Philippa Kaur

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    Domestic Enemies: The American Way of Life

    Newly elected President Joe Biden promised in his inaugural address to focus on achieving national unity. It is a customary theme of new presidents who wish to assure those who voted against them that their interests will not be neglected. But given the current political and social atmosphere in the United States, it will require more than rhetorical reassurance to achieve even a minimum sense of unity in a divided nation.

    Visible Cracks in the New American Order

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    CBS published the astonishing results of a poll conducted a week after the uprising at Capitol Hill on January 6. It revealed just how deeply alienated Americans feel. This may be nothing more than the immediate effect of the botched transition between Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s administrations. But CBS hints that it may be durable: “Of potential threats to their way of life — from foreign adversaries to economic forces to natural disasters — Americans today say the biggest threat comes from inside the country, from ‘other people in America, and domestic enemies.’”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Way of life:

    The imaginary idea that because a population consumes — and often over-consumes — the same industrial products, its habits of consumption imply the harmonious existence of a common culture, converging values and shared goals.

    Contextual Note

    The most glaringly depressing statistic from the poll shows that 54% of Americans identify “other people in America” as “the biggest threat to America’s way of life.” Interestingly, the fear of “foreign threats” — a category that presumably includes terrorism — is highlighted by only 8% of those polled. Such findings demonstrate the effect of the culture wars that have been brewing for decades. Whether this will lead to open conflict, similar to the January 6 insurrection, or whether it simply settles into a pattern of increasingly irreparable degradation of human relations at work or in public places, nobody knows. In either case, the nation is facing a troubled future.

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    CBS pessimistically concluded that “Americans are bracing for more political violence, not just in the next week at Mr. Biden’s inauguration … but also over the coming years.” Some will now be heartened by the fact that no political violence occurred on the day of the inauguration. They may conclude that the fear of trouble “over the coming years” is equally exaggerated. But there are significant signs that things may get worse before they get better.

    At least one finding of the poll pointed in what seems a positive direction. Although 52% said they were “scared” about the future, nearly half of those polled (49%) said that they were still “hopeful.” That includes some who said they were both scared and hopeful. That might mean people are becoming vigilant and ready to take positive action. But being scared of one’s neighbors cannot bode well for the stability of society. Faced with the choice between “optimistic” and “pessimistic” about the next four years under Biden, 58% chose optimism. On the other hand, only 13% claimed to be “excited,” which should surprise no one, since Biden has never been known for his exciting personality. Somewhat more troubling is the fact that 26% claim to be angry, especially among people whose “way of life” includes owning guns, cultivating assertiveness and speaking up to get satisfaction for one’s demands.

    How likely is it that this feeling among so many people may produce serious conflict? And which are the groups most likely to upset the nation’s tranquility? The New York Times focuses on the threat from the conspiratorial far right, recently emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidency and apparently willing to rally behind any banner Trump may choose to unfurl in the next few years. The implications go beyond the US, since right-wing populism has become a global movement, also stimulated by Trump’s example. 

    Under the title “An ‘apocalyptically minded’ global far right,” The Times warns of the existence of “a web of diffuse international links.” That makes the internal threat appear even more threatening. The Times notes that, to assess the danger, in the coming weeks and months, officials will be closely observing this trend. Some expect a reinforcement of the already powerful security state. That may have the effect of aggravating the sense of threat rather than alleviating it.

    Historical Note

    Every American with a television remembers that Superman famously deployed his superstrength in the cause of “truth, justice and the American way.” By “the American way,” the authors of the TV series that appeared in the 1950s were apparently referring to the American way of life. But in the midst of the Cold War, it could also have meant “not the Soviet communist way.” In other words, quite simply, God-fearing capitalism.

    By the mid-20th century, the character of Superman — originally created in 1938 on the brink of the Second World War — came to resemble a supernatural religious crusader, a post-Christian incarnation of a new kind of divinity who had the material powers associated with an omnipotent god and who used them to defend the way of life of the faithful. He was both godlike — coming from the heavens — and committed to defending America’s culture and lifestyle.

    The faithful were those who believed in consumer capitalism, which had become the closest thing to an official national credo. Capitalism could achieve this status because it wasn’t a religion. It had no theology other than Adam Smith’s mysterious “invisible hand,” a concept that did in fact evoke associations with religion. Since capitalism lacked an overt theology, it could be adopted as a quasi-official religion to the extent that it didn’t violate the First Amendment proscription of an established religion. An established credo was okay so long as it wasn’t a religion.

    How did the vast majority of Americans implicitly acquire their faith in an “American way” that couldn’t even be defined? Edward Bernays may be the man to thank for that. He is credited with inventing the profession of public relations. Bernays was employed by President Woodrow Wilson, for whom he coined the phrase that has been used ever since to define a pillar of US interventionist foreign policy: “Make the world safe for democracy.” He also launched the idea of propaganda as a synonym for advertising.

    Embed from Getty Images

    But Bernays did much more than change the tone and ambition of US foreign policy. He created the modern American way of life by giving shape to the ultimate goal of capitalism: the realization of the utopia known as the consumer society. Bernays transformed the psychology of selling, which quite logically also transformed an economy that became increasingly dedicated to hooking consumers on convenience products. In his book “Propaganda,” he explained: “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

    Americans in the 1950s assumed there was something called the American way of life and never questioned the unseen manipulators who had created it and imposed it on them, essentially through the entertainment media and the advertising that accompanied it. The 1960s witnessed the first challenge to the world of consumerism when the hippies revolted against the conformism that constituted the core of consumerism. But the power of the system Bernays had created was such that in the following decades the consumerist way of life would simply integrate the most marketable elements spawned by the counterculture.

    Half a century after the hippies, the consumer society faces a new challenge: the global menace of climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the sense that the consumerist way of life is rapidly decomposing. In its never-ending political assault on government regulations, the right wing in the US has consistently framed the question of liberties in consumerist terms. It is built on the freedom of choice, such as refusing energy-efficient light bulbs, and the freedom to pollute by maximizing the unbridled production of consumer goods.

