our recent wars have been so remote that we do not see the results or the consequences.   The slaughter of farm animals for food has been replaced by a distant, mechanized process.  Caitlin Doughty and Thomas Lynch have been two of the few voices to reacquaint us with death and its rituals. In her book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes talks of death, rituals, the process and our attempt to remove distance ourselves from it in frank (and sometimes humorous) ways.  She observes, “As late as the beginning of the 20^th century, more than 85 percent of Americans died at home. The 1930’s brought what is known as the ‘medicalization’ of death. The rise of the hospital removed from view all of the gruesome sights, smells, and sounds of death.”  We have tried to deny, sanitize, and remove from our humanity.  Last week, psychologist Mary Pipher wrote a stunningly beautiful essay on her acceptance of death as she inevitably creeps toward it. (_https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opinion/mortality-death.html).  With the grim prospect of widespread death to be visited upon us, we will need to face it squarely, as Pipher did.  We can deny it, but it will come looking for us.

We have started to do the same thing with sex, another aspect of our basic humanity, and in odd ways.  In some respects, we have pushed the boundaries of sexuality in sometimes unhealthy ways, often under the guise of “equal rights”  or correcting a social wrong. The LGTBQ movement legitimized gay marriage (through the courts and not through a democratic process) and immediately began pushing to get transgenders into women’s bathrooms and stomping on women’s sports by pushing to allow biological men to compete with them.  The LGBTQ movement also danced at the edge of normalizing pedophilia by pushing Drag Queen Story Hour across the country at local libraries, and glamorizing cross dressing 10 year old Desmond on Good Morning America.  Teen Vogue put out “how to” articles on anal sex.  Pornography became ubiquitous and more and more extreme and abusive.  The internet made it free and readily available for kids and teens.  AI and robotics are combining to make sexbots a reality in the near future, and will present another challenge to our humanness. 

While fringe and heretofore banned sexual practices were legitimized and glamorized, rigid rules were placed around the sexual behavior of those of us that comprise 95 percent of the population.  The MeToo movement began as a correction to stop (mostly) men from sexually exploiting women in the workplace.  Colleges shifted the definition and the burden of proof on matters of  “sexual assault” and made demands on what “consent” meant, wrecking young men’s lives without due process.  Under the new definitions,  Jimmy Stewart committed at least 3 acts of “sexual assault” against Donna Reed in his courtship of her in It’s A Wonderful Life.  The rigid rules (written and adopted by who?) put a chill on all relationships between men and women in the workplace and on campus.  The woke crowd was able to curtail normal pre-marital sexual relationships on campus more successfully than the Evangelical Christians could ever do.  Many, many long and happy marriages had their inception at the office (I know a couple that were bank examiners together—how erotic). Today, you simply don’t dare to make even the slightest comment that suggests that someone appeals to you at work, or you will be hauled up to HR.

Sex is an essential aspect of our humanity.  And we need to think about bringing it back to its essential function in our society.  As many issues as I have with the Catholic Church, it had it partially right.  Catholic doctrine views sex as part procreation and part human connection.  The problem it had is that it way overemphasized the procreation part and had too many rules around the connection aspect.  One woman wrote a beautifully worded letter to the editor (which I wish that I had kept) in which she took umbrage at the Church’s emphasis on procreation, while piling guilt and shame on the connection and pleasure aspect.  Her sexual compatibility with her husband was so acute, the pleasure so fulfilling, the connection so deep that it smoothed out the rough spots in their relationship, and neither could bear the thought of not having that intimacy, it was so sustaining.  And it had nothing to do with procreation.

As we confront this apocalyptic crisis, we would do well to spend some time thinking of the things that are part of our basic humanity, what they mean for us and where we have let them go off track.  We have shunned and denied death, but it threatens to now pay a visit in a large way.  We have normalized and freed up the fringes of sexual expression and at the same time contained and placed rigid rules around normal, heterosexual sexual expression.   It is time that we revisit some parts of the things that make us human.

Twin Stars

 I want to take you back, back to the early 70’s, to two figures that have always fascinated me and -  Janis Joplin and Bobby Fischer.  My love of music has roots in Janis and Bobby influenced my intellectual and sports life.  They have always captivated me because of their enormous talent, their stark individuality and rebelliousness, and complex personalities.  They led parallel lives and their apogee was oh, so brief. Both should still be with us. Janis would be 77 today, only a year older than Mick Jagger and he’s still touring. Fischer would be 76.   I still have distinct memories of watching each of their guest appearances on The Dick Cavett (who had a special thing for Janis) show, which are still available on YouTube.

