Politics Today, Part II

So I've got a calculus test today, and I'm typing this in between reviewing formulas for taking the derivative of logarithms, calculating elasticity, and evaluating interest rates (whether continuous interest or compound interest).

I'm trying to figure out what to say that won't turn into basic Clinton bashing (I am definitely not a fan, you see). 

And that's kind of the problem.  Or rather, the fact that we can't have an honest discussion about Clinton without sounding like it's Clinton-bashing is a problem.  The true believers have all their counter-arguments and defenses already lined up.  Don't like her? 

You must be a Republican.

Or too credulous, and willing to believe Republican lies.

Or sexist.

Or it was all Comey, and Russia, and you are letting them 'win' if you talk about Hillary's mistakes.

It kind of bothers me that we are almost a year past the election, and Hillary Clinton's name is still coming up all too often.  Some of that is on the Republican side - they seem to like using her as a distraction - but some of that is Clinton herself.  Who just refuses to go away.

And her true supporters laud her for that, even as the 2/3rds of the population who don't support her are sick of it.

I find myself wondering, why is she so desperate to hang on?  Like - I know that you have to believe in yourself to run for office.  That you have to convince yourself that you need to be the candidate, that nobody else can do it better.  (After all, if they could do it better you'd drop out and vote for them...right?)

But at some point you have to understand the distinction between what's best for you and what's best for the party.  And I really don't think Hillary hanging on is best for the party.  She lost to one of the most unpopular presidential candidates ever.  Some of that may be because of Russian meddling, or Comey, or any of the other excuses...but the race wouldn't have been close enough for those things to matter if she had been a better candidate in the first place. 

The true believers act as though her years of experience were a good thing, since it proved nothing the Republicans did could stick.  They were so focused on defeating the Republicans (and calling them out for all the 'lies' against their own candidates) that they didn't care at all about what the casual voter thought. 

Or how it looked, that the entire Democratic party supported a candidate who was under an FBI investigation.  After all, they all 'knew' the investigation was just Republican shenanigans, and not anything anyone should take seriously.

And now that the election is over, why, we've got better things to worry about.  Like Trump.  Or Russia.  No need to look at how and why the entire Democratic party supported such a flawed candidate.

So much of the commentary on that tweet is avoiding exactly that. 

Politics Today, Part I

This morning I saw this tweet, and decided to check out the comments.  I know, I know...people have stopped doing that.  It's ugly, negative, and you can't really tell who are bots, or paid responders, or just trolls trying to get people wound up.

Still, I like doing it for certain articles because it feels like I'm taking a pulse on an issue.  That is, the media may decide what to write about and may even slant the article a certain way, but the comments is where you get readers responses.  A sense of how they are interpreting the article.  And it's not always in the way the author expected or intended.  Plus, if there are bots or paid responders it's kind of worth knowing what sort of narrative is being pushed. 

Let me rephrase that - comments may not accurately reflect the viewpoints of the population, but it can and does reflect the strength of certain narratives (whether genuine or paid) and it's worth knowing what those narratives are and how many responders take the time to share it.

I have to admit, I was disappointed/disturbed by the narrative thus displayed, and what it says about America today.

This post is pretty much an attempt to sort through why it bothered me.

When I was a kid, I argued with one of my younger brothers a LOT.  I remember one particular argument - not the details, of course.  I remember Mom got involved, and it didn't go the way I wanted it to.  I wanted her to clearly back me up, see my brother's misdeeds and punish him.

What I do remember, however, is when she asked me "Do you think your brother thinks he won?"

Now, as a child I really didn't want to hear that, of course.  I was right, he was wrong, and it was very black and white to me.  But that question did kind of stick in my mind, because (now that I'm older) it brings up a very good point.  Namely, that just because we think someone 'got away with it', or wasn't punished appropriately doesn't mean that they feel the same way. 

I could go into a speech on human nature, on our tendency to exaggerate the hurts done us and minimize the hurt we do to others (thus making our evaluation of 'just punishment' flawed, as instead of "an eye for an eye" we feel that taking both eyes is just punishment for their taking one of ours) but I think that would take too long, so I'll skip it for now.