    When neighbors see their neighbors as the enemy, the kind of problem-solving necessary to address global warming, economic inequity and other visible problems becomes impossible. But rather than encourage reflection, commercial media and social media prefer to incite citizens to focus on blaming those who don’t share their values and seeing them as a threat to their way of life.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    How new voters and Black women transformed Georgia's politics

    In July 1964, Georgia restaurateur Lester Maddox violated the newly passed Civil Rights Act by refusing to serve three Black Georgia Tech students at his Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta. Although this new federal law banned discrimination in public places, Maddox was determined to maintain a whites-only dining room, arming white customers with pick handles – which he called “Pickrick drumsticks” – to threaten Black customers who tried to dine there.
    Endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan in his successful 1974 bid for the governorship, Maddox was once called “the South’s most racist governor.” But hostile treatment of minorities has often been Georgia’s chosen style of politics.
    Until recently. On Jan. 5, Georgians chose a Black pastor and a 33-year-old son of Jewish immigrants – Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff – to represent them in the Senate. They also elected Democrat Joe Biden for president in November.
    Georgia’s turn from blood red to deep purple gave Democrats their slender majority in the Senate, surprising Americans on both sides of the aisle. This historic moment was a long time coming.

    I am a political scientist who studies American politics, with a focus on minority voters and urban politics. In my research, I have examined the peculiar mix of factors that led to Warnock’s and Ossoff’s victories, chiefly an electorate that had been diversifying for years and the effort of many hardworking Black women.
    The New South
    The elections of Biden, Warnock and Ossoff are the culmination of a years long tug of war among the members of Georgia’s racially, ethnically and ideologically diverse electorate.
    Lester Maddox – a future Georgia governor – closed his Pickrick Restaurant in 1964 rather than integrate it. Bettmann Collection via Getty
    Georgia’s demographics are changing fast. In 2019, it was ranked fifth among U.S. states experiencing an influx of newcomers. According to census data, 284,541 residents arrived from out of state that year.
    Many of Georgia’s newest voters come from groups that lean Democratic: minorities, young people, unmarried women. Between 2000 and 2019, Georgia’s [Black population increased by 48%], mostly because people moved there from out of state. African Americans now make up 30% of Georgia’s population. The Latino population increased by 14% since 2000, and Latinos now comprise 9% of Georgians.
    Meanwhile, Georgia’s white population declined slightly, from 57% in 2010 to 54% in 2019. Non-Latino whites are projected to be a numerical minority in Georgia within the next decade.
    Just 30% of white Georgia voters chose Warnock and Ossoff on Jan. 5. But the pair, who often campaigned together, both won about 90% of the Black vote and about half of Latinos. Two-thirds of Asian Americans – a small but fast-growing electoral force in Georgia – voted for Ossoff, Warnock and Biden, exit data shows.
    Black women bring new voters
    Georgia’s changing electorate began producing new kinds of elected officials a few years back.
    In 2017 Bee Nguyen, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, became the first Vietnamese American elected to the Georgia state Legislature. She won the seat vacated by Democrat Stacey Abrams when Abrams ran for governor after a decade in the Statehouse.
    Abrams lost her 2018 race to become America’s first Black female governor by 55,000 votes, or 1.4 percentage points. Analysts attributed her defeat, in part, to low turnout rates, especially among Black voters.
    This – along with credible allegations of voter suppression – is one reason Abrams soon ramped up her voter registration effort.
    Abrams had begun organizing voters when campaigning for the Legislature in 2006. By 2018, her nonpartisan voter registration group, the New Georgia Project, was working with the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Pro Georgia, the Black Voters Matter Fund, Georgia STAND-UP and others to mobilize Black voters.
    Abrams at a campaign stop on Nov. 6, 2018. Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
    These groups, all led by Black women – Nse Ufot, Melanie Campbell, Helen Butler, Tamieka Atkins, LaTosha Brown and Deborah Scott, respectively – helped register an additional 800,000 Georgia voters between 2018 and 2020. Black voters and young people were particular targets.
    Exactly two years after Abrams’ November 2018 loss, Joe Biden won Georgia by 13,000 votes – the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since Bill Clinton in 1992. Warnock and Ossoff benefited from all these new Georgia voters, too.
    Georgia’s Democratic electorate is young, Black, Latino and Asian American. It is the new South – and Black women helped create it.
    [Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]
    Record turnout
    Ossoff and Warnock were always going to have a hard race in Georgia, but the nature of Georgia’s runoff elections compounded their underdog status.
    In Georgia, if neither candidate wins 50% or more of the vote in the general election, the top two candidates compete in a runoff. This system supposedly ensures that those elected have the support of a majority of voters, but in practice minorities usually lose to whites because of racially polarized voting. Historically, white and Black Georgians vote for the candidate from their racial group. Because white turnout was higher, white conservative candidates have won.
    The Jan. 5 runoff upended tradition. Over 4.4 million Georgians voted – a 60% turnout rate, almost doubling that of Georgia’s last Senate runoff, in 2008.
    In this year’s runoff election, Democrats went to the polls in droves during early voting, giving Warnock and Ossoff an edge. Republican turnout lagged in mostly white rural areas during the early voting period. It increased statewide on Election Day, but Democrats kept voting that day, too. Republicans could not make up the difference.
    Before Warnock and Ossoff, Georgia had never elected an African American to a statewide office. And it had never elected a Jewish senator.
    Republican failures
    The Republican Party had a role in its losses in Georgia, too.
    Some analysts blame Trump for low Republican turnout in the Senate runoff. After his loss in November, he claimed Georgia’s elections were “rigged” against his party. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to increasing stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 in a time of acute joblessness, poverty and hunger also likely hurt the Republican Senate candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
    Ultimately, though, it was Georgia’s changing electorate that put Democrats in office. The 2022 midterm elections will start to show how far Georgia has really come from the politics of Lester Maddox’s Pickrick Restaurant. More

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    Sovereign Wealth Funds Bet Big on India

    Since the outbreak of COVID-19, bad news has dogged India on the economic front. By the end of the 2020-21 financial year, which begins on April 1 and ends on March 31, the country’s GDP is estimated to shrink by 7.7%, the biggest contraction since 1952. In the first quarter of the 2020-21 financial year, the economy contracted by a historic 23.9%.

    To put things in perspective, India has suffered its first contraction since the 1979-80 financial year. Then, India’s GDP shrunk by 5.2% because of a double whammy. First, the 1979 Iranian Revolution led to a doubling of crude oil prices, hurting an energy importer like India. Second, a severe drought led to crop failure, falling incomes and declining demand. The 2020-21 recession is worse than that of 1979-1980. In fact, India’s contraction is the second-worst in Asia after the Philippines, whose economy has contracted by 8.5%-9.5%.

