Crisis, Cloverfield, Et Cetera

Another little while since trying this.

Crisis: Problems in Michigan cities, warning of a Fiscal Crisis, Weapons of Math Destruction about the once and future financial crisis, and opioids in Ontario

Apocalypse: A few Trump == Apocalypse items, go figure.

Collapse: South China Sea fishery - which references the Chinese claims to an extraordinary area, one that could turn into a shooting war, eventually. Although less so if the fish are all gone, no doubt.

Cloverfield: Okay, so in part the recent news about closing Santa Monica airport is what jogged the memory of this anyway,but 10 Cloverfield Lane was released on DVD a few weeks ago.

A bit more diverse results than previous searches for these sorts of indicators. Maybe it means something, maybe not.

A Moment of Clarity

Today's problems won't be solved by looking to the past.

Reading through recent proposals of various sorts, including but not exclusively the Better Way proposed by Republican legislators, this truth has become clearer and clearer.

It's not that there's anything egregiously wrong with the ideas there. They are, however, more of the same, at least for Republicans: Smaller government, less regulation, lower taxes. If there was a counter from the other side of the aisle, it would likely be more of their same as well. Or looking at different problems in their same way: more gun control, more unions, more government to resolve any issue. It's not like those have worked so far, either. At this point, every ordinary way to fix what's wrong - whatever you think is wrong - has been proposed, debated, exaggerated, sometimes implemented, usually ignored.

Soon, a moment of clarity will occur. It always does.

Everyone will realize that there's not an alternate interpretation of the Constitution that will fix it all. Congress won't pass some law that will resolve all major problems to everyone's satisfaction. The next president won't magically realize how to convince the nation to enact policies that have been previously proposed over and over again.

We the people probably know the answer already, a certainty that we each hold onto, nursing quietly, acknowledging the difficulty, the problems we will have to endure, that personal disagreement - perhaps with some minor part - that keeps us from shouting out what should be done. 

In the early 1770s, options for taxation of the American colonies based on their representation in Parliament were brought up, debated, considered, sometimes approved, mostly ignored.

In the 1850s, there were multiple changes in how slavery was treated, sometimes in favor of the practice, sometimes not. Most of them satisfied few and antagonized everyone else, until the only solution was a war that effectively decided that slavery would no longer exist in the United States of America.

Today, different parts of the political spectrum propose what they consider appropriate ways to handle the economy, the role of government, the need for the populace to protect itself against the government, how the economy should work for the people, when the people should support the government...or not. Even if this isn't a problem that's well defined, it's clearly the case that a significant portion of the American people do not believe their government is helping them.

It's not relevant that the distrust of government is for different reasons, even antithetical ones. Trump supporters blame the Democrats, the elite, and immigrants. Sanders supporters blame the Republicans, the 1%, and banks. This fundamental distrust of existing institutions will eventually make it clear that the only resolution will come not from evolution, but from revolution - from a major change, not an incremental one.

There isn't a way out that will be painless, or perfect. What might have been proposed in the last year, decade, or half-century has already been debated endlessly.  If it's helpful there's no agreement; if there's agreement, it has downsides; if it's perfectly safe, it doesn't resolve anything.

This inability to do anything will end the only way it can. At some point, the standard options that have been chewed up and spat out will give way to options that are new, unexpected, creative - dangerous - not standard at all. No more than it was a standard option to replace a British (but Catholic) king with a Dutch (but Protestant) one. Nor to say "we are leaving, you can't stop us, if you try it's war."   Nor to fight people who had been countrymen a few short months before.

Whatever this solution might be, there will be those who oppose it. There will be others who think it won't go far enough. When it is over, some will think the battle must continue. At the end, the predominant attitude may be relief that it has passed. 

It might turn out that some of today's concerns are a distraction, a minor discomfort, a sign/portent that's not close to the real problem. A few people killed during civil unrest, environmental issues, overreaching by the head of state - important to understanding the problem, if you look at it with the right sort of squint, but not the source nor target of solutions. 

And of course, a moment's thought brings a reminder that this has all been said before, and surely will be said again. 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

A Fourth Turning is a point where there are no solutions available through appeals to history. Considering what They meant by how They set up the system will not help - whether that system was set up ten, twenty, one hundred, or five hundred years ago. Finding a solution will be the responsibility of today's living generations.

That's you and me.

