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      Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

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      Over at least the past two months, US President Joe Biden’s White House has successfully inculcated in nearly all of the corporate media its firm belief that Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, has made the decision to mount a military invasion of Ukraine. Most of the articles published on the subject at best wonder about only two things. When will the invasion take place? And how far will it go?

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      Since the question of whether he will invade has been put aside, the pundits are asking themselves a different question. It concerns President Putin’s motives. Does Putin feel he needs to overthrow the Ukrainian government and reestablish a friendly regime that will serve as a buffer state between Russia and Europe? Or will he simply be content with controlling the Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine, effectively destabilizing the current regime and thus preventing the possibility of the nation’s integration into NATO?

      Given the apparently Beltway mantra that an invasion is imminent and that the West insists on Ukraine’s right to do what it wants, including joining NATO, it was therefore surprising to read in The New York Times this week that people in the White House — in this case, people who usually are removed from communication with the media — may have made a different assessment. In an article whose title “War May Loom, but Are There Offramps?” is an acknowledgment of the level of uncertainty that surrounds the current geopolitical standoff, David E. Sanger reveals that “even President Biden’s top aides say they have no idea if a diplomatic solution, rather than the conquest of Ukraine, is what Mr. Putin has in mind.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Like most Russians, and unlike most Americans, Putin knows something about how the game of chess is played. Geopolitics for Russians has always been a game of chess. Curiously, Western commentators instead seem to believe that the game logic Putin respects is similar to that of American football or basketball. They incessantly talk about Russia’s “playbook.” These are sports where you assign roles, plan actions and then try to execute. However complex the configurations may come, plays in a playbook follow a logic of going from step one to step two. Chess requires a different form and level of thinking.

      It is reasonable to suppose that the Russian-American AP reporter Vladimir Isachenkov has a good understanding of Russian politics and Russian culture. Here is how he describes the current situation: “Amid fears of an imminent attack on Ukraine, Russia has further upped the ante by announcing more military drills in the region.

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Up the ante:

      A metaphor from poker that when used correctly means to increase the initial stakes of a game, the amount that must be advanced by each player to enter the game. It is often used incorrectly as an equivalent of another poker term: call the bluff.  

      Contextual Note

      Isachenkov predictably foresees the invasion authorities in the West almost seem to desire, and not only in Washington. This week, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson forecasted Putin’s “plan for a lightning war.” Translated into German, that means Blitzkrieg, a term Johnson preferred to avoid using, though the innuendo was clear. The point of the entire effort to predict a Russian invasion is to instill the idea that Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler.

      Russians, however, are not known for practicing Blitzkrieg. Chess players prefer to construct their game patiently through a series of maneuvers that look at a long-term evolution. They challenge their opponent’s understanding of an evolving situation and are extremely sensitive to the layout on the chessboard, with the intent of making a checkmate inevitable. Americans, in particular, tend to go for strikes and are always hoping for a lucky strike.

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      Perhaps because Isachenkov believes Americans may not understand such strategies, instead of looking to the subtlety of chess for his gaming metaphor or even to Putin’s documented experience of judo, he draws his literary inspiration from another quintessential American game, poker. He tells us Russia has “upped the ante.” In so doing, he misinterprets not only the meaning of Putin’s moves but even the practice of poker itself. Isachenkov appears to interpret “up the ante” as meaning “increase the pressure” or “raise the temperature.” He didn’t realize that poker offers a better metaphor for Putin’s actions: calling Biden’s bluff.

      No respectable Western commentator would frame the situation in those terms. It would mean acknowledging that the US resorts to the ignoble art of bluffing. Bluffing implies hypocrisy. The US has only one goal: to make the world more equitable and to help democracy prevail. Secretary of State Antony Blinken defined the mission in these terms: “It’s about the sovereignty and self-determination of Ukraine and all states,” before adding that “at its core, it’s about Russia’s rejection of a post-Cold War Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.” And, just to make things clear: “It’s about whether Ukraine has a right to be a democracy.”

      Isachenkov points out that Russia “has refused to rule out the possibility of military deployments to the Caribbean, and President Vladimir Putin has reached out to leaders opposed to the West.” He calls this “military muscle-flexing” but perhaps fails to see this for the theater it is meant to be, coming from the president of a nation that gave us Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov and Gorki. Evoking the Caribbean is Putin’s way of alluding to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It may especially be meant to call Americans’ attention to the idea that powerful nations do not look kindly to discovering an adverse military nuclear presence at its borders. If John F. Kennedy could force Nikita Khrushchev to back down 60 years ago, Putin should be allowed to do the same to Biden today.

      Historical Note

      If Vladimir Putin is calling Joe Biden’s bluff, what is the nature of that bluff? In the simplest terms, Biden’s bluff is the latest version of what President George H.W. Bush, after the demise of the Soviet Union, proudly called the “new world order.” After defeating Donald Trump, Biden announced to his allies in Europe that “America is back,” which was his way of saying “my version of America is great again,” the version that uses its military reach to protect its business interests across the globe.

      In a New York Times op-ed dated January 24, national security expert, Fiona Hill, who served under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, claims that Putin’s aim is not just to annex all or part of Ukraine. He isn’t looking at taking a pawn or even a bishop. He has the whole chessboard in view. Hill is undoubtedly correct about Putin’s real purpose, that he “wants to evict the United States from Europe.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      “Right now,” Hill writes, “all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union.” In other words, the current posture of the United States is offering Putin a winning hand (poker) or setting itself up for a checkmate.

      Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who knows something about the stakes associated with warfare, makes a complementary point concerning the nature of the risk for the US: “It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.” If events get out of control, as is likely if there is no diplomatic solution, the effects on the West’s economy will be far more dramatic than any damage that can be inflicted on Russia through sanctions. 

      The US has refused to listen to the arguments not just of Putin, but also of foreign policy wonks such as John Mearsheimer. They believe that even the daydream of linking Ukraine with NATO crosses the reddest of lines, not just for Putin but for Russia itself. Failing to take that into account while insisting that it’s all a question of respecting an independent nation’s right to join a hostile military alliance represents a position that makes war inevitable.

