At Night, He Is Studying for an IT Career

Each year I seem to end up with one BIG BOOK. Last year it was Ian Morris and Why the West Rules--For Now. This year it is shaping up to be Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. I could list about 50 books, for 50 years. I'm never sure when I am reading them which ones will keep coming back to visit me. Some from when I was younger include Eric Hoffer's True Believer and Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled.

I mention these, because although there would be more famous books on my list (if I ever made this list), I don't think these books are known to most people I know.

The Better Angels of Our Natures may be a book that will give me a sense that, even without major changes in the way things are going, things may turn out better than they have been anyway. (Candide is probably on my list, also, and I have about 45 years avoiding becoming Dr. Pangloss, so you can imagine my worry about this confession.)

Wouldn't that be the damnest thing. All these years, fearing that we were becoming the worst of all possible worlds, and then one new book, and I can finally lean back and relax.

This book makes me think science is about to tell us why people do bad things to each other. Maybe, then, violence can stop. Pinker doesn't make this promise, but I'm reading between the lines. Or maybe I'm just making up new lines.

One of the many factors that Pinker credits for an improved humanity is satire. He quotes the King of Brobdingnag when he responds to Gulliver's description of English government: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth." That has long seemed an accurate description to me, but I am delighted to accept any evidence of change.

I am not sure if, like many old men, I am becoming more conservative as I age, or if there is really some hope that gradual improvement is possible in people, families, society, government, law. If I'm just getting old, I'll ask my friends to wait until after the holidays before they dump the ugly truth in my lap again.

Dano on Newt and others

Dano reports on the Republican debate last night. I missed it. I believe I was watching a re-run of Dexter. However, I'll take Dano's report as the whole truth and comment on the debate as well. Ron Paul, may be 75, but at least he knows what he believes and sticks by it. Dano's report also, oddly, stirs some sympathy for Newt. I've heard about Fannie and Freddie and the censure and all the marriages, but at least the guy can talk. Maybe that should be a threshold requirement.

I guess I am a little surprised that Gingrich was allowed to come out of this debate completely unscathed. Out in the real world, journalists, op-ed people, and probably the other campaigns, off the record, are attacking him vigorously. At the moment, believe it or not, Newt is ahead in Iowa and nationally. It has been my prediction that this will not last. I'll stick with that, but I will say that I would like nothing better than to be wrong. If the R's actually nominated Newt--and I guess that possibility has at least to be mentioned because Iowa votes in a mere 42 days--absent some earth-shaking change, I think Obama would mop the floor with him. But, anyway, at the moment, Newt leads, and last night he got nothing but softballs from the moderator, the audience questions, and the other candidates. Romney, with one exception to be mentioned below, did his usual good job. Cain has lost his confident, happy personality and now has a little of the "deer in the highlights" look to him. I think helives in great fear of making another showing of his vast ignorance of the sorts of things that a candidate for president should know. I think his reaction is completely understandable. I also think he's toast. Now, his poll numbers still show him to be arguably in contention, but the leak, and the fall, continue. Much as I dislike Perry, every time he has the floor, I cringe that he is going to embarrass himself. I suspect most other people have the same reaction. Bachmann had a decent performance and was heard from a lot. I doubt she will survive the Iowa Caucuses, but she has a bit of a chance there. Before her drop, she did win the Ames, Iowa straw poll; she was born in Iowa; she holds office in a neighboring state; and she has campaigned very, very heavily in Iowa. Maybe she will do well enough to survive there. My bet is no. This was a "national security" debate, and so a lot was on foreign policy. Ron Paul's views on those issues are clearly out of themainstream among most Republican voters. But he certainly did nothing to try to cover that up. Rather, he defended all of his dovish (and perhaps isolationist) views very vigorously and passionately, and, I thought, quite persuasively. He seemed to have part of the audience on his side. I continue to think he will do well better than he did in '08. Also, I think everyone seems to be forgetting that his age--75--has always been considered way too old for a presidential candidate. I didn't listen to any of the post-debate spin, and I haven't read anything about it yet, so this spin is purely my own. One thing that happened that I think may have been a mistake by Romney is this: one time Paul was speaking, with passion, about one of his foreign policy positions; the TV had a split screen so that you could see Paul speaking and you could also see Romney's reaction. Romney at one point "rolled his eyes." I think that may be significant because Ithink it has the potential of really pissing off the Paul supporters. They have cult-like loyalty. Romney may not have known he was on a split screen. If Romney gets the nomination, he will need those Paul voters. I think some day he may regret that eye-rolling. Like today, for instance. Gingrich's hope is that while each other "non-Romney" had its 15 minutes and then had its bubble burst, he gets his 15 minutes so late in the game that his bubble is still there when the real voting starts! I guess it's possible. I suppose stranger things have happened. But I can't think of any at the moment.