I highly recommend Holly George-Warren’s meticulously documented biography, “Janis—Her Life and Music”  If you are a fan of her and her music. Janis has been gone now for a half century, dying at the tender age of 27, yet her work left an indelible mark on me.  Pearl was one of the first albums I acquired and to this day, I have never tired of it.  Why?  I think because no other musician has been able to express themselves through their music in such a passionate and authentic way.

Her character was so complex and fraught with contradictions.  Very smart and very artistic, she pushed boundaries early on in her conservative town of Port Arthur, Texas.  As a result, she found herself walled off from the in crowd in high school.  She ultimately found another, more intellectual crowd, but the mocking and exclusion cut her deeply.  Former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson was part of the crowd that tormented her and his cruelty  certainly altered my view of him.

Like most artists, Janis had to endure long stretches of uncertainty and penury.  Part of her was bold, brash and tough.  She once bashed a beer bottle over someone’s head in a bar fight.  She was a woman in a man’s world, a white woman singing the blues and bisexual at a time when it was not accepted.  She was full of contradictions, brazen, yet vulnerable. Part of her liked the adoration and stardom, but part of her yearned for stability, domesticity and a house with a white picket fence.  Throughout her short life, she yearned for constant love and connection which she never really found.

Her internal discord manifests itself in her music.  You don’t just listen to Janis’s music, you feel it.  You can feel her deep emotional pain, loneliness and longing as her raspy voice belts out the first three songs on Pearl -- Move Over, Cry Baby, and A Woman Left Lonely.  She sang not with her voice but with the deepest parts of her soul, which always had an empty, unfulfilled place.  Janis tried to fill that hole with promiscuity and drugs and her demons eventually overtook her.  Perhaps the most incisive line in George-Warren’s book was from a friend and lover David Niehaus,  Janis “died because she was so sensitive to the world.  That’s what killed her.”

Just after Janis’s death, another superstar burst on to the popular culture scene.  A brash, gawky young chess nerd took the world by storm.  Bobby Fischer, a most unlikely superstar, became an overnight sensation, and vaulted chess from an obscure game of nerds to a national pastime and subject of conversation.  Today, few people could name the world chess champion (Magnus Carlsen), but in the early 1970’s, everyone knew Bobby Fischer.  At the time, Fischer spawned chess clubs and an enthusiastic interest in chess across the U.S.

Living with his single mom in the Brooklyn, Fischer became obsessed with chess at a very early age.  So consumed by the game was young Fischer that his mother sought professional help for him.  He played at the chess clubs with the strongest players in the country,  and became the youngest Junior Champion at 13 and US Chess Champion at 14.  Legend has it that he was so consumed by chess that when one of his mentors took him to a brothel for his first sexual experience at 19, he came out, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Chess is better.”   His rise in the chess world was meteoric but his eccentricities also manifested themselves early, as he accused the Russians of collusion during his trip there in 1962.  The Russians dominated world chess but Fischer began to beat Russian giants like Tigran Petrosian and  Mark Taimanov.

One cannot examine the Fischer phenomenon out of the context of the Cold War (captured in what I think is the best biography of him, Bobby Fischer Goes to War).  The proliferation of nuclear weapons made a hot war between the superpowers unthinkable.  The contest between the U.S. and the Soviets was fought in skirmishes on the turf of several third world countries, and in 1972, it was fought on a small 64 square slab.  Fischer embodied American individualism—the brash, solitary pioneer; Spassky, the product of the Soviet collective system.  So symbolically important was this match that when the temperamental Fischer threatened to pull out, Henry Kissinger called him to persuade him to show up.   We all know the results.  The petulant and eccentric Fischer blundered in the first game and forfeited the second over outlandish demands about the playing conditions.  Fischer clawed his way back and defeated Spassky to become World Champion and returned from Reykjavik to the sort of adulation usually reserved for returning warriors and astronauts.

But it was all short-lived.   Fischer’s eccentricities got the best of him and he lost his title when he refused to defend it, resigning the title in 1974.  He vanished into  seclusion for over two decades but surfaced again to play a rematch in Sarajevo which was under U.S. sanction at the time and he was eventually arrested for defying sanctions.  He became more anti-American as he aged and cheered on the 9/11 attackers.  He often went on strange, virulent antisemitic tirades (his mother was Jewish). Fischer died in 2008, known as much for his borderline psychotic behavior as an individualist that took on and defeated the Soviet empire by himself.  Like Janis, much of Fischer’s life was sad, tormented and lonely.  While Bobby had no formal diagnosis, several people have put forward theories his deeply troubled personality.  But for one brief shining moment, Fischer’s obsession made him a national hero.