    Green Shoots of Recovery

    In 2021, better news has trickled in. India’s manufacturing sector is rebounding. The Nikkei Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index, compiled by IHS Markit, rose to 56.4 in December 2020, up from 56.3 in the previous month. Any figure over 50 signals growth, and manufacturing has now been increasing for five months. More importantly, India’s agricultural sector is expanding strongly. In fact, it grew even during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    Deloitte estimates that “India may have turned toward the road to recovery.” It bases its judgment on recent high-frequency data. India has been fortunate to have lower infection and fatality rates than countries like the US or the UK. It has also launched the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccine drive. This should improve consumer and business confidence and boost economic recovery.

    Why Is Foreign Investment Flooding Into India?

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    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is predicting a return to growth in 2021 as are investment banks and large funds. The Indian government is bullishly claiming that India can achieve double-digit growth through increased digital services and the expansion of its manufacturing base. This would be driven by growing demand in the rural sector, the youth and India’s aspirational middle class.

    Even if the government claims might be optimistic, many companies and investors have bought into the India growth story. In particular, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been betting on India. In 2020, they invested a record $14.8 billion in the country. In the same period, they invested only $4.5 billion in China, meaning that SWF investment in India is three times that of China. What is going on?

    Dark Clouds in Sunny Skies

    To understand why SWFs are turning to India, we have to understand their incentives. These funds do not answer to investors who crave quarterly or yearly or even five-year returns. As custodians of a nation’s wealth, SWFs are long-term investors. In their view, India is operating from a lower base than China. So, India’s growth prospects are higher than China’s as it plays catch-up. 

    Furthermore, unlike venture capital or private equity players, SWFs place a high premium on the long cycle factors like political stability, social cohesion and geopolitical importance. As a robust democracy with many decades of experience in the peaceful transfer of power, India is increasingly attractive in a volatile, complex and ambiguous world. China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang have shaken up many SWFs that are choosing to park their money in India.

    There is another reason for SWFs to invest in India. They agree with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who praised India for taking “very decisive action, very decisive steps to deal with the pandemic and to deal with [its] economic consequences.” Like her, they are impressed by New Delhi’s appetite for structural reforms and the surprising competence India’s much-maligned government has demonstrated during the pandemic.

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    On December 31, India’s health ministry revealed that the country’s COVID-19 recovery rate was an astonishing 96.04%. This is one of the highest recovery rates in the world. Despite the economic contraction, the government has fed hundreds of millions, brought in much-needed economic reforms and kept the budget deficit down to reasonable levels. At a time when countries have sunk into unsustainable debt traps, India presents a relatively better investment opportunity for SWFs with strong prospects of sustainable, long-term growth.

    There are two dark clouds threatening this sunny economic scenario. First, India faces the twin external threat of China and Pakistan. Both these nuclear powers make territorial claims against India. They have been ratcheting up rhetoric, and tensions are running high. Even at the height of a bitterly cold winter, Indian and Chinese troops have clashed yet again on the border. Once the Himalayan snows start melting in late spring and early summer, troops could start clashing and a military conflict might ensue. This would inflict a tremendous economic setback in the short run. If India is able to defend its territory, then its economy would benefit in the long term. However, there is no guarantee how such a conflict might play out, and this remains a great risk to the economy.

    Second, India faces the threat of domestic unrest. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has had to deal with numerous protests since its reelection in 2019. The Citizenship Amendment Act triggered protests in many cities across the country. They died down as the pandemic spread. Currently, farmer protests are rocking New Delhi on Republic Day. In a country as large and diverse as India, threats of more protests and unrest are never far away. As long as the government can contain protests, they remain immaterial. However, a breakdown in social cohesion would damage India’s growth story.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Conspiracy Pushers: QAnon’s Radical Unreality

    “Where we go one, we go all.” This tagline from the now infamous QAnon conspiracy has been seared into our hive minds since the insurrectionist events of January 6 on Capitol Hill. The question now becomes, where do Q’s followers go from here? Their “coming storm” prophesied that Donald Trump would seize power, overthrow the deep state and arrest a cabal of Satan-worshipping, pedophilic Democrats. Luckily for everyone else, this storm was little more than an afternoon drizzle. However, the threat from these conspiracies remains.

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    Much has been written about the radicalization of QAnon adherents since the coup attempt, and there is an available body of work for anyone brave enough to wade into this conspiracy pool. There have also been extensive follow-up attempts to dissect the QAnon mindset since President Biden’s inauguration, given Donald Trump’s failure to deliver on the promises made by Q.

    Turbulence Ahead

    While some are taking a certain satisfaction in watching the QAnon worldview crumble, the situation is poised to grow even more complex. This presents an even deeper challenge to the long-term social and political health of the United States. Observers who are commenting on the disillusionment of QAnon communities now that Biden’s presidency has become a reality are missing the point, since reality was never the point to begin with. The point has always been escapism — absconding into a world of fan fiction where the entanglements of our political and economic lives can be distilled down to memes, anonymous “transmissions” and a binary choice between good and evil, filled with legions of heroes and villains. None of this will be abandoned any time soon, let alone gracefully.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Because of this, there is deep turbulence ahead, namely what to do with potentially millions of people who now adhere to an untethered ideology. These digital communities are not going to vanish, nor are they simply going to recognize the absurdity of their ways and come back to the mainstream. Doing so would undermine the investment they have made in the conspiracy that has consumed them, forcing them to acknowledge that their estrangement from family, friends and colleagues is actually of their own making. There is also another dimension, one that goes even deeper. Letting go of the conspiracy and admitting that their beliefs are misplaced is to also acknowledge that they allowed themselves to be deceived and manipulated.

    Having this expectation is a heavy lift and one that cannot be expected without programs or mechanisms that support personal disengagement. Arab countries battling extremism have pioneered these kinds of deradicalization programs and have been running them for years. Unfortunately, programs like this that are currently available in the US do not exist on the scale needed to be effective. What we are left with is much more rudimentary and reactive, allowing us to only assess the pathways these individuals are taking and how their digital communities are supporting their radicalization.

    There are five main QAnon archetypes currently in play. Each has a role in either disrupting or scaling the radicalization behind the next version of the conspiracy. The first group are those who can be reached. These will be individuals who understand they unwittingly fell into something and are looking for a way back to their lives pre-QAnon with a minimal amount of embarrassment. The second group are those still consuming the conspiracy but who are negotiating their belief system within it as Biden settles into his presidency. The cracks have started to form for these individuals, and it could go one of two ways: Either they are reached and brought back into normative political and social life or they will evolve in the direction of the new conspiracy.