      In a 2021 Geopolitical Monitor article with the title “Do We Live in Mearsheimer’s World?” Mahammad Mammadov cited “Mearsheimerian realism,” which he claims “sees Ukraine’s future as a stable and prosperous state in its being a ‘neutral buffer’ between multiple power poles, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Accordingly, Russia is still a declining power with a one-dimensional economy and need not be contained.”

      That seems like a solution most people in the West could live with… apart from the military-industrial complex, of course. And Democratic presidents seeking to prove they are not weaklings before this year’s midterm elections.

      *[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 Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      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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      Creating Better Working Conditions in America

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      Before the coronavirus pandemic, our capitalist system relied on a generous supply of American workers willing and able to put in full-time hours. But with a declining birth rate, increases in early retirement, millions of women still out of the workforce and the deaths of more than 862,000 people in America — a result of a population ravaged by COVID-19 — the United States needs to get creative to stay operational.

      There are two solutions: attract more immigrants and institutionalize flexible work arrangements, especially for older Americans who aren’t ready or able to leave their jobs.

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      Unfortunately, politicians and employers have shown reluctance to embrace these common-sense solutions. Despite promises to make sweeping changes to US immigration policy, President Joe Biden has been unwilling or unable to roll back most of the extreme anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration. To be fair, in the cases where Biden and his team have tried to make some changes, they have been ordered by Republican-appointed judges to reimpose these policies, as in the case of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.  

      In the workplace, some employers have refused to institute flexible work policies, leading to employee pushback on calls to return to the office. Additionally, last summer, governors in 26 states — all but Louisiana led by Republicans — ended extra unemployment benefits from the American Rescue Plan two to three months earlier than federally required, with some explicitly stating that the unemployed are “lazy” and wanting to collect government benefits. Governor Mike Parson of Missouri said in May 2021 that continuing these unemployment programs “only worsens the workforce issues we’re currently facing. It’s time that we end these programs that have incentivized people to stay out of the workforce.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      However, with the US averaging around 700,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 each day over the last week, the pandemic is far from over. American families are at their breaking point. Rather than relying on outdated racist and classist ideas about immigration and government support for families, politicians and employers wanting to stimulate the economy should focus on creative solutions to what is clearly an unprecedented crisis.  ]

      Immigrant Workers

      One solution is to build on the existing labor force by welcoming more immigrant workers and providing better benefits for their labor. While immigrants continue to be employed at a higher rate than those who are US-born, they make up just over one-sixth of the total US labor force. Immigrants have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic working as essential workers at all levels. But at the same time, many immigrants, particularly Asian, faced increased racism during the early days of the pandemic. 

      Politicians and the American public alike often invoke the idea that we are a “nation of immigrants.” While some might argue that we never have been, immigrants are an important part of American society and deserve better opportunities and benefits available to them.

      Many immigrants in the US are not eligible for unemployment benefits, which makes them more vulnerable. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that at least 6 million immigrants work in industries hardest hit during the pandemic. Additionally, immigrant families have a higher risk of being food insecure. Thus, while immigrants take care of us, we do not return the favor.  

      Flexible Working

      The early retirements of older workers are more likely tied to concerns about health and safety around COVID-19 and an increasing desire for remote work, yet many are not prepared financially for retirement. It would not be surprising if many returned to the workforce, at least part-time, at some point in the coming years. 

      Industries, corporations, foundations and employers would be wise to recruit retirees, even for part-time positions. The older population has a wealth of experience, knowledge and the aptitude to mentor younger workers and immigrants. For example, in one study of retired surgeons, more than half of participants were interested in serving as mentors to new surgeons and most were willing to do so even without compensation. Similarly, for teachers, mentoring is a valuable experience for both retirees and new teachers.  

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      To be sure, attracting immigrant workers by offering competitive salaries and benefits, and meeting workers’ need for flexible work arrangements might require employers to temporarily cut back on profits. However, making these investments in workers would show that employers are forward-thinking and respect their contributions.

      With slowing US population growth, employers will have a smaller pool of potential employees and will therefore need to offer better working conditions to attract workers. Additionally, 2021 saw American workers striking and unionizing with rates not seen in decades, with some attributing this, in part, to pandemic working conditions. In short, employers can create better working conditions by choice or by force.

      Politicians could ease the burden on companies by incentivizing flexible working policies and making it easier for Americans to combine work and family. But — even better — they could ease the burden on workers by providing direct support through paid leave, housing support, universal health care and other programs that would allow for a better quality of life for Americans. These supports would also make part-time work a more realistic option and empower families to make their own decisions about how best to combine work and family at any age.  

      Reimagine Society

      The COVID-19 pandemic has changed us as individuals and as a society. We cannot simply “get back to normal” despite calls from politicians and CEOs to do so. After all, the US alone will likely reach 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the months to come. 

      If politicians and employers want to stay operational, we must take this chance to reimagine our society. This means putting people over profits and creating workplaces that are responsive to the needs of people and their whole selves. 

      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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      Welcome to the Metaverse: The Peril and Potential of Governance

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      The final chapter of Don DeLillo’s epic 1997 novel “Underworld” has proven a prescient warning of the dangers of the digitized life and culture into which we’ve communally plunged headfirst. Yet no sentiment, no open question posed in his 800-page opus rings as ominously, or remains as unsettling today, as this: “Is cyberspace a thing within the world or is it the other way around? Which contains the other, and how can you tell for sure?”

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      Regrettably, people’s opinions on the metaverse currently depend on whether they view owning and operating a “digital self” through the lens of dystopia (“The Matrix”) or harmless fun (“Fortnite”). It is additionally unfortunate that an innovative space as dynamic and potentially revolutionary as the metaverse has become, in the public’s imagination, the intellectual property of one company.

      But the fact that future users so readily associate the metaverse with Facebook is a temporary result of PR and a wave of talent migration, and will be replaced by firsthand experiences gained through our exposure to the metaverse itself, and not a single firm’s vision for it.

      Meta Power

      So, what does this all mean? How will the metaverse shape the way we do business, the way we live our lives, the way we govern ourselves? Who owns the metaverse? Why do we need it? Who will be in charge?