T.S. Eliot Hope and Despair

I can't say I've understood any poem by T.S. Eliot, even after reading the explanations by the scholars. But I keep reading them, because the language traps me.

A couple of lines in Ash Wednesday:

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

Climbing three sets of stairs, the climber first has to get past the devil with that deceitful face and then at the third landing (as I envision it) he finds,

Strength beyond hope and despair.

I have wondered about asking for "hope" or just engaging in the act of "hoping." How can we hope if we have faith. James says something like this: "Sisters and Brothers, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. These trials test your faith and bring you patience. Patience causes you to mature and gives you wisdom."

James doesn't say hope for something else, but have joy in the trials you have. The proper response is patience, not hope. And of course, despair is just the bad side of hope. Patience replaces despair as well as hope.

Eliot writes that despair and hope are both falsehoods worn by the devil and there is a strength that gets you past them.

I like this. If, as I suspect, God has made each of us exactly who we are, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what God made. If, as I suspect, God has made the whole world, past and future, hope and despair are false emotions; the world will be tomorrow just what God planned.

Differently put for the more secular among us: If, as I suspect, we are each determined to be who we are by our heredity and environment, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what the universe has made us to be. If, as I suspect, past and future are determined by the laws of the universe, hope and despair are false emotions, the world we be tomorrow exactly what it must be based on forces in motion from long in the past.

Dano thinks Romney can win in Iowa and New Hampshire

Dano is still handicapping the Republicans. I doubt he ever voted for one, but he never played for the Cowboys either and he always has an opinion about who will win. He sees Romney as a threat now in Iowa and New Hampshire.

He says:

The most recent two polls in Iowa and NH on the R race show Gingrichwith a big lead in Iowa (32 to Romney's 19) and Romney leadingGingrich by only 2 (29-27) in New Hampshire which had long beenthought to be a Romney lock.I don't think Gingrich will do nearly as well as these polls show.After he got up in the polls, commentators all over the place--fedprobably and secretly by opposition research from the othercandidates, at least in part-- have been re-stating all of hisbaggage. The big money from Freddy Mac is one; but his wholehistory, when re-remembered, just has too much negative in it toremain viable. Multiple adulteries, marriages, a fortune he hasmade as a crony capitalist since his years as speaker; and no one hasyet even bothered to mention that he was charged with an ethicsviolation in a Republican controlled House and fined hundreds ofthousands of dollars for it.To me, it looks like this thing is going to break pretty nicely forMitt Romney as we near the real voting. Four differentchallengers--Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich--have a bubble andthen each for one reason or another is found to have somedisqualifying negative. I think the anti-Romneys latched ontoGingrich because they had been burned time and again by being seducedby candidates who are so stupid and/or ignorant (Bachmann, Perry,Cain). At least Newt is smart and can speak the language.Now, the polls still also show Cain somewhat in contention, but thatcandidacy has a leak, and I don't think that leak is reparable.I also read that while Newt has raised a fair amount of moneyrecently, he still has little or no organization on the ground inIowa. In Iowa, there almost has to be a ground game of get-out-the-voters to get people to go to those caucuses, which is more timeconsuming than just voting. I get the impression that Newt is not agood organizer. He could hire one, of course, but a certain amountof discipline must come from the candidate. One also has toremember, he has never actually run for president before--heconsidered it several times but didn't run--and he has never actuallyrun in an election in anything larger than a Congressional district.I think he likes to spout pompous ideas and sound smart, and he maynot realize that that's not enough to win the Iowa caucuses.I think Mitt senses all this; for a long time, he made no seriouscommitment to Iowa because it is a place where he seemed likely tolose, and he wanted to be able to play down a loss. Well, just inthe last few days, he has decided to go all out there for a win. Hesees the opening. Romney is thus going to go all out to finish firstin both Iowa and New Hampshire. I think he has a decent chance topull it off. If he does that, it might create a sense ofinevitability that will make him the effective nominee pretty quickly.Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the last post, I am expecting a prettygood showing for Ron Paul, not only in Iowa, but in a lot of places.It is true that, mainly because of his foreign policy ideas--that is,he dislikes war and torture--80% of the Republican electorate willprobably never vote for him. But he gets his votes--now lookinglike perhaps15 or more percent--anywhere and everywhere. He'llalways have some money. And he'll always have a lot ofvolunteers--in any state. I read that he has a good organization inIowa.