    The third group are the enablers who are still committed to trafficking in conspiracy regardless of the form it might be taking. They are the content creators, communicators, logistical planners and recruiters. They have influence within their digital communities, which they will protect by espousing whatever version of the conspiracy keeps them most relevant.

    The fourth group are the ideological drivers of the conspiracy, those not only with the most followers and content but those capable of articulating the most radical aspects of the conspiracy. Many of the previous ideological leaders of QAnon have dropped out due to a loss of legitimacy within these digital communities. But in doing so, they have left behind a vacuum. This space is now being filled by opportunists who need to make even more outlandish claims as a way of establishing their bona fides to the millions of followers looking for what comes next, accelerating the potential for radicalization.

    Turn to Anger

    The fifth group is the most worrisome and where intelligence gatherers and federal law enforcement will need to be most focused. These are individuals who recognize the conspiracy was a lie, but still maintain all of their underlying resentments, specifically white grievance. This will turn to anger, which can be easily exploited, not just because they realize QAnon was a lie, but because they believe they were abandoned by the same politicians who told them the election was stolen. These individuals will be looking for new digital communities that are less keen on fan fiction and more prone to direct action as a way of exercising their grievances. They will be prime targets for white supremacist groups and militias who are looking to recruit, plan and engage in violent action. The recalibration of these relationships is already ongoing.

    Believing the followers of QAnon have lost faith in the conspiracy in any meaningful way is naive. Their reality is flexible. Spend a few minutes in any QAnon Telegram channel, and you can see that the unreality of their beliefs is only accelerating. A new conspiracy is already claiming that Trump will become president again on March 4 under a “restored republic,” which links to a belief that the US was dissolved in the 19th century. Individuals who have retreated from normative social and political life into their conspiracy-driven digital communities will continue to find ways to thrive because they have no other choice. Their emotional investment in the conspiracy has become their personal identity. This is only going to make the conspiracy more dangerous and the radicalization stronger. 

    The FBI cannot arrest its way out of this problem, nor can the tech companies be counted on to regulate their own platforms in a way that addresses the complexity of these vast challenges. While radicalization is nothing new, it is new in the American context. This is a knowledge frontier in its infancy and one we are wholly unprepared for — for all the reasons that led us to this place to begin with. If left unaddressed, we might soon find ourselves in a position where our unreality has indeed become our reality.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    in World Politics

    A Tale of Two Historical Adversaries

    As Joe Biden settles into the White House and the Democrats in Congress play out the final act of their formal confrontation with the man now known as Citizen Trump, observers will begin focusing on another drama, one that the Democrats and their preferred media have obsessively elevated to the top of the hierarchy of concerns at the very moment when a global pandemic has undermined the health of humanity and a climate crisis threatens the health of the planet. What is that drama? Russia’s role in the great SolarWinds hack.

    Much of the credibility of the Democratic Party hinges on justifying what increasingly resembles a conspiracy theory designed to offer the Democrats psychological thrills comparable to those that QAnon offers to Republicans. The difference is that, apart from Citizen Trump himself, the members of the Republican Party obsessed by QAnon are mostly marginal personalities, such as newly elected Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. In contrast, proponents of the Democratic conspiracy theory include, no less, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. They appear to believe that Trump not only commanded the attempt to occupy the Capitol, but coordinated the operation with Vladimir Putin.

    President Joe Biden has not personally embraced the Democratic obsession with Russia. As the elected president and now leader of the party, Biden will have to clarify the state of play on the Russia question that has come to define the party during its four years of opposition to Donald Trump. Paradoxically, though deemed a puppet of President Putin, Trump’s “America First” orientation seriously damaged the theoretically cordial relations that existed since the end of the Cold War between Russia and the United States. An objective observer could only conclude that Trump may have appreciated Putin’s style, but — apart from fragilizing NATO, which he did for purely financial reasons — his policies did little to accommodate Putin’s politics.

    Who Is Nancy Pelosi Enabling?

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    The Democrats want Biden to flamboyantly punish Russia for every real or imaginary sin they can think of, if only to avenge Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. The problem is that the first order of business on the new president’s agenda is not about punishment, but collaboration. Biden must rectify one of the most egregious errors made by Trump, who refused to extend the New START — the last nuclear treaty between the US and Russia remaining in effect, which expires this year.

    Most reasonable people would like to see the risk of nuclear war reduced even if it cannot be eliminated. Democrats, unlike Trump, consider themselves reasonable people and, therefore, are intent upon extending the expiring treaty. The New York Times makes this clear while worrying that the question is more complex than simply reaching an agreement: “While Mr. Biden has long favored the extension, there was debate among his top aides about how long it should be. He chose the most time available under the treaty’s terms, in hopes … of preventing a nuclear arms race at a time the new president expects to be in a state of near-constant, low-level competition and confrontation with Moscow around the world — and particularly in cyberspace.”

    Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, reduced this complex reasoning to something the media could understand: “This extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial as it is at this time.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Adversarial:

    Not in total conformity with a powerful nation’s expectations and requirements and therefore susceptible to being severely punished militarily or economically.

    Contextual Note

    The quandary Biden is now facing has nothing to do with nuclear security. It concerns the theme The Times and other media have been pushing since early December: the SolarWinds cyberattack now thought to have affected at least 250 US federal agencies and businesses. To this day, the experts have been left guessing about who did it and to what end. The Democrats and, of course, The Times immediately proclaimed that it was Russia. Proof is never required because, as most Democrats now believe, hacking is an integral part of the Russian genome (bad science is often brought in to bolster this kind of specious reasoning).

    To make the case, all the pundits require is finding someone in the government or the “serious” media to affirm that, whatever the complaint, they consider it “likely” that the Russians were responsible. CNN, for example, correctly designates “The computer intrusion campaign that has been linked to Russia.” This phrase is designed to make readers assume that Russia did it. But “linked to” means nothing more than speculated about. Anyone versed in the basics of criminology should understand that, even when there is a “likely” suspect, if no concrete proof exists to accuse them and the investigation has failed to unearth a clue as to the motive, taking legal action against that suspect simply makes no sense and would be considered an abuse of justice.

    The frustration of not being able to prove one’s suspicions marks the point at which imaginary genetic reasoning can easily take over. It also opens the door to geopolitical conspiracy theories. What precise instructions, we must ask, did Vladimir Putin give to Donald Trump in the telephone conversation Hillary Clinton believes the two men had on January 6, as the assembled troops of the colluding presidents were assaulting the Capitol?