      Taking a lead from this stellar primer, if we simply replace the word “metaverse” with the word “internet” wherever we see it, all of a sudden, its application and significance become easier to grasp. It also becomes clear that Facebook’s rebranding as Meta is not as much a reference to the creation of the metaverse but more in line with the company’s desire to become this new territory’s most enthusiastic homesteaders. Facebook is not so much creating the metaverse as it is hoping — like every other firm and government should hope — that it won’t be left behind in this new world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As far as the metaverse’s impact, its political implications might end up being its least transformative. In the United States, for instance, the digitization of political campaigning has carved a meandering path to the present that is too simplistically summed up thus: Howard Dean crawled so that Barack Obama could walk so that Donald Trump could run so that Joe Biden could drop us all off at No Malarkey Station.

      Where this train goes next, both in the United States and globally, will be a function of individual candidates’ goals, and the all-seeing eye of algorithm-driven voter outreach. But the bottom line is that there will be campaign advertisements in the metaverse because, well, there are campaign advertisements everywhere, all the time.

      More interesting to consider is how leaders will engage the metaverse once in power. Encouragingly, from the governmental side, capabilities and opportunities abound to redefine the manner in which citizens reach their representatives and participate in their own governance. Early public sector adopters of metaversal development have but scratched the surface of these possibilities.

      For starters, the tiny island nation of Barbados has staked out the first metaversal embassy. This openness to embracing technology and a renewed focus on citizen interaction evidenced in this move are laudable and demonstrate the metaverse’s democratic value as a means for increased transparency in government and truly borderless global engagement. Though novel, Barbados’ digital embassy is no gimmick. You can be sure that additional diplomatic missions will soon follow suit in establishing their presence in the metaverse and will perhaps wish they had thought to do so earlier.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Another happy marriage of innovation and democracy is underway in South Korea. Its capital city has taken the mission of digitizing democracy a step further by setting the ambitious goal of creating a Metaverse Seoul by 2023 for the express purpose of transforming its citizenry’s access to municipal government. Things like virtual public hearings, a virtually accessible mayor’s office, virtual tourism, virtual conventions, markets and events will all be on the table as one of the world’s most economically and culturally rich metropolises opens its digital doors to all who wish to step inside.

      Digital Twinning

      Any time technology is employed in the service of empowering people and holding governments more accountable, such advancements should be celebrated. The metaverse can and must become a vehicle for freedom. It need not provide a tired, easy analog to Don DeLillo’s ominous underworld.

      But then there’s China. While some of its cities and state-run firms are making plans to embrace what functionality is afforded via metaversal innovation, there can be no question that the government in Beijing will have a tremendous say in what development, access and behavior is and isn’t permitted in any Chinese iterations of the metaverse. It is hard to imagine, for instance, certain digital assets, products or symbols making their way past the same level of censorship beneath which China already blankets its corner of cyberspace.

      Yet China’s most intriguing metaverse-related trend involves the spike in interest in digital property ownership occurring while its real-world real estate market continues to sputter. Such a considerable reallocation of resources away from physical assets into digital ones mirrors the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency as a safe haven from the risk of inflation. Call it a technological inevitability or a societal symptom of COVID-fueled pessimism, but the digital world now appears (to some) to present fewer risks and more forward-looking stability than the physical.   

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      China may be an extreme example, but the need to balance transparency, openness and prosperity with safety and control will exist for all governments in the metaverse just as it does in non-virtual reality. Real-world governmental issues will not find easy answers in the metaverse, but they might find useful twins. And as is the case in the industry, the digital twinning of democracy will give its willing practitioners the chance to experiment, to struggle, to build and rebuild, and to fail fast and often enough to eventually get some things right.

      Championing commendable applications of this new technology in government and business will position the metaverse as a useful thing within the real world, something that enriches real lives, that serves real people — not the other way around.

      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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      The Pentagon’s Latest Glorious Failure

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      For centuries, the idea prevailed in our competitive civilization that when someone fails a fundamental qualifying test, it means they should return to their studies and keep a low profile until they felt ready to prove their capacity to pass the test. Someone who fails a driving test will be given a chance to come back a second or even third time. But most people who fail three or four times will simply give up trying to swallow their pride and accept their permanent dependence on public transport, family and friends. The same holds true for law school graduates seeking to pass the bar or indeed students in any school who repeatedly fails an examination.

      In the world of Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur whose first startup fails gets up, dusts off and returns to the race. The venture capitalists will often look at a second effort after the first one fails as proof of courage and resilience. Three- or four-time losers, however, will usually get the message that it may not be worth trying again. In the meantime, the venture capitalist will have removed them from their files.

      Amy Wax and the Breakdown of America’s Intellectual Culture

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      Some privileged people and institutions exist who appear to be spared the indignity of having to retreat after a pattern of failure. The Afghanistan Papers revealed how the repeated mistakes of US military leaders over decades not only did not require them to return to their studies, but duly rewarded them for their service.

      Then there is the US Department of Defense itself. In November 2021, Reuters offered this startling headline: “U.S. Pentagon fails fourth audit but sees steady progress.” Since 1990, Congress has obliged all government institutions to conduct a thorough audit. The Pentagon got a late start but they are already at their fourth audit. And they have consistently failed. But like a backward pupil in an elementary school class, the authorities note that despite consistent failure, they should be encouraged for making progress. Will they prove to be better at failing the next time?

      The Reuters article reveals the source of the government’s hope. It isn’t about performance. Like everything else in our society of spectacle, it’s all about favorability ratings. Our civilization has elevated the notion of ratings to the ultimate measure of virtue. Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s CFO, explains why, despite the failure, there is no need to worry. “The department continues to make steady progress toward achieving a favorable audit opinion.”

      Our Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Audit opinion:

      The rigorous standard by which the most sacred part of the US government, the only one that has achieved the status of an object of worship, will be judged by

      Contextual Note

      Opinion is famously fickle, never more so than in the hyperreal world of politics. Like the wind, it can change direction at a moment’s notice. Political professionals have become adept at forcing it to change. That is what political marketers are paid to do. And they measure their success by shifts in the largely unstable numbers that appear in the ratings. Everything becomes focused on the numbers produced by surveys of opinion.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Concerning the Pentagon’s audit, McCord did mention some impressive numbers that went beyond registering opinion alone. The results of the failed audit revealed “more than $3.2 trillion in assets and $3 trillion in liabilities.” Learning that the Pentagon’s balance sheet is $200 billion in the black can only be encouraging. Any entrepreneur knows what that means. In case of forced liquidation, there would be a valuable stockpile of usable weapons to be sold to the highest bidder and still money left over to pay off all the debts. Or, more likely, the whole operation could be profitably sold to a competitor, say, Canada, Mexico, France or Israel at an even higher valuation. China would be excluded from consideration because of the feat, perhaps at the UN, that such a merger would produce a global monopoly.