The lives of Janis Joplin and Bobby Fischer ran in parallel paths.  Their time in the spotlight was so maddeningly brief, their genius and enormous talents derailed by their fatal flaws. Despite the brevity of their celebrity, and their early unraveling, nearly a half century later we still marvel at the gifts they brought us.  Half a century later, when we think of the blues, we think of Janis and when we think of chess, we think of Bobby. Each was truly sui generis.

Perhaps the great essayist H.L. Mencken was onto something 100 years ago when he wrote, “No moral man—that is, moral in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a  book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever  been done by a virtuous woman.”

Stay In Your Lane

We have entered into a period of remarkable instability, both here and abroad.   Our political parties have been wrecked.  Traditional alliances have been shattered- Turkey, a NATO member, is now an enemy.  30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,  one of the parties in our two-party system is about to nominate an undeniable admirer of the Soviet Union, Cuba and Daniel Ortega. And in the midst of all coronavirus is stalking the world and mauling markets.

To confront these disruptions, and have a successful outcome requires real leadership, with the West more or less on the same page, shoulder to shoulder, with each person playing their role.  In 1981, with the West in an economic funk, and the Soviet Union menacing, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II each had a role in the recovery of the West and pushing back on Soviet aggression. 

The demands and challenges facing the West are even more complex than they were then.  But this time around, not only are we more divided, people and institutions are straying from their appointed roles.  I have an answer to all, if we want to navigate through this---STAY IN YOUR LANE.

·        Supreme Court.  Last week Supreme Court Justice complained about her more conservative colleagues, and accused them of a conservative bias.  Likewise, when Trump was nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg said of Trump, “He’s a faker. He has no consistency about him.  He says whatever comes into his head at the moment.  He has an ego.”  Just last week, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, presiding in the Roger Stone case, went on several rants, even going after Tucker Carlson.  Why would she even mention Tucker Carlson?  If you want to be a judge, be a judge.  If you want to be a politician or a pundit, be that.  But don’t mix the two. Stay in your lane.

·        Media.  Journalists have become the worst lane drifters.  As their business model has changed, rather than being reporters and investigators, they have become advocates and agenda pushers.   Rather than observing, questioning, and writing, they have thrust themselves in as players.  No one exemplifies this more than prima donna Jim Acosta of CNN.  Instead of reporting on news, he wants to BE the news. Media has destroyed its credibility by becoming a player on the field of play.

·        The Presidents.  Barack Obama routinely stepped into Congress’s lane. From DACA to JPCOA, Obama took over the role of a feckless Congress through the issuance of executive orders.  Donald Trump has done the same, mostly through Twitter.  He has diverted funds for border security.  His tweets about pending cases under the Justice Department purportedly Attorney General Bill Barr to contemplate quitting.  Losing Barr would be a disaster for Trump.  But he cannot resist drifting into someone else’s lane.  Again, stay in your lane.

·        The Administrative State.  Perhaps the most pernicious of all and most exemplified by ex-Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, who the Democrats hauled up to testify in their impeachment hearings. Yovanovich claims she “felt intimidated by the Trump administration (by his critical tweets) but offered no evidence of a “high crime or misdemeanor” in her testimony. Richard Cordray, head of the CFPA, tried to appoint his own successor, and the Trump administration was forced to go to court to remove him.  The Administrative State has, over time, become unmoored from the electorate and has taken on functions that belong to the legislative, executive and judiciary branches—accountable to no one.  The arrogance of Cordroy who believed that he could appoint a successor, and the disconnect of Yovanovich, who believed that she could make her own policy, and in each case independent of the administration, shows the contempt for the boundaries of their roles.

·        Pope Francis.  The spiritual leader of the Catholic Church has been pushing hard at climate change, open borders and international wealth redistribution. Jumping into politics and economics with both feet, Francis not only steps into other people’s lanes, he opens himself up to charges of hypocrisy by doing so.  Francis has not had inhibitions about levelling criticism at Donald Trump and other leaders that are defending national sovereignty.  Yet is noticeably silent when it comes to China, the biggest polluter and violator of religious liberty in the world.  Francis’s inability to stick to matters of spirituality has caused many Catholics (including this writer) to put their full participation in the Church on hold.