    Historical Note

    The Times rightly points out that the suspicion of Russia has complicated Joe Biden’s decision-making. It “puts Mr. Biden in the awkward position of seeking to extend the nuclear treaty — which Mr. Putin has already said he is willing to renew — while very publicly discussing the need to make Russia pay a price for the hacking.” In serious criminology, attempting to evaluate the “price to pay” for a crime when the very nature of the crime is in doubt would be extremely unprofessional. It is tantamount to conducting the trial before making the charges. That has, of course, become a kind of a historical norm in US foreign policy. From the Gulf of Tonkin incident to waging war on Afghanistan instead of targeting the likely criminal organization, al-Qaeda, American politicians have consistently botched their criminology to precipitate a war.

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    The Times article grudgingly admits that the SolarWinds hack was more likely traditional spying rather than the “act of war” some politicians have been shouting about. Reuters quotes “U.S. Senator Dick Durbin calling it ‘virtually a declaration of war’ and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio saying that ‘America must retaliate, and not just with sanctions.’” Does the fact that if may have been spying rather than political or military aggression make it excusable? After all, everybody spies.

    The true criminologist might reframe the investigation by asking two basic questions. The first is, who among all possible suspects is really good at sophisticated cyber spying? The second is, what data was being breached and why would the perpetrator be interested in it? To the first question, there are several serious leads, including Russia. But the list also includes China (Trump’s claim), Israel and the US. The last two have been eliminated because they are not adversaries of the US. But is spying only adversarial? Our criminologist knows that, despite official denials, the NSA spies on Americans. So do Facebook and Google. What those two platforms glean appears to be valuable.

    Cyber spying feeds the world of Big Data, essential for managing economies and economic relations. Israel, perhaps the world’s most sophisticated purveyor of cyber spying, spies on any target of interest, as an Al Jazeera documentary recently revealed. If the investigators had an idea of the purpose of the spying, the criminologists might have a clearer idea about which of the many suspects are truly “likely.”

    The Times’ characterization of the relationship with Russia as a “near-constant, low-level competition and confrontation” is an interesting innovation that may reveal something about the Democrats’ conception of psychological warfare. If the glorious Cold War of the past, when the Soviet Union looked like an empire, could be accurately characterized as constant, high-level competition and confrontation, then the new Cold War still focused on Russia represents a certain form of progress. “Constant” has become “near-constant” and “high-level” has become low-level. That should be reassuring.

    The other question to ask about the Biden administration is this: Will the effort at constant, high-level confrontation now be directed at China? And can the declining US empire simultaneously handle two cold wars alongside a potential civil war at home?

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    in US Politics

    'America is back': the delusion of normalcy that haunts the United States

    The election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States was received across much of the world with a mixture of relief and exuberance, though often laced with apprehension. A common theme in news headlines and Twitter feeds was that normal service was being resumed in the US and in international affairs.
    In France, the newspaper Le Monde ran with the headline: “American Elections 2020: Joe Biden’s victory sparks huge relief in Europe.” On Twitter, Paris’ mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted out: “Welcome Back, America.” In Germany, the cover of the news magazine Der Spiegel depicted Biden putting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty back on the torso (referencing an infamous cover from 2017 that depicted Trump severing the head). The image is accompanied with the ironic text “Make America Great Again.”
    The theme of an American restoration was repeated in news and social media across the world. The symbolism is strong, but it is less clear what is being restored. In this it echoes the “return to normalcy” theme in Biden’s election campaign in the US, a nostalgic nostrum that vaguely promises a reset of American principles and policies. What is at issue in these desires to go back to a pre-Trump America?

    In the US, the desire for normalcy surrounding the election of Biden reflects an existential anxiety – that Trump ignited a devastating attack on liberal democracy that may prove epochal.
    The contradictions and tensions in American liberal democracy have been forcefully revealed with his presidency, which took advantage of the gap between declared liberal values and political reality. Trump not only exploited that gap, he spoke to latent desires and emboldened expressions of identity in both politics and people that had long been marginalised or silenced.
    With Trump’s ousting, the liberal desire for a return to normality has been amped up via the figure of Joe Biden. It was clearly articulated by the new president at his inauguration, in his pleas for national unity and his promise to end the “uncivil war” in the US. David Sanger, in the New York Times, noted that: “Mr Biden’s inauguration was notable for its normalcy, the sense of relief that permeated the capital over an era of constant turmoil and falsehood ending.”
    But there was little that was normal in the scene of a scaled-down inauguration taking place with only a handful of socially distant, masked participants and surrounded by the militarised landscape of a post-riot Capitol. The image was not of national healing but of a national emergency.
    Pride and relief: a shopkeeper in Kamala Harris’ ancestral village in India catches up with the news. EPA-EFE/Jagadeesh NV
    Accompanying the desire for normalcy and sense of relief is the implication that the “Trump era” was an aberration, a temporary deviation in the natural political order of things.
    This is an attractive and tempting palliative for those who resisted Trump’s spell and disavow the significance of his political rise and appeal to millions of Americans. In this view, Trump was “the cat in the hat” – an unwelcome visitor and unruly avatar of instincts for disorder, evicted once the parents return. Enter Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
    But Trump (and Trumpism) was and is something more than a temporary eruption in the order of things or mere symptom of a malaise in American public life. Trump unleashed the libidinal forces of “illiberal democracy”, undermining America’s commitment to constitutionalism, the rule of law and individual rights. He supported these forces in the US and encouraged them elsewhere, transforming the landscapes of American political culture and foreign affairs in ways we are still trying to understand.
    American myopia
    Americans pay little heed to external perspectives on their country and by and large do not respond well to critical views of it or of their leaders. That may be viewed as stubbornly patriotic, but it is more fundamentally due to a deep-seated ignorance founded on a myth of national exceptionalism, a myopia that is quintessentially American.
    Trump’s presidency should remind Americans of the fragility of the social and political order that so many take for granted. Is it not a little shocking that Americans should need to be reminded of this? Perhaps not, perhaps the amnesia is a component of the American worldview, which commonly displaces the most serious challenges to democracy on to others elsewhere.
    As the American writer Tom Wolfe once quipped, the “dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Of course, “it can’t happen here”.
    Funny way of ‘returning to normality’: impeaching the outgoing president. EPA-EFE/ Shawn Thew
    Might it be that the importance of Trump’s election and presidency has been better or at least more readily understood in other countries where there is a living memory of the pains of populist authoritarianism, where people are more familiar with how reality can be dismantled?
    The Slovenian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon suggests as much when, in the wake of Trump’s election, he commented:

    In America, a comfortable entitlement blunts and deactivates imagination – it is hard to imagine that this American life is not the only life possible, that there could be any reason to undo it.