      Reuters reassures us that optimism is in the air: “As the audits mature and testing expands, Department of Defense leaders expect findings to increase in number and complexity.” They underline the encouraging thought that “successive sweeps could expose more profound problems.” Even the idea of exposing “more profound problems” is promising. It means we may one day understand what’s behind the discovery that the DoD — according to a previous audit — left $21 trillion of expenditure unaccounted for over the past two decades.

      The commentator Jonathan Cohn highlighted an obvious fact that should resonate with the public in light of recent haggling in Congress over President Joe Biden’s agenda. “None of the ‘centrist’ Democrats or Republicans who complained about the cost of the Build Back Better Act,” Cohn notes, “have said a peep about the ever-growing Pentagon budget — and the fact that it is somehow still growing even despite the Afghanistan pullout. It has grown about 25% in size over the past five years, even though the Pentagon just failed its fourth audit last month.”

      In his book, “War is a Racket,”, the most decorated senior military officer of his time, Smedley Butler, explained the underlying logic that still holds true nearly a century later. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States,” Butler wrote, “are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.”

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      A lot of corporations — with names like, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton and Northrup — have managed to “get it.” Those corporations are very careful with their own audits because they know that failing an audit, even once, let alone four times, would cancel their ability to keep milking the Pentagon’s cash cow. Luckily, the Pentagon doesn’t have to worry about losing its relationship with those corporations simply on the grounds that it failed yet another audit.

      Historical Note

      Ratings, and more particularly favorability ratings, are numbers with no stable meaning. Instead of reflecting reality, they merely register the state of shifting opinions about reality. And yet, ratings have become a dominant force in 21st-century US culture. This is perhaps the most significant sign of a fatal decline of democracy itself.

      The idea of democracy first launched in Athens nearly three millennia ago aimed at spreading the responsibility for government among the population at large. Inspired by the Athenian example, the founders of the United States and drafters of the US Constitution realized that what worked reasonably well for the governance of a city-state could not be directly applied to a nation composed of 13 disparate British colonies. Drawing on England’s parliamentary tradition, the founders substituted representative democracy for Athenian direct democracy.

      Instead of sharing the responsibility of governance with the general population, the new republic offered the people a simple tool: the vote. It was accompanied by the idea that any (male) citizen could seek to stand for election. The founders hadn’t fully appreciated the fact that this might lead to the constitution of a separate ruling class, an elite group of people who could compete amongst themselves to use the tools of governance to their partisan ends.

      Nor did they anticipate the consequences of industrialization of the Western world that was about to unfold over the next two centuries. It would not only consolidate the notion of political organization focused on partisan ends, it would ultimately spawn the “science” of electoral marketing. With the birth of technology-based mass media in the 20th century, that science would focus exclusively on opinion, branding and ratings, leaving governance as an afterthought.

      Embed from Getty Images

      By the 21st century, politics became totally dominated by the race for popularity and the cultivation of strategies to that end. The emergence of television in the second half of the 20th century, coupled with the presence of telephones in every home, sealed the deal. The science of polling was born. Once that occurred, everything in public life became subject to ratings. In the world of politics, the needs of “we the people” were fatally subordinated to a focus on the shifting and increasingly manipulable opinions of those same people. The science of electoral marketing definitively replaced the idea of public service and the quality of governance as the dominant force in political culture.

      The only trace of uncertainty left is the famous “margin of error” attributed to polls, usually estimated at around 3%. In contrast, the Pentagon’s margin of error is measured in multiple trillions of dollars.

      *[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 Weekly 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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      Amy Wax and the Breakdown of America’s Intellectual Culture

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      Since October 2017, we have featured The Daily Devil’s Dictionary that appeared five times a week. In 2022, it will appear on a weekly basis on Wednesdays. We will shortly be announcing a new collaborative feature that extends our approach to deconstructing the language of the media.

      Besides the Eiffel Tower and foie gras, France is known for having produced an intellectual class that, over the centuries, from Diderot’s Encylopédie to Derrida’s critical theory, has successfully exported its products to the rest of the world.

      France’s intellectual history demonstrates that alongside traditional social classes, a nation may cultivate something called the intellectual class, a loose network of people who collectively produce ideas about society that are no longer restricted to the traditional categories of philosophy, science and literature. Prominent intellectuals merge all three in their quest to interpret the complexity of the world and human history.

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      French intellectuals are perceived as floating freely in the media landscape. American intellectuals, in contrast, tend to be tethered to universities or think tanks. They publish and sometimes appear in the media, but with a serious disadvantage, having to compete in shaping public discourse with far more influential media personalities such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson or even Tucker Carlson.

      A stale historical cliché compares Europe with ancient Greece and the US with the Roman Empire. Rome and the US both produced a vibrant and distinct popular culture, with a taste for gaudy spectacle and superficial entertainment. But in Roman times, plebeian culture co-existed with a patrician culture cultivated by Rome’s ruling class. Modern democracy roundly rejects the very idea of a ruling class. Commercialism has turned out to be the great equalizer. Everyone in America is expected to share the same culture of movies, TV and popular music. The same applies to popular ideas, whether political, scientific or economic.

      Amy Wax is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is not shy about expressing her ideas, notably her updated version of class differences. She is convinced that what she calls “bourgeois culture” replaced Rome’s patrician culture in the US but is in danger of extinction. Wax believes everyone in the US, including recent immigrants, should share that culture. Anyone who resists should be excluded. She also thinks that race and ethnicity are reliable indicators of the capacity of immigrants to conform.

      As a young woman, Wax paced the halls and absorbed the wisdom spouted in lectures at Yale, Oxford, Harvard and Columbia University. Along the way, she amassed the kind of elite educational experience that identifies her as a distinguished exemplar of the modern intellectual class. With such impeccable credentials, it is fair to assume that she is not only well-informed but has learned the fine art of responsible thinking, a quality the media attributes to such luminaries.