The Rise of Ron Paul

Dano in the following post discusses Gingrich's likely collapse and the benefit to Ron Paul. Ron Paul has long been my favorite Republican. In fact, I think he is better on war issues than almost all the Democrats. I am not a libertarian; far from it. A true libertarian begins with a belief in free will and I can't go there. But I also think that government largesse is distributed so unfairly that the poor may be helped if subsidies to the rich could be curbed. Anyway, as weird as Ron Paul is, I still prefer him to a Gingrich or a Romney.

Dano says:

Well, just after my last post, where I concluded that there was a good chance that Gingrich would emerge as the main alternative to Romney,Newt got hit with an avalanche of bad publicity about his work forFreddy Mac in the early 2000's. In a recent debate, a moderatorasked him what he did for Freddie Mac to earn $300,000, and Newt saidit was just advice "as a historian", that he told them they weremaking bad loans and that a bubble was looming. It turns out hewas paid $1.6M instead of $300,000, and the folks he spoke to atFreddy Mac say they remember no advice along the lines that Gingrichclaims. They said he was hired to help them state positions thatwould be Republican-friendly so that the then-Republican controlledCongress would not dismantle Freddy and Fannie.Freddy and Fannie are hated by the Tea Partiers, so when this sinksin, it is going to hurt him--pretty badly, I think. He was tryingto help Freddie survive Republican attacks, and he lied about itbesides that.It hasn't sunk in yet. The most recent polls in Iowa and N.H. showhim in a very strong second place in both, one per cent behind Cain inthe former and 2% behind Romney in the latter.So, I am back to the position that it looks like Romney if for noreason other than you can't beat someone with no one. It is 46 daysto the Iowa Caucuses, and 53 to the N.H. Primary. I don't know ifthere is even enough time for another candidate to become thenon-Romney. Now, Santorum is conservative enough to satisfy thebase and has no big flip flop problem. Jennifer Rubin in the Wapohas several times suggested that he might have an ascendency. He isalso not a bad debater. But Santorum has never been out of singledigits, mostly not even out of low single digits.Another man who warrants discussion is Ron Paul. His numbers areinching up. Now, he will never be nominated because he is out ofthe mainstream of the R party on a lot of issues, especially onforeign policy where he is a consistent dove. So, I have alwaysthought he would be irrelevant--getting his 10 per cent or maybe even15 or a little higher--never enough to win anything. Well, hisnumbers in some polls are starting to rub against 20. So, he mayfinish second in a lot of primaries; I say "a lot" because he will noteasily drop out. He has a cult-like following that keeps giving himmoney no matter what. So, he can run and run and run and run, andhe may keep finishing second a lot--might even eak out a win or twosomewhere.I'll stipulate that there is some wishful thinking here, but I amhoping he loses (he will) but he does so well that he gets pissed offand runs in the General Election as an independent or third partier.He did that before--Libertarian candidate in 1988. However, hisfollowing is much larger now. Paul believes in conspiracy theories,and is a little off balance, so I can imagine him working himself intoa lather with the idea that he was cheated out of winning by the REstablishment. If he were to do that, Obama would benefit greatly.One poll on this showed Obama beating Romney by 6 without Paul as athird partier but by 12 with Paul in the race.Paul would know that he would be hurting the R's, but I am not surethat would stop him. He dislikes the R's about as much as the D's.I have even noticed that he rarely criticizes Obama in the debates;rather, he criticizes the whole American status quo, and thus"everyone else." Now, the history of third party candidates is thatthey poll well early sometimes but their percentage usually drops byelection day, sometimes by a lot. But in the case of Paul, while hemight have some of that usual erosion, his cult-like backers aremostly going to stay with him. And they don't mind losing toomuch; they think they are on some mission which goes beyond 2012.That would be a real nightmare for the R's.Obama's prospects still look pretty decent to me, but I worry thatEurope may plunge the world into more economic distress, and it wouldbe hard to see him winning if the economy were even worse than it isnow.