    Hemon filters his perspective through his experiences and insights from living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war “through a time when what cannot possibly happen begins to happen, rapidly and everywhere”. Observing the disorienting impact of the early days of Trump’s presidency, he wryly notes that: “‘Reality’ has finally earned its quotation marks.”
    Reality did indeed earn its quotation marks in “Trump’s America”, a fantasy world in which Trump supporters imaginatively and emotionally invest. It’s a world in which conspiracy theory and social media combine to create an alternative reality, a world that is self-contained and self-reinforcing – and impervious to facts.
    Galvanised by Trump’s near messianic leadership, the fantasy has become pervasive and is deeply embedded in the imaginations – the fears and desires – of millions of Americans. It cannot simply or swiftly be undone.
    Back to reality
    “America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it”, Biden stated in November as he introduced his foreign policy team. The “America is back” refrain has been repeated ad nauseum by Biden’s surrogates in the past few months.
    What it means in terms of policy remains unclear. More symbolically, it is declared as a rebuttal of Trumpist foreign policy, infamously sloganed as “America First”, suggesting a renewed era of US global engagement and leadership. But the meaning remains open and opaque and, as Julian Borger observes in The Guardian: “How a slogan as all-encompassing as ‘America is Back’ is received around the world will inevitably be a Rorschach test for what is perceived to be the ‘real America’ that has been absent in the past four years.”
    How The Conversation covered the inauguration of Joe Biden. The Conversation
    The perception of what constitutes the “real America” is both a domestic and foreign policy dilemma for the US. Assumptions about liberal democracy at home and about a liberal world order abroad are no longer acts of faith.
    As we head into a “post-American world”, global enthusiasm for democracy cannot be assumed, nor can the ability of the US to set an example, for that has been undone by the spectacles of civil unrest and the disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The domestic “uncivil war” will, as political scientist Francis Fukuyama warns, have “consequences for global democracy in the coming years”.
    Biden’s foreign policy team are talking up democratic solidarity between states as the basis for a new internationalism but this cannot be a restoration of liberal hegemony. It must reckon not only with the damage done by the starkly nationalist “America First” doctrine: it must also acknowledge the failings of liberal internationalism before Trump became president. After all, neoliberal globalisation gave rise to the political and cultural blowback called Trumpism in the US and its ethnonationalist cousins across the world.
    Making a fetish of normalcy is a form of American exceptionalism. “America is back” may prove as myopic and delusional as “Make America Great Again”. More

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    in World Politics

    The Science of Rebuilding Trust

    During his inauguration, President Joe Biden appealed to us, American citizens, repeatedly and emphatically, to defend unity and truth against corrosion from power and profit. Fortunately, the bedrock tensions between unity, truth, power and profit have newly-discovered mathematical definitions, so their formerly mysterious interactions can now be quantified, predicted and addressed. So in strictly (deeply) scientific terms, Biden described our core problem exactly right.

    Can We Build Social Trust in an Online World?

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    I applaud and validate President Biden’s distillation of the problem of finding and keeping the truth, and of trusting it together. Human trust is based on high-speed neuromechanical interaction between living creatures. Other kinds of trust not based on that are fake to some degree. Lies created for money and power damage trust most of all.

    A Moment of Silence

    As Biden showed in his first act in office, the first step toward rebuilding is a moment of silence. Avoiding words, slowing down, taking time, breathing, acknowledging common grievances and recognizing a common purpose are not just human needs, but necessary algorithmic steps as well. Those are essential to setting up our common strategy and gathering the starting data that we need to make things right.

    The next step, as Biden also said, is to recognize corrupting forces such as money and power — and I would also add recognition. The third step, as I propose below, is to counter those three forces explicitly in our quest for public truth, to do the exact opposite of what money, power and careerism do, and to counter and reverse every information-processing step at which money, power and recognition might get a hold.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Instead of using one panel of famous, well-funded experts deliberating a few hours in public, employ a dozen groups of anonymous lone geniuses, each group working separately in secret for months on the same common question. Have them release their reports simultaneously in multiple media. That way, the unplanned overlap shows most of what matters and a path to resolving the rest — an idea so crazy it just might work.

    Since I’m describing how to restore democracy algorithmically, I might as well provide an example of legislation in the algorithmic language too. To convey data-processing ideas clearly, and thereby to avoid wasting time and money building a system that won’t work, technologists display our proposals using oversimplified examples that software architects like myself call “reference implementations” and which narrative architects like my partner call “tutor texts.”

    These examples are not meant to actually work, but to unambiguously show off crucial principles. In the spirit of reference implementations, I present the following legislative proposal, written to get to the truth about one particular subject but easily rewritten to find the truth about other subjects such as global warming or fake news: The Defend the Growing Human Nervous System With Information Sciences Act.

    The Defend Act

    Over centuries, humankind has defended its children against physical extremes, dangerous chemicals and infectious organisms by resolute, rational application of the laws of nature via technology and medical science. Now is the time to use those same tools to defend our children’s growing nervous systems against the informational damage that presently undermines their trust in themselves, their families and their communities. Therefore, we here apply information science in order to understand how man-made communication helps and hurts the humans whom God made.

    The human race has discovered elemental universal laws governing processes from combustion to gravitation and from them created great and terrible technologies from fire and weapons to electricity grids and thermonuclear reactions. But no laws are more elemental than the laws of data and mathematics, and no technologies more universal and fast-growing than the mathematically-grounded technologies of information capture, processing and dissemination. Information science is changing the world we live in and, therefore, changing us as living, breathing human beings. How?

    The human race has dealt with challenges from its own technologies before. Slash-and-burn tactics eroded farmland; lead pipes poisoned water; city wells spread cholera; radioactivity caused cancer; refrigerants depleted ozone. And we have dealt with epidemics that propagated in weird and novel ways — both communicable diseases spread by touch, by body fluids, by insects, by behaviors, by drinking water, by food, and debilitating diseases of chemical imbalance, genetic dysregulation, immune collapse and misfolded proteins. Our science has both created and solved monumental problems.