      Embed from Getty Images

      So could it have come about that such a distinguished thinker and ranking member of the intellectual class should now be accused of sharing the kind of white supremacist attitude Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale) famously attributed to the “basket of deplorables”? The intellectual class in the US uniformly and loudly rejects all forms of racism. If Wax expresses ideas that echo racist theses, it would indicate that she is betraying her own intellectual class. Appropriately, her university acknowledged her betrayal when it condemned her “xenophobic and white supremacist” discourse.

      In a podcast in late December, Wax went beyond her previously expressed belief that the US would “be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” On that earlier occasion, she specifically targeted blacks, whom she categorizes as intellectually inferior. This time, she took aim at Asians, whose reputation for academic excellence and scientific achievement most people admire. She justified her attack in these terms: “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

      When the host of the podcast, Professor Glenn Loury, questioned her logic, she evoked “the danger of the dominance of an Asian elite in this country” who may “change the culture.” Wax’s fear of domination by a foreign race and her defense of white civilization could hardly convince Loury, who is black. Loury countered that the Asians Wax wants to exclude are “creating value” and “enlivening the society.”

      “How do we lose from that?” he asks. In response, Wax offered her own rhetorical question: “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?”

      This week’s Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Spirit of liberty:

      America’s supreme civic virtue that consists of pursuing self-interested goals and conducting aggressive assaults against whatever one finds annoying

      Contextual Note

      Wax offered her own definition of the spirit of liberty, which she identified as the virtue associated with “people who are mistrustful of centralized concentrations of authority who have a kind of ‘don’t tread on me’ attitude, who are focused … on our freedoms, on our liberties, on sort of small- scale personal responsibility who are non-conformist in good ways.”

      Apart from the fact that Wax is attributing a cultural attitude to “Asians” (more than half of humanity), her idea of liberty reflects feelings associated with aggressive, nationalistic historical memes (for example, “don’t tread on me”) rather than the kind of political concept we might expect from a serious intellectual. In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill defined it as the “protection against the tyranny of political rulers,” analyzing it in terms of the individual’s relationship with authority, not as a “spirit” or attitude. But Mill was English and, unlike Americans, the English are disinclined to celebrate attitude.

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      Wax, who is Jewish, paradoxically complained that Jews “have a lot to answer for … numerically through their predominance.” She derides their “susceptibility to the idealistic, pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas.” When Loury accuses her of appealing to a stereotype, she objects that there’s nothing wrong with stereotyping when it is used correctly.” Just as Wax approves of non-conformity “in good ways” she condones “correct” stereotyping. She believes herself to be the arbiter of what’s good and correct.

      Historical Note

      Wax shares with Fox News host Tucker Carlson a sense of legitimate domination of what she calls “the tradition of the legacy population,” identified as the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) majority. Wax aligns with cultural nationalists like Samuel Huntington, whose book “Who Are We: America’s Great Debate?” — following his famous “The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of the World Order” — preached for the reaffirmation of the political and moral values transmitted by the WASP founders of American culture 400 years ago.

      The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University sums up the components of the Puritans’ culture: “the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law.” The culture’s admirers routinely forget that their respect for law might mean disrespecting the law of the indigenous populations of the land they chose to occupy. Enforcing that respect sometimes translated as genocidal campaigns conducted in the name of that law. It also embraced slavery based on racial criteria.

      Wax’s up-to-date WASP culture, which she prefers to call “bourgeois culture,” no longer requires genocide or slavery to prevail. Her defense of a largely imaginary legacy culture has nevertheless led her to embrace a racist view of humanity. While decrying the multicultural “wokism” that she believes now dominates academic culture, she appears to believe 19th-century France rather than the Yankee Revolution sets the standard to live up to.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Wax is right to lament the very real breakdown in America’s intellectual culture. The trendy woke moralizing so prevalent in American academia deserves the criticism she levels at it. Both her attitude and that of woke scholars derive from the same puritanical tradition that insists on imposing its understanding of morality on everyone else.

      Wax’s choice of “bourgeois culture” as the desirable alternative to wokism seems curious. Bourgeois culture is identified with the mores of a dominating urban upper-middle class that emerged in 19th century France that projected the image of a vulgar version of the aristocracy. It produced a culture specific to France, very different from the democratic culture of the United States at the time.

      This highlights another difference. Whereas the French intellectual class, even when indulging in its traditional disputes, tends to agree on the meaning of the terms it fabricates, American intellectuals routinely bandy about terms they never seek to define or understand and use them to punish their enemies. That is what Wax has done with bourgeois culture and, in so doing, she has declared multiple races and ethnicities her enemies. 

      *[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 Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary. After four years of daily appearances, Fair Observer’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary moves to a weekly format.]

      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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      Can a Non-Lethal Eco-Terrorism Strategy Pay Off?

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      In 2025, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is hit by a killer heatwave. The astronomical temperatures resulting from solar radiation kill 20 million people.

      In the wake of this climate disaster, a new movement arises in India: an eco-terrorist network called the Children of Kali. The Hindu deity Kali, “She Who Is Death,” is the goddess of doomsday, and her “children” seek, through extremist measures, to avenge the deaths of their countrymen and to halt the march of climate change.  

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      Such is the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a climate fiction novel that plays out how humanity will handle the climate crisis over the next decades. The scenario is far from science fiction, however. With the right ingredients — environmental disaster, government inaction and public support, combined with non-lethal and well-publicized tactics — eco-terrorism could prove a fiery cocktail.

      Special Interest Extremism

      Both premises, the killer heatwave and the eco-terrorist network, are based in reality. Last year’s Intergovernmental Governmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted more intense heat waves of longer durations, occurring at a higher frequency globally. Within the next decades, mean temperatures could be at least 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, leading to intense heat waves and driving higher mortality and poverty rates.

      The second premise, the growth of eco-terrorism, sprung up in the late 1970s. At the turn of the century, the FBI identified the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) — radical environmentalists and animal rights activists, or what the bureau calls “special interest extremism” — as “the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.”