The point was that in a dispute we tend to focus on defeating the other, and in doing so we lose sight of the bigger picture.  So, for example, in a counterinsurgency we start focusing on killing insurgents rather than the bigger picture (i.e. killing insurgents as well as reducing their ability to recruit new insurgents through a combination of policies.  Like addressing the grievances that motivate new recruits, making it clear that there is a way out if they give up the fight (so they don't feel like they have to fight to the death), and remembering to create a safe place for neutrals and people caught in the middle.  That way there clearly IS an alternative.  You basically want to make it clear that supporting you is better than supporting the bad guys, not just morally...but also in terms of safety and your ability to protect those who support you.

On a less violent, less visceral level the same thing happens in politics.  That is, true believers (on the left and the right) focus on their opponents.  On wanting to clearly win, and make the other side clearly lose.  They get tunnel vision, and lose sight of the bigger picture.  They pander to their base, and stop caring about persuading those who aren't already true believers (like them.) 

And they want to make the other side lose.  Badly. 

So they consider any attack on their own to be lies...while any attack against their opponent is God's honest truth.  And anyone who doesn't see it their way is too stupid to know better, or misled by the lies of their opponents.  Either way, it's not worth considering.  And definitely not worth changing course - after all, that would mean their opponent won. 

Tunnel Vision, and the Problems of Critiquing the Past

Before going into more recent history, I wanted to touch base on some very ancient history.  Namely, the Sicilian Expedition where Athens invaded Sicily during their war with Sparta.  Take a look at this map, from the Wikipedia article previously linked:





Seems kind of crazy that Athens and their allies (in red) would invade Sicily during their fight with Sparta and Sparta's allies (in blue). 


If you read the wikipedia article, you can see why it doesn't seem as crazy as it sounded at first.  There was some prior history, Sicily could aid their enemy, the Athenians had initial success, there were some odd circumstances that were probably not considered predictable (i.e. Nicias's attempt to stop it backfired and the invasion became so large that a defeat was more disastrous than it could have been; also the whole strange tale of Alcibiades.)


You can dig into the weeds, of course, and argue over what played the largest role in the disaster, whether disaster was truly inevitable, and more.  Yet if you pull back a little bit and look at the map, I think there are some obvious dangers. 


First of all, the distance is a problem.  Athens is farther away, which means there's an inevitable delay in sending supplies, communication, and response time.  I particularly want to point out how hard it is to ship horses for the cavalry.


Second, the resources sent to Sicily were not there to assist with allies closer by. (I kind of agree with Pericles, who wanted Athens to consolidate their allies closer to home.)  I think there's some truth to assessing the economics behind a war, though the connection is not always as clear as you'd think.  Anyways, triremes are expensive, and mounting an expedition like this used a lot of Athenian economic power.  Resources that could have been used elsewhere, to better effect.


There's something else that leaps out at me, though given how little Sparta knew about building a navy it doesn't seem relevant in this particular context.  Back then sailors generally hugged the coastline, as you can see by the red route on the map.  That means Athens is sailing past enemy territory for a large part of the journey.  If the Spartans did have more of a navy, they could have blockaded or interdicted the Athenians on any attempt to reach Sicily.  I suppose it's not always a bad idea.  The Allies hopscotched past islands in the Pacific during World War II, and it worked.  I just don't like the potential for an enemy to cut our supply lines, not unless it's a deliberate (and well thought out) strategy as in WWII.


I suppose of Sicily were some sort of key terrain, it might have justified the expedition.  But it really wasn't.  The level of support Sicily might have provided to Sparta was not worth the cost to Athens.


If you want to dig deeper into ancient history, there's plenty to look at.  I brought it up for two reasons.  The first is to point out how easy it is to know who was right and who was wrong when it's ancient history.  The truth, however, is that in the here and now it's always hard to know who to believe.  Who is most accurately assessing the situation.  There's always white noise, always information you have to filter out.  We can hear about the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades and wonder why Nicias didn't win at the time...


But if we were actually there at that point in time we probably would have believed Alcibiades instead.


The second reason?  Even a couple thousand years later we can argue over what did or didn't lead to failure.