The West faces numerous difficult issues—economically, politically and militarily.   These challenges would be difficult to tackle even if there was unity and even if leaders stuck to their assigned roles.  Reporters need to investigate and report, not become an opposition party.  The legislature can’t let the president and the administrative state take over its job.  The Pope has to attend to spiritual matters, not politics.  The members of the Supreme Court can’t be out politicking.   Our problems are infinitely harder to solve when the lead players won’t stay in their lanes. 

Corona- Opportunity

The emergence of the Coronavirus or COVID19 as it is now called has caused a great deal of worry worldwide as it has spread to several  countries, including Iran and South Korea.  The contagion has inflicted a great deal of damage on the Chinese economy and interrupted supply chains.  About 800 million people in China are on travel restriction. 

And we are early in this conflagration.

But I see long term opportunity in this disruptive event. 

It’s a big wake up call.

At the same time President Xi struggles to deal with COVID19, other aspects of the Chinese regime’s rule and intentions are revealing themselves, and the picture is troubling.

First, let’s look at the Chinese response to COVID19.  The New York Times in its February 8^th edition, wrote an expansive and well-documented piece, exposing the attempts of the Chinese government to quash information about the virus, and its cloddy efforts to silence those that were warning about it, culminating in the death of Dr. Lee, who, the doctor who first rang the alarm bell.   Lee was disciplined for publicizing the illness.  This effort is ongoing as independent journalists are “disappearing” routinely.   The Beijing government knew of the problem in early December but didn’t admit to it until a month later.   We offered assistance from the CDC which offer was rebuffed and CDC officials are still being barred from Wuhan.  Most telling were the statements from the Chinese ambassador, who brushed off a question of the outbreak’s origin and the bioweapons lab as arising from xenophobia and “maybe the virus originated in the U.S.”

Emily Landon of the University of Chicago  Medical School stated: “If you could have contained really early on at the beginning when there were 20 cases, there wouldn’t be any cost. You should use a quarantine strategy.  Once it passes to the 4^th generation of transmission, you switch to a mitigation strategy.”  We’re clearly into mitigation now as the virus has spread to South Korea and Iran.  The CCP at the outset was more interested in controlling the narrative than the virus.

I was fortunate enough to have William H. McNeill as a professor as an undergrad.  One of McNeill’s major works was an epidemiological study published in 1976,  Plagues and Peoples.  In it, McNeill asserted that throughout history, plagues have had a major impact on the course of history.  Most economists are talking about the length and cost of the quarantine.  But I believe that COVID19 will have a different, and more permanent outcome.

COVID19 and its handling by the Chinese government is yet another piece of evidence that suggests that it should trigger a re-evaluation of our relationship with China. We have seen just in the past few months, just how the CCP behaves.  Its suppression of protests in Hong Kong were thuggish.  It immediately sought reprisals against the NBA for daring to question its handling of the protests.  It has coerced the Vatican into a secret deal regarding the selection of Catholic bishops in China (so secret that even the bishops in China don’t know what it entails).  It’s clear from WHO, that it, too has been coerced by the CCP.

It’s one thing when your totalitarian behavior affects your own citizens. That is bad enough.  It’s another to use economic coercion to bully your way.  But now the Chinese government’s behavior is threatening life across the globe.

This is not simply a matter of the length and cost of the quarantine.  If the West has any sense at all, the outbreak should cause a real and permanent shift in our relationship with China.  Our government, business and academic elite lulled us into an unrealistic future with the Beijing regime.  COVID19 is a slap that must sober us up.

Rebalancing the Portfolio

In my professional life, I spend a substantial amount of time advising clients on acquisitions or investments in privately held companies, especially those that are troubled or have some issues.  I am on the front lines of deciding whether and how to invest in these companies, and when to get out.

Viewed through this structure of portfolio management, we, as a nation also make choices of where to expend finite resources in time, energy and resources in developing and maintaining our global partnerships. We should have a forward looking posture with respect to future returns and dividends just as we do in the corporate world.  I believe that the coming years will see a major shift of attention away from some regions and toward others.