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      ELF attacks included arson, sabotage and vandalism; other environmental extremists have been linked to what is known as tree-spiking to prevent deforestation and the sabotage of whaling and sealing vessels. The era of nuclear expansion was accompanied by attacks on nuclear installations: Between 1966 and 1977, 10 terrorist attacks took place across Europe, while between 1969 and 1975, US nuclear facilities faced 14 actual and attempted bombings and 240 bomb threats.

      These acts of eco-sabotage certainly feel a far cry from today’s conception of terrorism as violence, often lethal, targeted at civilians. Yet it does qualify: In 2002, following 9/11, the FBI defined terrorism as “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of … committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population … in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

      Despair Rising

      It is difficult to be precise about the number of eco-terrorism incidents because so little research within the field of terrorism is conducted on this particular type. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index merely notes that it falls outside its main categorizations. However, it appears to be on the rise. Last year, The Hill reported that the FBI was investigating 41 incidences of eco-terrorism in Washington state alone, including the derailing of a train that resulted in 29,000 gallons of crude oil being spilled. In September 2021, 53 activists from Insulate Britain were arrested while attempting to block the London Orbital Motorway.

      As deadly natural shocks become increasingly common worldwide, the specter of future eco-terrorism looms much more prominently now than it did two decades ago. In the wake of the UN Conference of the Parties climate summit (COP26) that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, it is more evident than ever.

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      The conclusion of COP26 has widely been received as more of a whimper than a bang. A sense of disappointment, if not failure, greeted the final agreement despite what many have called historic achievements. Thousands of youth activists on the streets of Glasgow channeled the sense of fury felt by the leaders of countries most vulnerable to climate change. Such frustration may have its own consequences.

      According to a 2021 global survey on the impact of climate fears, despair is rising. The youth is scared and angered by governmental paralysis when it comes to the climate emergency. The division between the global south and the global north in the wake of COP26 is ever more acute, with rising resentment that the developed world is failing to fund the now urgently needed adaptation and mitigation measures. With escalating numbers of desperate people, extremist ideologies can find fertile ground.

      Sabotage, Ecotage

      As climate disasters worsen and public sentiments shift, radicalization may well follow. So, if eco-terrorism were to arise, what might it look like? A 2020 paper published in the Journal of Strategic Security explored exactly this thought experiment. Much like the now-inactive ELF, 21st century’s eco-terrorists would likely start with industrial sabotage, or “ecotage.” They might expand to fossil fuel plants, airports and container ships.

      Targeting humans, not infrastructure, as happens in Robinson’s novel, seems comparatively unlikely. In general, climate activism is associated with high regard for the sanctity of life. Even ELF guidelines emphasized the need to protect life during group actions, and that the goal of attacks on property is to cause targeted economic harm to industries that degrade the environment.

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      Lethal action would be left to fringe elements, which is a possibility we can’t rule out. But the saboteurs of Robinson’s fiction, who carry out targeted assassinations of major investors in fossil fuels and take down planes to reduce air travel, are likely to remain the bogeymen of ecological activism.

      How effective might such a non-lethal strategy of eco-terrorism be? A well-targeted campaign of attrition, wearing down governments and greenhouse gas-emitting corporations, would be costly and challenging to guard against. With maximum costs imposed on fossil fuel economies, they might simply choose to concede to the terrorists’ demands.

      Already technologies abound that are environmentally friendlier and less costly. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s 2021 report found that 62% of renewable energies are cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. With viable alternatives in reach, governments and private companies might concede to a policy change as the least costly strategy. Although governments might not admit to it, research has suggested that they often do yield to terrorist demands. Between 1980 and 2003, half of all suicide terrorism campaigns were closely followed by substantial concessions from the target government.

      Oxygen of Publicity

      Terrorism survives on “the oxygen of publicity,” to quote former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Research on eco-terrorist tactics has emphasized how well-designed and well-publicized acts of ecotage might galvanize public support if the public endorses the group’s goals and isn’t repulsed by its tactics.

      Public endorsement is certainly on the table. A majority of US voters now strongly believe in the need for climate action. An estimated 6 million people joined the climate protests around the world in September 2019, including peaceful occupations and roadblocks. According to a 2021 global survey on climate change conducted by the United Nations Development Program, one in three people said that climate change is an emergency and that the world should urgently do everything necessary in response.

      Every action necessary to respond to the climate crisis has instead included government crackdowns on non-violent ecological activism. Research from 2013 emphasized that there has been no documented evidence of harm to humans resulting from actions by radical environmentalists nor of violence being deployed to cause injuries or death. Yet in 2004, a senior FBI official described animal-rights extremism and eco-terrorism as “our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority.” As recently as 2020, the UK included organizations like Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion in its police counterterrorism guide alongside violent right-wing extremists.

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      These tactics are misguided. Although eco-terrorism does meet the definition of terrorist strategies, the consequences are, as yet, largely non-lethal and governments should respond appropriately. For one, it is more challenging to negotiate with, and concede to, terrorist organizations. Labeling climate-action groups as eco-terrorists runs the risk of undermining their stated objectives, stifling legitimate political dissent and preventing progress toward much-needed climate goals.

      Moreover, some groups have argued, the eco-terrorism designation has been used as an intentional tactic by corporations and governments to quash lawful campaigning. Research published by the Journal of Strategic Security suggests that this disproportionate response might fuel the radicalization of the groups and individuals most likely to turn to extremism.

      Siberia is burning, Shanxi is sinking, Alabama is rocked by tornadoes. Climate disasters will continue. Governments might stand by and watch or, worse, employ counterterrorism tactics against climate activists. In turn, the outraged might answer the call to arms.

      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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      Justice in the US Is an Art Form

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      On any given day, US media will offer an abundance of reports on the sometimes strange workings of its justice system. This first week of January has proved to be rich in examples, with the high-profile cases of Ghislaine Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes complemented by a host of stories about smaller cases over the antics of local judges or the ambiguity of legislation in particular states.