More from Dano on the presidential race

The commentariat is more and more seeing the R race the way I did acouple of weeks ago, that is, that it was shaping up, at leasttemporarily, as Romney vs. Gingrich. Then, there was a lot of talkabout how Cain had apparently survived his sexual harassment scandal.Now, everyone seems to see Cain as mortally wounded for variousreasons. Even before that scandal, I thought he would fall by theweight of his own vast ignorance. He's doing that--he can't thinkwhat to say about Obama's Libya policy, thinks China doesn't havenuclear weapons, has never heard of the "neo-conservative" movement,etc. He really was meant only to be just a vanity candidate.Cain's numbers show him still in contention, but there is a slow leak.The national poll numbers are going to start bouncing all over theplace when the states start voting. The Iowa Caucuses are in 48days. So, the most important polls to look at for the R's are Iowapolls. The most recent one is Cain 20, Gingrich 19, Romney 14, Paul10 Bachmann 10. Perry 5, and Santorum 5. The numbers are veryfluid--60% say they may change their mind. So, anything mighthappen there. Right now, I think the most likely scenario is thatNewt wins it.Perry really is dead, by the way. His disapproval/approval numbersare horrible and reflect no chance of a resurrection.Now, some say that Gingrich will also be exposed as too moderate and aflip-flopper, and there is some chance of that. He once believed inclimate change and some aspects of what is now Obamacare. When a"conservative" has been in politics as long as he has, it isimpossible to have always had the views that satisfy 2011 TeaPartiers. So, there is that danger for him. Also, there is thatbaggage of 3 marriages, an ethics violation, and forced resignation.The R primary voters seem to have forgotten about all that.What Newt is trying to do--and it may work with the R's--is to suggestthat he represents truly apocalyptic change because of his cerebraland visionary ideas and approach. Also, Newt says he wants 7Lincoln-Douglas style debates with Obama lasting at least 3 hourseach. That wouldn't happen, of course, but by suggesting it, he iseffectively asserting that he would do well in such marathon debates;and a lot of R voters are understandably worried about whether some oftheir candidates could debate Obama without completely embarrassingthemselves. My perception is that the R's think Newt could handleObama.Going back to his apocalyptic change thing, I think the R voters dolike to see this election--or at least would like to see it--as amajor, pivotal, Manichaean struggle of good vs. evil. Gingrichplays to that feeling. Romney does not. Gingrich would like theR's to see Romney as a competent technocrat--a manager, sort of aRepublican Michael Dukakis. If he can pull that sort of appeal off,he may be forgiven his previous moderate positions more so than Romneyhas. So, my bottom line is--still probably Romney for thenomination, but this may get very interesting, particularly the Newtthing.Obama is now beating all of them 6 or more points in head to heads.I think his strategy of (very mild and subtle) "class warfare", callsfor higher taxes on the top bracket, attacking the intransigence ofthe R's in Congress, etc., is a winner. A big danger to him,though, would be if the American economy--bad as it is right now--gotworse. A Europe meltdown might cause that to happen. If theeconomy gets substantially worse in the next year, he would be very,very vulnerable. If it stays about the same, I think he pulls itout.