China.  Our fundamental premises vis-à-vis China have been badly mistaken.  As recently as four years ago, Nobel Prize winner Eugene Fama was asserting that trade with China would result in an emerging middle class that would demand more freedoms from the ruling government.  China would eventually evolve into a more responsible global citizen.  Thomas Friedman lauded China as a country that “can solve big problems.”   Since the Clinton administration welcomed China into the WTO with open arms, the exact opposite of what Fama predicted has come to pass.  China has become more authoritarian, more aggressive, and more repressive.  Through currency manipulation, dumping and intellectual property theft, our industrial heartland was eviscerated.  The Chinese stole or coerced away intellectual property, engaged in widespread corporate espionage, hacked into the government’s personnel files and its military was behind the Equifax hack.  It built a vast surveillance state, repressed the Hong Kong protesters, and coerced the Vatican into having a say in bishop selection in China.  It flouted basic notions of human rights with its operation of Muslim detention camps. It began to assert military power in the South China Sea.  Instead of becoming more democratic, President Xi n tightened his grip on power.  Its repression of information, well documented by the New York Times, of the coronavirus outbreak (even going so far as to blaming the U.S.) is just the latest example of totalitarian China’s inability to be a responsible global citizen.  The CCP has demonstrated that it is much more interested in controlling the narrative than in controlling the virus. 

After decades of deluding ourselves, we have begun to wake up under the Trump administration.  My first hard slap in the face came from University of Chicago professor John Mersheimer, who in his book tour, exclaimed boldly, “You do not want China to become rich.”  Donald Trump, to the consternation of the corporate and DC establishment urged companies to begin pulling out of China.  Although I am a free trader, I concur with the process of decoupling.  Good trading partners do not steal each other’s stuff.   What we hoped would be a good trading partner and market for our goods and services morphed into a geopolitical rival. 

Middle East. Likewise, the blood and treasure, time and attention poured into the Middle East has been staggering.  Two wars and trillions of dollars later, and we would be hard pressed to assert that there has been any appreciable progress, other than a handful of states that seem to have accepted Israel as a state and a little bit of liberalization within Saudi Arabia.  Our attempt to remake Iraq was a catastrophic failure. Trump’s characterization of Syria as “nothing but blood and sand and death” may not be too far off.  Even Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes in his essay 50 Years: The Middle East & Me in American Thinker, noted,

“And yet: reaching the half century mark, I admit to a certain ennui.  The region’s old problems (fear of modernity, hatred of the West, despotism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, conspiracy theories) remain unsolved even as new ones (Islamism, anarchy, water shortages, Chinese influence) keep growing.  When momentous change does finally come (as in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq) things usually get worse.”

In his January 17, 2020 essay in the WSJ entitled The Middle East Isn’t Worth It Anymore, Martin Indyk asserted,

“Yet after the sacrifice of so many American lives, the waste of so much energy and money in quixotic efforts that ended up doing more harm than good, it is time for the U.S. to find a way to escape the costly, demoralizing cycle of crusades and retreats.”

Both the Middle East and China turned out to be bad places for us to do business. But what about future investments of time and treasure?

The region that most intrigues me is Africa.  The notion first came to me from---of all places----a weekly radio program entitled Afropop Worldwide (www.afropop.org).  Georges Collinet has hosted a weekly radio program for over 30 featuring African music but he also intersperses commentary about culture, politics and even the economies of the countries that he features. In his January 16 program on Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast, many of the artists commented on their ties to France, the improvement in the economy and the vibrancy of the culture.  One artist tried to persuade a person that wanted to immigrate to Europe, “Instead of fleeing, why don’t you stay and build a future here for your country?”

While I am not well versed in African politics or its economies, the program spurred me to think about the possibilities.  I then read an excellent article in Foreign Affairs magazine by Judd Devermont and Jon Temin, entitled, Africa’s Democratic Moment:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2019-06-11/africas-democratic-moment

In that article, Devermont and Temin acknowledge some of the challenges that sub-Saharan Africa has faced but spun out areas of real concrete progress. The emergence of key reformers in Congo, South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Angola.  The authors see real promise and progress in the region, and state that “the United States should increase its diplomatic, financial and technical support to those states doggedly reforming on their own initiative, beginning with Angola and Ethiopia.”  Unlike the Middle East, where we have attempted to beat democracy into some states with a hammer, several African states appear to be finding their own way.

I have much to learn about sub=Saharan Africa and Africa generally.  But it offers intriguing possibilities.  In addition to the factors that Devermont and Temin highlighted, Catholicism is growing in Africa (while Christianity generally is on the decline in the U.S. and Europe).   Remember that the two states that voluntarily gave up their nuclear programs – Libya and South Africa--- are on the African continent.