      The ultimate effect of these stories may appear to justify the remark made by Mr. Bumble, in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” who cited the proverbial phrase, “the law is an ass.” Dickens painted Bumble as an appalling hypocrite and the hapless husband of a tyrannical wife. When told that “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction,” Bumble correctly identifies the gap between the principles expressed in the law and reality. Reacting to the supposed “suppositions” of the law, Bumble wishes “that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”

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      In this comic passage, Dickens identified one of the central problems of any system of law, the friction created when suppositions concerning human behavior meet the facts of actual human experience. In most people’s minds, the notion of equality before the law requires that the letter of the law be applied uniformly to everyone, regardless of circumstance. But justice requires two things not contained in the law. Application of the law should take into account variable circumstances. But it should also mobilize the human ability to treat language — the wording of the law — as the not quite reliable artifact all language tends to be. The latter seems to represent a formidable challenge.

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      A New York Times article with the title, “Language Mistake in Georgia Death Penalty Law Creates a Daunting Hurdle” exposes how the careless wording of a Georgia law has inverted its intended logic. At one point it quotes a pearl of wisdom from 2013 uttered by future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “It is essential,” Kavanaugh opined, “that we follow both the words and the music of Supreme Court opinions.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Music:

      1. A sublime art form practiced in all human cultures that derives from the ability to modulate the pitch, rhythm and sympathetic resonance of sounds produced by both the human voice and the skillful manipulation of a wide variety of physical objects

      2. A useful metaphor that consists of using the art form’s absence of propositional content to make irresponsible assertions sound as if they reflect deep and serious reasoning

      Contextual Note

      Perhaps Kavanaugh imagines the US criminal justice system as something akin to the pre-Copernican universe in which the sun was believed to revolve around the Earth and where, at the summit of the heavens, one could hear the celestial music of the spheres. That is a far cry from the more accurate description of the law’s workings by Mr. Bumble, who wished the law might descend from its principled heights and open its eyes to deal with human experience.

      The verdict in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes confirmed the spectacular fall of a one-time darling of the techno-financial-political establishment and youthful billionaire. It also illustrates that while Kavanaugh’s imaginary legal music didn’t play much of a role in determining the verdict, a certain form of cultural mythology figured prominently.

      Under the headline, “EXCLUSIVE: Juror speaks out after convicting Elizabeth Holmes,” ABC News reports on how the jury’s deliberation reached a verdict that ended up blaming Holmes for bilking the millionaires and billionaires who invested in her company but found her innocent of conning a gullible public into purchasing a fraudulent product.

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      One of the jurors, Wayne Kaatz, described by ABC News as “a daytime Emmy-award-winning TV writer,” observed a phenomenon that any author of fiction and media professional would be expected to notice. “It’s tough,” Kaatz explained, “to convict somebody, especially somebody so likable, with such a positive dream.” He insisted that the jury “respected Elizabeth’s belief in her technology, in her dream.” He added that in their mind, Holmes “still believes in it, and we still believe she believes in it.” In US culture, believing in a “positive dream” is in itself an act of moral virtue. Believing in those whom you believe is nearly as good.

      Historical Note

      The idea of the American dream was first promoted by the businessman and historian James Truslow Adams. In his best-selling 1931 book “Epic of America,” he described it as the “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Later commentators, according to music historian Nicholas Tawa, “would claim that the American Dream was mostly the quest for financial betterment and the accumulation of bigger and better material goods.” Truslow launched the phrase describing his “positive dream” just about the time Edward Bernays, the godfather of public relations, was consolidating the ideology that would underpin the growth of the consumer society in subsequent decades.

      Martin Luther King cleverly exploited the idea of the American dream in his famous “I have a dream” speech. Instead of putting it in a consumerist framework, Reverend King framed the black American’s dream in terms of future justice. The justice-inspired dream has consistently challenged Truslow’s consumerist version aggressively promoted by Bernays and the powerful agencies of Madison Avenue.

      In other words, even within the US justice system, it isn’t King’s dream of justice but Truslow’s consumerist model that dominates, unconsciously orientating the average American’s perception of the world. The vaunted personal belief in one’s money-making dream (and scheme) typically contains some wildly positive outcome for the world.

      In the case of Elizabeth Holmes, what the jury called a “positive dream” was the promise of an instantaneous deciphering of every citizen’s state of health thanks to a drop of blood produced with a pinprick. For the incomparably successful Elon Musk, it’s the return of the planet to ecological health thanks to expensive electric cars. Or, alternatively, the colonization of Mars when the emerging truth about the failure of electric cars to save the Earth offers humanity no other choice than to escape to another planet.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These generously optimistic beliefs held by brave entrepreneurs (funded by equally brave billionaires) may be seen to justify lying and other forms of skulduggery. After all, if you have a great idea and don’t accept to play hardball by aggressively promoting the dream you are intent on turning into reality, you will fail and return to the dustheap from which you came: the cohort of anonymous losers. The jury admired Holmes for trying, even though the effort required some serious lying to a gullible public. 

      In contrast, the jury had no trouble finding Holmes guilty of the much more serious crime of pulling the wool over the eyes of America’s nobility, the wealthy elite who agreed to back her dream with their cash. In a guest article for The New York Times, Vanity Fair’s Bethany McLean admits to hoping that justice would be served with the opposite verdict. She wanted Holmes “convicted on the charges of lying to patients but found not guilty of the charges that she defrauded investors.” McLean believes that they “should have done the homework that others who refused to give Theranos money did.”

      The A-list investors and political celebrities who backed Holmes’ dream had the means to do due diligence but, charmed by the music of the dream, didn’t bother. Worse, the confidence projected by such prestigious investors — including former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Henry Kissinger, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, James Mattis (Donald Trump’s future defense secretary), Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family — gave added credibility to the lies Theranos’ patients were subjected to.

      Holmes is now awaiting sentencing. She will probably serve significant time in prison, though that may be attenuated and her time in prison reduced thanks to the kind of prevailing sympathy that exists for those who believe in their dream (especially young white females). That sympathy may have been a factor in the lenient sentence given to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2008, though no jury was involved. Perhaps that’s just one feature of the music of the law that Justice Kavanaugh believes to be real, always ready to produce its seductive strains, at least in those moments when it isn’t braying like an ass.

      *[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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      Judicial Creativity Makes the News

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      The criminal justice system in the United States may not be the best imaginable model for producing effective crime control. Given the numbers of people incarcerated, neither does it appear to be an effective tool of dissuasion. Its rate of 629 people incarcerated per 100,000 is five times as high as France (119) and seven times higher than Italy (89), the home of Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra. Only El Salvador begins to approach the US figure (572), an ungovernable, poverty-stricken nation in which criminality has become a way of life for its youth, largely deprived of any other perspectives.