Cultivate Patience and Keep Your Hands Clean

In this election year which feels too much like 1860, an obscure quote by Winston Churchill comes to mind. It's from page 91 of a 1961 book called "Official Secret." The author, Clayton Hutton, had worked for the Britsh military during World War II, creating equipment like silk maps, tiny compasses, and survival kits. With them, surviving crew members of shot-down aircraft could evade the enemy, and prisoners of war (POWs) could attempt escape and return to areas under Allied control. 

Although Churchill's name is not mentioned,  the allusions to the highest possible authority being a "cigar-smoking" "elderly gentleman" are clear enough. The meeting came about when Hutton had to justify having Red Cross parcels in his office. In his book he insists that he was only investigating their contents, not thinking of incorporating his escape tools into them. Including military supplies in Red Cross packages would have contravened the Geneva Conventions, and would also have risked having those parcels and others withheld from the POWs. He eventually used other channels to sneak in his inventions, such as "donations" to POW camps of unused books - which happened to have maps and currency hidden in their covers. 

Upon hearing Hutton's confirmation that his work had been legitimate, Churchill goes on to give a description of the planning for  the war:

Always remember that at the end of this war we want to be in a position to say that we fought and won it fairly. I think you’re trying to go much too quickly. Reconcile yourself to the fact that it takes us four years to attain victory. In the first year we have to sell the war to the public; in the second we are busy jiggering and tooling for the latest weapons; in the third supplies come pouring in; and in the fourth we press buttons everywhere and the enemy has a most unpleasant time. So cultivate patience and - keep your hands clean.

Which is quite good advice in general, and particularly here as we approach the peak of this Crisis.

Crisis, Collapse, and Cloverfield

A lot of changes and new items since I last tried this:

Crisis: Refugee crisis in Europe continues. Pope Francis calls the U.S.-Mexican border a "humanitarian crisis." The water problem in Flint, Michigan shows up, too.

Apocalypse: More X-Men: Apocalypse, naturally, but particularly because Deadpool did so well last weekend that it's raising comparisons and one-up attempts. There's a show called "You, Me, and the Apocalypse" on NBC - but probably for not much longer. And Amazon included a zombie apocalypse opt-out clause in a terms of service agreement.

Collapse: After an uninteresting first page, there are stories about the collapse of Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Ukraine's coalition government.

Cloverfield: Everything is about 10 Cloverfield Lane, a sequel (of sorts) to the monster-takes-Manhattan original.

The Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Every 80 to 100 years, people look around and agree that whatever it is society is up to, it is no longer working. 

1933 - The Securities Act of 1933 

That doesn't mean that everyone agrees on the solution, just that it's time to find one. 

1861 - The Secession Winter 

It may require a statement of purpose, and the powers that be may have their own ideas about how to respond to that. 

1779 - The Spanish in the Revolutionary War 

It may result in a change that seems odd and unexpected in a did-they-really-do-that way. 

1688 - The Glorious Revolution 

It can easily end up as a total war, one that changes who are the players of the game, or even how the  game itself is played

1588 - The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 

Apocalypse, sayeth Wikipedia, is an unveiling, a revelation, a gain of new knowledge. It has taken on its meaning of The End Times because of its association with The Revelation of St. John the Divine, which prophesies the new Kingdom of Heaven, and the tribulations which lead up to it.

I don't think Trump is War. I don't think Sanders is Famine. I don't think either is Death or Pestilence.  They are loose about the land, though, and they are speaking to a belief that This Isn't Working. Sanders blames the banks and the 1%, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. Trump blames immigrants and ISIS, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. There is a connection here, and it's one that can be seen in the financial crisis, in the years leading to the financial crisis, in the response to Katrina, even in 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq: The government isn't doing what it should, what it is supposed to. We aren't even sure what it is supposed to do, anymore.

The American people supporting Trump and Sanders - and for that matter Cruz and Clinton - have all had a few months of schooling on Your Government and How It Works. Yet they have completely different ideas of what government should do. Whatever issues their proposed policies might have, though, both Trump and Sanders are espousing the idea that the government should do what the people want it to do. They are seen as proposing new solutions, not the status quo.

And that's why Bernie and Donald are both harbingers of a time, coming soon, when we are going to have to seriously agree to seriously disagree. People are ready to start choosing between bad alternatives - and between good ones as well. Want small government, expect an end to Too Big to Fail. Want free child care, expect liver wurst on rye. You can have a car with two doors, or with four doors, but not both at once.