As we decide where to invest and where to divest, I believe it will be away from China and the Middle East, and we should consider investing more in Africa.

And besides, the music is wonderful. 

Labels

We’ve unfortunately become accustomed to labeling and name calling in public discourse.  In the Democratic party, labelling is a business model.  Identity politics makes it mandatory, and part of the lexicon.  Patriarchy, toxic masculinity, Islamophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic and the like are the words and labels used to summarily dismiss another person.  Those words are used to avoid dealing with another’s point of view and argument but to attempt to render all of their opinions unworthy of consideration.  Donald Trump also is a master labeler.  “Lyin’ Ted Cruz,” “Mini Mike,” “Crooked Hillary,” are monikers crudely designed to brand the opponent and neuter anything that person has to say.   Even Barack Obama did it.  Remember those “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion,” in which he dismissed the concerns and denigrated the culture of middle America?  We have grown to expect this from our politicians. 

But academia and public intellectuals are something different.  They are in the business not of gathering votes but of exploring ideas, and in the course of doing so, must subject them to scrutiny and questioning.  As Nassim Nicholas Taleb asserts:

Mathematicians think in proofs, lawyers in constructs, logicians in operators, dancers in movement, artists in impressions, drummers in rhythms, and idiots in labels.

But our divisions have grown so deep and rancorous now that even public intellectuals have been engaging in this kind of slandering.   And it is concerning to me.  A label is an intellectual condom, a prophylactic that prevents thinking.

First, there is Taleb himself.  Ironically, the one that posted that idiots think in labels is himself a prime offender.  Taleb is a talented writer and an original thinker.  I loved Antifragile and Skin In the Game.  But he savages other public intellectuals.  He vilified Charles Murray, “Charles Murray is considered a Galileo of the reacticists, someone provides scientific truths.  He is just an intellectual fraud.  He has referred to him as a “fake scholar.” Similarly, he tore at Steven Pinker, mocking him for teaching “Pseudo-Empiricism.”  He has skewered Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler as “nudgeboy” and labeled his theories as a “Mickey Mouse framework.”  Yoval Harari, Taleb says, “is a quack.”  Ironically, many intellectuals are skeptical of the substance behind Taleb.  One Chicago Booth professor confided to me, “Many of my colleagues think his work lacks intellectual rigor but I think he has some interesting things to say.”  Taleb, the anti-labeler, does plenty of it.

In the law, Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe has done much of the same.  Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a solid liberal and prominent Democrat.  He has taken on high profile, controversial clients, such as O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Harry Reems and Claus von Bulow.   But Laurence Tribe last week labeled Dershowitz a “charlatan”  and said that “ he “shouldn’t be allowed to use bogus legal arguments on impeachment.”  Tribe, whose name now belies the bias in his thinking, would undoubtedly not have the same view had Dershowitz taken on Khalid Sheik Muhammed as a client, but defending Trump is an unforgivable sin.  Dershowitz replied that he made the same legal arguments that he would have made if Hillary Clinton were being impeached on the same grounds. 

Most disappointing was Deirdre McCloskey.  I have great respect for McCloskey as an economic historian and a gifted writer and have had an opportunity to have lunch with her.  I highly recommend her recent book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All.  Yet, in her book tour, she said, “On the prospect of Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump, I quote the former Republican consultant who you see on MSNBC a lot who says ‘don’t put up Bernie Sanders because in the United States a sociopath beats a socialist six times a week and twice on Sundays’ and that’s true.”   As much as I like McCloskey’s thinking much of the time, her labeling of Trump as a sociopath is out of bounds.  She calls Sanders a “socialist” which is a person that believes in a certain economic structure.   But by labeling Trump a sociopath, she attacks HIM with a charge that she is supremely unqualified to make.  Sociopath is a diagnosis in the DSM which only a psychiatrist can make.  McCloskey is transgender and of all people that should know better than to sling labels, McCloskey should.  Her recent book contains a well argued critique of Thomas Picketty’s Capital without sliming Picketty, so she knows how to do it.

Labeling can make for winning politics, but it is a lazy person’s game that unnecessarily and gratuitously aggravates the divisions that already exist in our society.  It diminishes the person.  I think less of Tlaib, Tribe and McCloskey when they deploy it as a weapon.  It would be more persuasive for Tribe to say  something like, “Dershowitz has a point, but here’s what I think he gets wrong, and here’s why. ”  

We should expect better from our public intellectuals, especially in this era of trolling and constant spitballing.