    But just as no technology is more powerful than the information sciences, when deployed against an immature, growing, still-learning human nervous system, no toxin is more insidious than extractive or exploitive artificial information.

    The Defend the Growing Human Nervous System With Information Sciences Act aims to understand first and foremost the depth and texture of the threat to growing human nervous systems in order to communicate the problem to the public at large (not to solve the problem yet). This act’s approach is based on five premises about the newly-discovered sciences of information.

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    First of all, there is an urgent global mental-health crisis tightly correlated over decades with consuming unnatural sensory inputs (such as from TV screens) and interacting in unnatural ways (such as using wireless devices). These technologies seem to undermine trust in one’s own senses and in one’s connections to others, with the youngest brains bearing the greatest hurt.

    Second, computer science understands information flowing in the real world. Numerical simulations faithfully replicate the laws of physics — of combustion, explosions, weather and gravitation — inside computers, thereby confirming we understand how nature works. Autonomous vehicles such as ocean gliders, autonomous drones, self-driving cars and walking robots, select and process signals from the outside to make trustworthy models, in order to move through the world. This neutral, technological understanding might illuminate the information flows that mature humans also use to do those same things and which growing humans use to learn how to do them.

    Third, the science of epidemiology understands the information flows of medical research. Research has discovered and countered countless dangerous chemical and biological influences through concepts like clinical trials, randomization, viral spread, dose-response curves and false positive/negative risks. These potent yet neutral medical lenses might identify the most damaging aspects of artificial sensory interactions, in preparation for countering them in the same way they have already done for lead, tar, nicotine, sugar, endocrine disruptors and so on. The specific approach will extend the existing understanding of micro-toxins and micro-injuries to include the new micro-deceptions and micro-behavioral manipulations that undermine trust.

    Fourth, the mathematics of management and communication understands the information flows of businesses. The economic spreadsheets and prediction models that presently micromanage business and market decisions worldwide can, when provided with these new metrics of human health and damage, calculate two new things. First, the most cost-effective ways to prevent and reduce damage. Second, such spreadsheets can quantify the degree to which well-accepted and legal practices of monetized influence — advertising, branding, lobbying, incentivizing, media campaigns and even threats — potentially make the information they touch untrustworthy and thereby undermine human trust.

    America has risen to great challenges before. At its inception, even before Alexis De Tocqueville praised the American communitarian can-do spirit, this country gathered its most brilliant thinkers in a Constitutional Convention. In war, it gathered them to invent and create a monster weapon. In peace, it gathered them to land on the Moon. Over time, Americans have understood and made inroads against lead poisoning, ozone destruction, polluted water, smog, acid rain, nicotine and trans-fats. Now, we need to assemble our clearest thinkers to combat the deepest damage of all: the damage to how we talk and think.

    Finally, we humans are spiritual and soulful beings. Our experiences and affections could never be captured in data or equations, whether of calorie consumption, body temperature, chemical balance or information flow. But just as we use such equations to defend our bodies against hunger, hypothermia or vitamin deficiency, we might also use them to defend against confusion, mistrust and loneliness, without in the process finding our own real lives replaced or eclipsed. In fact, if the human nervous system and soul are indeed damaged when mathematically-synthesized inputs replace real ones, then they will be freed from that unreality and that damage only when we understand which inputs help and hurt us most.

    Informational Threat

    The Defend Act tasks its teams to treat the human nervous system as an information-processing system with the same quantitative, scientific neutrality as medicine already treats us as heat-generating, oxygen-consuming, blood-pumping, self-cleaning systems. Specifically, teams are to examine human informational processing in the same computational terms used for self-driving vehicles that are also self-training and to examine our informational environments, whether man-made or God-made, in the same terms used for the “training data” consumed by such artificial foraging machines.

    An informational threat such as the present one must be met in new ways. In particular, the current threat differs from historic ones by undermining communication itself, making unbiased discussion of the problem nearly impossible in public or in subsidized scientific discourse. Thus, the first concern of the Defend Act is to insulate the process of scientific discovery from the institutional, traditional and commercial pressures that might otherwise contaminate its answers. Thus, the act aims to maximize scientific reliability and minimize commercial, traditional and political interference as follows.

    The investigation will proceed not by a single dream team of famous, respected and politically-vetted experts but by 10 separate teams of anonymous polymaths, living and working together in undisclosed locations, assembled from international scientists under international auspices; for example, the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will collaborate with the World Health Organization.

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    Each team will be tasked with producing its best version of the long-term scientific truth, that is of the same truth each other team ought to also obtain based on accepted universal principles. Teams pursuing actual scientific coherence thus ought to converge in their answers. Any team tempted to replace the law of nature with incentivized convenience would then find its results laughably out of step with the common, coherent consensus reported by the other teams.

    Choosing individual team members for intellectual flexibility and independence, rather than for fame or institutional influence, will ensure they can grasp the scope of the problem, articulate it fearlessly and transmit in their results no latent bias toward their home colleagues, institution, technology or discipline.

    Each team will contain at least two experts from each of the three information-science fields, each able to approximately understand the technical language of the others and thus collectively to understand all aspects of human informational functionality and dysfunctionality. To ensure the conclusions apply to humans everywhere, at least one-third of each team will consider themselves culturally non-American.

    Each team will operate according to the best practices of deliberative decision-making, such as those used by “deliberative democracy”: live nearby, meet in person a few hours a day over months in a quiet place and enjoy access to whatever experts and sources of information they choose to use. Their budget (about $4 million per team) will be sufficient for each to produce its report in one year, through a variety of public-facing communications media: written reports, slide decks, video recordings, private meetings and public speeches. Between the multiple team members, multiple teams and multiple media, it will be difficult for entrenched powers to downplay inconvenient truths.

    Released simultaneously, all public reports will cover four topics with a broad brush:

    1. Summarizing the informational distractions and damage one would expect in advance, based only on the mathematical principles of autonomous navigation mentioned above, including not only sensory distractions but also the cognitive load of attending to interruptions and following rules, including rules intended to improve the situation.

    2. Summarizing, as meta-studies, the general (and generally true) conclusions of scientifically reputable experimental studies and separately the general (and generally misleading) conclusions of incentivized studies.

    3. Providing guideline formulae of damage and therapy, based on straightforward technical metrics of each specific information source such as timing delay, timing uncertainty, statistical pattern, information format, etc., with which to predict the nature, timescale, duration and severity of informational damage or recuperation from it.

    4. Providing guidelines for dissemination, discussion and regulatory approaches most likely not to be undermined by pressures toward the status quo.