      On the other hand, it has consistently demonstrated its creativity. American legislators at both the state and federal level have always found imaginative ways of improving the performance of a legal system designed to protect and sometimes even reward anyone who can afford an expensive lawyer (or team of lawyers) and crush anyone who cannot, especially if their ethnicity places them in a group reputed to be inclined to criminal activity.

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      California’s creative legislators were the first to initiate the brilliant idea, subsequently followed by more than 20 other states, of “three strikes and you’re out.” The national sport, baseball, provided them with the perfect model for setting the rules of civil behavior. The law was apparently “crafted to be largely symbolic.” It quickly achieved its purpose of consolidating in the public’s mind the idea of an identifiable, always-to-be-feared criminal class.

      Legislators and jurists invested much of their creative energy in finding acceptable ways to avoid sending people with lavish lifestyles to jail for a broad class of antisocial behavior, corporate crime, despite the fact that it frequently provokes major societal disasters. Senator Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court insisted that we think of corporations as people. But when they commit crimes, even with catastrophic consequences for millions of people’s lives, the courts not only cannot send a corporation to prison, they refrain from being too hard on the people at the top of those corporations who implemented the crimes since, after all, they were just doing their (well-paid) job and serving the economy. The same logic applies to members of the political establishment whose job responsibilities occasionally include committing war crimes across broad swaths of the world in the name of America’s sacrosanct “national security.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Jeffrey Epstein clearly belonged to that same elite. Given the sums of money he controlled, he achieved something akin to a corporate identity. In 2008, he was convicted in a Florida court on an absurdly mild charge that had little to do with the crimes he was known to have committed. Thanks to arrangements that were made with federal prosecutors, he served a simulacrum of incarceration in which for 13 months he was free during the day but condemned to spend his nights in a public jail.

      In 2019, the mounting evidence of his criminality made the decision to arrest him unavoidable. Possibly in consideration of his powerful friends and associates, Epstein had the good sense to commit suicide in his jail cell when nobody was looking. Could there have been some complicity in his noble self-sacrifice? As Bill Gates famously said, “he’s dead, so in general you always have to be careful,” meaning that once he could no longer talk, Epstein’s friends conveniently no longer needed to be so careful.

      Epstein’s demise in jail — whether assisted or self-inflicted — was a new crime scene. The criminals, in this case, were identified as the two black prison guards who were charged with monitoring his cell. Instead, they slept or surfed the web on that fatal night. They falsified their report and, like everyone else in the institution, were totally unconcerned by the fact that the video surveillance system was not working. Being the kind of people they were (black working class), they were duly called to account for their crime.

      Last week, the BBC reports, “US prosecutors have dismissed charges against two prison guards who falsified records the night Jeffrey Epstein killed himself on their watch.” The prosecutors “asked a judge to dismiss their case, saying the pair have complied with a plea deal.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Plea deal:

      A procedure that allows judicial authorities to avoid the literal application of the law and to arrange things in whatever they deem the public interest to be, either in the interest of identifying the true, powerful, higher-level culprits hiding in the wings or in the interest of protecting them.

      Contextual Note

      The case of these two prison guards undoubtedly deserves a bit more reflection than US media seem willing to offer. The briefest attempt at reflection might include the consideration that subjecting the guards to the full force of the law in a trial involve the risk that they might implicate other people, including their own superiors, to prove their innocence.

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      In the imagined case that the two guards were not just neglectful but had received specific instructions not to carry out their normal duties that night, faced with the prospect of prosecution, they would undoubtedly be inclined to reveal in a public courtroom that they were simply following orders. In the equally imagined case that they were offered a chance to live their lives in peace after some sort of agreed settlement, part of the settlement would obviously include the dismissal of any charges against them.

      Instead of entertaining and investigating such hypotheses, the prosecutors issued this statement: “After a thorough investigation and based on the facts of this case and the personal circumstances of the defendants, the Government has determined that the interests of justice will best be served by deferring prosecution.” How, we might ask them, do they define “the interests of justice,” and justice for whom?

      Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, found the procedure suspicious. He called the plea deal “unacceptable” and demanded “a report detailing the prison agency’s failures.” The BBC article subtly expresses its own doubts in the following remark: “It is unclear why the document was not filed until 30 December.” Let the reader wonder about that.

      “As part of a plea deal,” the BBC reports, “the pair agreed to complete 100 hours of community service and co-operate with an investigation by the justice department’s inspector general.” What about the other parts of the deal? And what does cooperating entail? Could it involve agreeing to a law of silence? The reader is still wondering.

      A classic plea deal seeks to implicate people higher up on the criminal ladder. But nothing prevents it from doing just the opposite.

      Historical Note

      Ironically, just this week, Glenn Greenwald exposed a different, equally suspect story of a possible plea deal, this one concerning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Denouncing the control intelligence agencies have achieved over corporate news media, exemplified by the permanent presence of former high-level officials of the CIA and FBI as salaried staff of the networks, Greenwald cites former FBI Assistant Director and MSNBC employee Frank Figliuzzi. He argues that if extradited from the UK, “Assange may be able to help the U.S. government in exchange for more lenient charges or a plea deal. Prosecutions can make for strange bedfellows. A trade that offers a deal to a thief who steals data, in return for him flipping on someone who tried to steal democracy sounds like a deal worth doing.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      This would be a plea deal with purely political ends and no relation to any form or idea of justice. Instead, it relies on the radical injustice of obsessively prosecuting whistleblowers. The enmity between the intelligence agencies and Donald Trump is such that any prospect of legally embarrassing the former president appears worthwhile in the eyes of many people at MSNBC and in the establishment of the Democratic Party.

      Then there’s the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted last week of sex trafficking as Jeffrey Epstein’s partner and accomplice. Many in the media are speculating about the possibility of a reduced sentence if she is willing to name names. The prosecution ” confirmed no plea bargain offers were made or received,” according to Ghislaine’s brother, Ian Maxwell, who expects “that position to be maintained.

      Plea deals clearly offer scope for impressive feats of creativity by those in the judicial system who know how to use them.

      *[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