Should we be so afraid?

Everyone I talk to seems to have a story about a kidnapping, home invasion or murder. Channel 5 is doing a series about the drug war in Mexico spilling over the border. Some of the guys I know are buying AR-15 and AK-47 to give to their wives. People complain they can't sell their houses to escape the coming violence.

So far, though, the statistics don't bear it out. When considered in terms of murders as a percentage of the population, Brownsville is still safer than Texas or the nation as a whole. We are also safer in terms of violent crime. We are a little higher with theft, but most of us don't buy a AR-15 to fight off a GPS theft through the passenger window of the car.

Brownsville has about 4 murders per year for every 100,000 people. Of course, this is horrible if you are a loved one of a victim, but there is no way to run away from it and stay in the United States. You can go to Europe. Most of Europe have had under 1 murder for 100,000 people for years. Europe, right now, is probably the safest place homo sapiens has every been since the beginning of the species.

Rapes, robberies and assaults are also much lower in Brownsville than the rest of the country. Even auto thefts are lower: who would have guessed it. We are safer than Port Isabel and Harlingen.

We used to go to Matamoros for dinner, a haircut, the pharmacy. Now most everyone I know is afraid to go. This is not born out by the statistics, either. Tamaulipas has a rate of 9 murders per 100,000. This is twice that of Brownsville, but still less than Houston and much safer than going to DC (24 per 100,000). The Yucatan has a mere 2 murders per 100,000, almost down to European levels. A visit to the Mayan ruins may be safer than staying at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Apologizing to Hobbes

Maybe I owe Thomas Hobbes an apology. All these years I thought he was just a propagandist for Charles II. I thought Hobbes was wrong about human nature. He insisted we needed a strong government, a Leviathan, to control man's evil nature. Without this strong government, we would be in constant fear, in danger of violent death, "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

This is not what I have concluded of human nature with some 35 years of talking to folks in jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Or those people on the outside who are largely indistinguishable from those on the inside. I have tended to the argument of Rousseau that "nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state...." And of Kropotkin, that the natural state of man (without the Leviathan) is one of mutual aid. Differently put, people, unless society locks them in cages together like rats in a small pen, do a pretty good job of getting along. They help each other because the cooperative groups are more likely to survive. Until we have been damaged, we don't have a desire to damage other people.

I am not ready to jettison this view of human nature. But I have been reading a book by Steven Pinker that argues that when Hobbes was asking to for strong government, he had his reasons, and a good argument apart from trying to please a young king. Pinker proves quite convincingly that without strong government, in history, rates of murder have been higher. Much higher. Not uncommonly, a hundred times higher.

No wonder Hobbes was born as twins with "fear." No wonder, he wanted someone, even a silly, hedonistic Merrie Monarch, with the power to stop the violence.

Pinker has published "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." He compares murder rates throughout the existence of our species. He looks at the level of homicides during anarchy of the hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies. He argues a five-fold decrease in murders in moving into agricultural societies. In the move from feudal territories to kingdoms, he argues a ten-fold to fifty-fold decline in the murder rates. Since World War II, he argues we have moved into a New Peace and a time of fewer civl wars, genocides, repressions by autocratic governments and terrorist attacks.

Oh Thomas, I'll be more patient with you in the future.