Prepare to choose.

Now Leaving Flyover Country

We are leaving Flyover Country behind. Did you notice?

A map metaphor works well with history in a number of situations. There are different views you can use, depending on whether you care about what people do or what has changed or what has stayed the same. Whatever there is has to be at a useful scale. 1:1 maps aren't of much use in any way.  A globe isn't helpful for getting to the grocery store, but is great to see how the continents are shaped. For a long enough trip, you may need a wide country-to-country view along with specific directions to get to the final address. With history, too, if we're trying to make sense of what's around us, the effective result is similar: There are these close and crowded districts that anyone can discuss easily, separated by long, wide, boring stretches that nobody ever asks about. Flyover country.

Big sections of history are flyover country. Sumer and Ur are the first civilizations, but everyone remembers the Egyptians. Rameses and Tutankhamen are 4000 years ago, but there's nothing interesting after that until Greece 1500 or so years later - flyover country. It's good to know about the Romans - until the death of Christ, anyway, at which point who cares about them?  Turns out they are still the only interesting thing for roughly another 1500 years, when the Renaissance happens.  There, everyone pays attention again...but it's kinda flyover country too, once you've seen a few of the paintings. At least until Columbus shows up, when people start paying attention again.

We've just left another of those sections, if the generational view is right at all, The period of time we left a few years ago - perhaps as much as ten years, now - is a time that will be treated in history books as less important, even least important, compared to the big wars that are easily managed.  From Reagan's re-election until 2008, nobody is really going to comprehend what happened. They might understand why he was elected in the first place, but why was it so divisive? What did Clinton do that was different? There will be conjecture about 9/11 and the market meltdown and the Great Recession, and dissection of why different policies were exactly right and completely wrong and extended and helped quickly resolve the problems....for anyone who really wants to dig into it,  and most folks probably won't, any more than most people can discuss what happened between 1928 and 1939.

(It's not certain that 2016 will be like 1939, of course, but (if you'll forgive further map metaphors) it feels like that's the direction we're heading, in approaching years.)

And it's too bad people won't think of it.  If you lived through it you know that there was a lot to like about the time since the mid-1980s. It was exciting and vibrant and things were changing. There was the Web and full-immersion video games and computer generated graphics. Cell phones became smartphones, information went everywhere, digital media became streaming, solar cells went from spacecraft to rooftops.  There is probably a way to make sense of some parts of it, along the way.   There's no story, though, that has a beginning and ending, that ties video games and the web into the financial crisis and what's happened since.

That's probably because, for this little while, people individually did what they thought was important and worthwhile. Whether they are fought for just causes or not, wars require a lot of people moving in the same direction and agreeing on what is to be done. Individual efforts get lost in the larger    pushes - one person invented the World Wide Web, but many people were involved in getting the U.S. into WWII. Those individual threads don't tie together as easily as larger government-supported efforts.

Now, though, people are getting tired of the government not doing much. While there's disagreement about what should be done, support for outsiders like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump point to a desire that the government should start being effective in a way it hasn't been. I'm not sure exactly what it will be, but I do think that people tired of confused foreign policy and unhelpful domestic policy will start demanding that the government do its job properly.  There are good things and bad things that government can do, if this widespread support is real. Everybody will probably find something they don't like about how it's done.

Keep it in mind. We're leaving flyover country. It's going to get interesting again soon.

Christmas Songs

At Hollywood  and Highland today, heard the song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Very cheerful and uplifting.

Which doesn't fit the mood of the day at all. Where are our depressing Christmas songs? We're solidly in our Crisis, so where is our White Christmas?

Was that really a Crisis tune, though, or did it just become famous then? When was it actually composed? The answer is (according to Wikipedia), nobody really knows. It says, though, that the first performance was Christmas Day, 1941 - also known as a few weeks after Pearl Harbor.  They'd really earned their hopeful-but-not-happy Christmas song.

What other not-quite-happy ones are there? There's The Christmas Song,  although that's more solemn than depressing. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, certainly counts, though - it's all about how your life can only get better from here. Both of those were from 1944 -  when the War was ongoing, that is, even if there was some hope that it would be done in Europe soon.

Maybe that happy one was from the same time, though? Nope, 1963. Probably released a month after  JFK, but still sounds like the cheery post-war period.