    Within two years of passing this act, for under $100 million dollars, the world will understand far better the human stakes of artificial input, and the best means for making our children safe from it again.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    in World Politics

    When Will Boris Johnson Be Committed?

    The UK has finally cast off all its shackles and is ready to assert its freedom under the creative leadership of Boris Johnson, the man who made Brexit happen. Things are a little complicated for the moment, but once COVID-19 can be tamed, British creativity will find its cruising speed.

    Brexit has been official only since January 1, 2021. It’s far too soon to expect any concrete results. Creative leadership needs a little bit of time to get going. Faced with a challenge, Britain’s creative managers will do the first thing all creative managers do, especially those with a sense of how the law works. They will search for loopholes and storm their way through them. Rest assured, Johnson’s government is already hard at work.

    One example is the “working time directive,” an initiative, as reported by the Financial Times, that will rescind the 48-hour workweek limitation imposed by European law. This new directive is part of a promised “post-Brexit overhaul of UK labour markets.” This reform in the name of improved productivity theoretically violates the last-minute agreement signed a month ago with the EU but, apparently, there’s a loophole. The EU will have the right to protest only if it can “demonstrate the changes had a material impact on competition.” Let them try. That will keep the bureaucrats busy and it will take years to begin to make the case.

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    The government claims this measure will help both businesses and workers in the UK, but Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow business secretary, begs to differ: “In the midst of the worst economic crisis in three centuries, ministers are preparing to tear up their promises to the British people and taking a sledgehammer to workers’ rights.”

    Another example concerns the post-colonial habit of wealthy nations that have for decades been shipping their plastic waste to poor countries. Karen McVeigh in an article for The Guardian, “’Loophole’ will let UK continue to ship plastic waste to poorer countries,” describes how the post-Brexit UK is “failing to honour its promise to curb shipments of plastic waste to developing countries.” This is all the more astonishing as Johnson’s Conservative Party, in a brave attempt to prove its ecological credentials, had taken a firm position condemning the practice. McVeigh writes: “Britain will continue to allow plastic waste to be exported to developing countries, despite a Tory party manifesto commitment to banning the practice, and promises of no regression of environmental standards post-Brexit.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Commitment:

    A solemn promise intended to be kept unless it turns out to be costly or inconvenient.

    Contextual Note

    The point of a party’s manifesto has never been to define an ambitious legislative program that it intends to pass, but rather to give an idea of how its members imagine a utopian society might look. That’s what interests voters during an election campaign. It proves that the party has what can be called “a vision,” which has become a standard political commodity that can be fabricated practically instantly by experienced spin doctors.

    The European Union had already taken an initiative on the question of plastic waste. The Tories vociferously claimed to agree with it and announced their commitment to implementing it. The European law became applicable at the beginning of this year. It requires the banning of “all non-recyclable plastic waste being shipped to developing nations from 1 January.” 

    One of the reasons both the Europeans and the British Tories found this so convincing is that, apart from the catastrophic effects on the environment of the countries to which the waste is shipped, much of the plastic ends up polluting the oceans and seas of the world, including those that surround the isle of Britain. Now that the UK is nothing but an island, there is a selfish reason for the reform. But, as the world should now realize, selfish environmental reasons rarely trump selfish monetary reasons.

    The government’s lawyers have taken a lesson from the recent legal history around the issue of sexual assault. They have drafted a condition that makes everything acceptable, so long as it is consensual. It even has a name: “prior informed consent.” In other words, the UK is committed to respecting the idea that “no means no.” McVeigh offers the details: “UK exports will now be made under a new system of ‘prior informed consent’, under which the importer has to agree to accept the waste, and has the opportunity to refuse it.”

    Historical Note

    The FT article quotes a government spokesperson, who clearly believes in Britain’s future vocation as an innovator that may serve as a model for others. It may fall short of a return to empire, but some people still remember the cultural leadership of the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. That was when the UK offered the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Carnaby Street, Monty Python, the Skinheads and punk rock. As per the British government, “Leaving the EU allows us to continue to be a standard-setter and protect and enhance UK workers’ rights.” 

    As they have done for the past four years, the Johnsonite Tories see this as a turning point not only in the history of the British Isles, but a major event in world history. European standards were unbearably bureaucratic and led to sclerosis. The new deregulated standards of the UK are flexible and innovative, the stuff of a shining future.

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    Some may feel that this sounds like an appeal to the past, to the Thatcher years. That would be understandable coming from Margaret Thatcher’s party. But in terms of its capacity to produce plastic waste, the UK has no need to return to the glories of the past. It is already a leader. “Britain is one of the biggest producers of plastic waste in the world, second only to the US.” With 67 million inhabitants, the UK represents a little more than one-fifth of the population of the United States. Holding second place in such a competitive world is quite an accomplishment.

    The article lists some of the countries to whom Britain exports its waste: Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Turkey. Finding a way to take advantage of poor countries is baked into British imperial culture. A Greenpeace political campaigner complained that “creating a loophole to allow the dumping of our plastic trash on environments and communities bodes very badly. This is not leadership, it’s failing to do the bare minimum.” What Greenpeace fails to appreciate is that, like limits on working hours, this measure is meant to make British businesses more competitive. Reducing the amount of plastic sold to consumers might hurt sales and profit margins.

    The government makes the case that this is nothing more than a big misunderstanding. A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed the government pledge “to ban the export of all plastic waste to non-OECD countries.” Promises are for the future, not the present. After all, there was no precise timetable on the pledge. Instead, the department confirmed that “it had commissioned research to better understand existing UK plastic waste recycling capacity and would consult in due course on how to deliver its manifesto commitments.” Research by bureaucracy takes time. That was one of the main reasons Boris Johnson wanted to leave the European Union. Its bureaucracy made it difficult to expedite important business.

    The problem Karen McVeigh cites is, therefore, clearly exaggerated. Even though Europe managed to get the law in place for the first day of this year, the much more efficient decision-making of a liberated, unbureaucratic Britain will only need several more months, years or, who knows, decades. After all, research is complicated and expensive, especially when you’re on your own and have to rely on your limited resources.

    What the UK government wants us to understand is that the commitment is there. That should be enough. It will remain there with the same firm intention to carry it out until the date that the policy can be put into effect, whenever that may be, if, of course, no other unexpected event prevents that from occurring. In which case it will be reconsidered, more research will be conducted and subsequently a new commitment for future action will be announced.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More