Dano's thoughts on the presidential race

My friend Dano has been sending me regular observations about the progress
of the presidential race. I think it is good stuff and I asked him for
permission to pass it on. Here it is:

Ok, I have had a few more days of the Cain scandal to absorb, and we just had another R debate; and last night we had all those ballot referenda in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine, etc.; so here are my thoughts: Perry had a big gaffe tonight and is dead because he said he was going to close 3 cabinet level agencies, and he could only remember two of them. The way he did it made it stick out like a sore thumb. It was painful to watch, even for someone who wishes him ill--such as myself. I honestly really felt sorry for the dumb-ass. It is being mentioned by commentators as one of the worst debate moments of alltime. He actually had a good debate otherwise, and later he did remember the third agency (it was Energy). Nonetheless, he is toast. He may have been anyway, but he is now. It will be an internet laughing stock type of moment.Romney did his usual competent performance, and so I assume nothing has changed for him. About 25% of the R party are for him and about 75% are pretty strongly against him.Cain avoided any further damage from his scandal and otherwise had a good night. Nonetheless, I still think he is a dead man walking. It is obvious that the scandal has enormous potential for story after story after story and detail after detail, and "drip, drip, drip. "Eventually, it will occur to the R voters that that is an unacceptable situation for a nominee, even aside from his other shortcomings, which are major. I noticed tonight that the other candidates no longer feel the need to attack him, as they did vigorously a month ago. They know it, too. The problem for them is that Cain may hang on to 20% or thereabouts ofthe vote nationally, and in Iowa--the first to vote--too long for them to gather up the residue of his eventual collapse. In other words, he may not fall fast enough to help any of the others. NYT columnist Charles Blow (a black liberal) gave a reason for this: the conservatives like what he says about race; Cain says that most blacks have been "brainwashed" to stay on the "Democratic plantation." He says that people who do not have jobs have only themselves to blame. By being for him and knowing that he says such things, he exonerates alot of typical arch-conservatives of a lifetime of racism. So, they love him and will not abandon him easily. This creates the possibility that he may stay as the number two to Romney long enough that no one else can ever reach that spot in time to stop Romney.The next in line for the anti-Romney, at this point, is clearly Gingrich. He has had all good debate performances. He does not attack the other R's, and so no one ever sees the mean side of him except when he attacks Obama, which they like, of course. His is gradually coming up in all polls. I think there is a chance that--especially if the Cain collapse speeds up--he may end up the main opponent to Romney. He'd probably still lose; people will remember his three marriages and the nasty circumstances of his two divorces (Romney made a point tonight, with Newt standing next to him, that he had been married to only one woman--an accomplishment for a Morman, I suppose--for more than 40 years). So, it still looks like Romney to me. But I would like to see it devolve to a Romney-Gingrich race just for the fun of it. Cain is never going to get that nomination, and he now is just standing in theway of others who might have a chance to knock off Romney. As for Obama, things look better for him. The ballot initiatives in Ohio, Maine, and, incredibly, Mississippi, look good for him, and there is mounting evidence that the tea-soaked R's have over-played their hand since the 2010 election. Particularly in several swing states--Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, as major examples--the 2010 elections created R governors and legislatures that are now patently unpopular in those states, and this phenomenon will help Obama to win those states. The Occupy Movement and other studies and articles have educated the electorate--particularly the independents--on the fact that the gap between rich and the middle class in this countryhas risen very dramatically since the Reagan election in 1980. An absolute majority of the country polls that R policies are designed to favor the rich. Also, the majority of both the independent and moderate voters have now been convinced that the R's are intentionally sabotaging the economy to help their election chances against Obama. This creates an atmosphere in which Obama can win. It creates a situation where he can make the opponents the main issue instead of himself--which he needs to do because he has been no great success. But as things stand now, he is the favorite against any R nominee. I don't know if he even deserves to be the beneficiary of these sentiments, given his choice of Geitner as Treasury Sec. and his relatively soft on Wall Street administration, but he is the one who is in position to benefit from it, if he plays his cards right. One danger is that a lot of the people on the left will conclude that he is not part of the solution, but rather part of the problem, and will stay home. We will see.