Kierkegaard on regret

How have I NOT posted this delightfully melancholy quotation before now? It comes from Søren Kierkegaard, and you can find it all over the Internet. I'm sure you've seen it before.

The thing is, I remember figuring this out on my own many years ago ... possibly even before I'd heard of Kierkegaard, and certainly before I ever encountered the quote. I knew people who regretted major decisions in their lives, turning points where they were sure (in retrospect) that they had taken the wrong path. And I remember thinking, after I'd known them for a while, ...

All this regret is silly. In the first place, if you could go back in time to The Day you made that Big Decision, you would once again be the person you were back then. You'd think the way you thought back then. You'd have the same priorities you had back then. And so you'd end up deciding the same way all over again.

What's more, even if you did happen to pick the other choice, you'd always second-guess yourself just like you do today. No choice is ever perfectly blissful. No road is ever perfectly smooth. So you'd run into problems and difficulties (just like you do today), and I guarantee you'd start telling yourself, "If only I had made The Other Choice back on That Day (meaning the one you really did make in reality), then everything would be fine now!" 😀 In the long run you'd just be trading one batch of troubles for another, and it wouldn't be any better.

Then one day I read the quote by Kierkegaard, who said the whole thing so much more elgantly.

 

    

Blame the victim!

Quick! What do all these cases have in common? Anything? Also, who's at fault in each one?

A young woman (aged somewhere between sixteen and nineteen—in your answer, let me know if her age makes a difference to you) is invited to a party. She dresses up in her sexiest outfit, drinks a lot of alcohol at the party, and behaves very flirtatiously to everyone she meets, men and women alike. By the end of the evening, she has sex that she does not remember consenting to. The boy that she accuses of raping her says he doesn't know her and he's never seen her before in his life; but he has no alibi, and his friends place him at the same party sometime that night. No witnesses will admit to seeing what happened between them.

A rich man goes out to a show in the downtown of a Big City. He has to park several blocks away. After the show, he takes a shortcut to get back to his car, which requires him to walk through a dark alley late at night. It's an unsavory part of town. The man is expensively dressed, and wears an expensive watch that he keeps checking compulsively. Also his thick wallet is visible bulging out of his back pocket. He is mugged, and stripped of everything valuable: watch, wallet, everything. It was dark, so he cannot identify his assailants.

You are a lounge singer and dancer named Michelle Triola, who has also had a couple of minor acting jobs over the years. For six years you live with a much more successful actor named Lee Marvin, but you never marry him. When you finally move out, you sue him for 50% of the $3.6 million which he earned during the time you were sleeping at his place. Your lawyer argues that even though the two of you never married, nonetheless you put your career on hold to support this man and so you deserve compensation for a kind of "marriage with no rings attached."

You are a citizen of El Salvador, who enters the United States illegally in 2011 at the age of 16. You never arrange to re-enter the country legally, and you never acquire U.S. citizenship; but eight years later (in 2019) a judge grants you "withholding of removal" status, which is a little bit like asylum but with some technical differences. (See the linked Wikipedia article for details.) You settle in Maryland, marry a wife, and have children. Then on March 15, 2025, the American immigration authorities pick you up and send you back to El Salvador, where you are still a citizen. The authorities in El Salvador put you in prison.

OK, time's up! What do all these cases have in common?

That's simple. In all four cases, the protagonist engaged in risky behavior—knowing there was a risk!—and then got caught by the risk. In principle it is no different from swimming in a tidepool posted with a sign that says "WARNING: ALLIGATORS!" and then running into an alligator.

Oh, but who was at fault? Didn't each protagonist have a right to act as he (or she) chose? Doesn't that mean that the malefactor is the Other Person, the one who caused trouble for the protagonist?

Well, yes and no. In the first three stories, yes, the young woman and the rich man and the lounge singer all had a right to act as they did. But so what? They ran into bad consequences anyway, so their right to do as they did wasn't a lot of help.

In the last story, the case is a little different. Nobody has a "right" to enter a foreign country illegally. So Kilmar Abrego Garcia was at risk from the very beginning, and must have known as much.

The first two stories are purely fictitious, though I have no doubt that stories just like them take place every year. Because they are fictitious, it is impossible to tell how partisans of the protagonists might reply. But the second pair of cases really happened, so we know exactly what was said. In both cases, partisans of the protagonists talked about the day-to-day lives of the people at the center of controversy. 

Michelle Triola spent years cooking meals for Lee Marvin, and cleaning his house, and washing his socks. Years! It's true they never married, but doesn't she deserve some recompense for all that work she put in on his behalf?

Kilmar Abrego Garcia settled in Maryland, married and raised a family. He spent years at a job. Years! His son "has autism, a hearing defect, and is 'unable to communicate verbally.'" Autism! The other children that he and his wife are raising have special needs as well. It's true that he never acquired American citizenship, but doesn't he deserve consideration and gentle treatment for all the work he has put in, and in recognition of all the trouble his children face?

In other words: It's true that neither one ever acquired the status that would put them beyond risk, but doesn't their hard work count as enough to give them the virtual status anyway?

Unfortunately, the way formal status works in the real world, the answer is: No! Formal, legal status is a real thing, and it has real consequences. If you never bother to secure that status, then you are always at risk. And if you swim often enough in a tidepool with alligators, sooner or later you're going to meet up with an alligator.

Life sucks, but them's the breaks.

It's time to go back to blaming the victim. Not for doing active harm—that's still the malefactor, if you can catch him—but for being a Damned Fool. And in the case of someone like Abrego Garcia, where the so-called "malefactor" is actually the country's law enforcement, there's nobody else to blame. 

Enter the country illegally, and you are at risk for deportation even if you are a saint while you are here.* Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

__________

* This is why I do not discuss the allegations that Abrego Garcia might have committed domestic violence, or that he might have been a gang member. None of it matters to the basic argument. Entering the country illegally and never securing legal status is enough to put him at risk. The rest is just gravy; and if those other allegations turn out to be false on deeper examination, it won't affect the basic facts that everyone already acknowledges.

    

Campaign promises

In just over a month, Donald Trump will move back into the White House as the 47th President, the only one besides Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutive terms. Among his supporters, anticipation is high for all the marvels he will achieve as soon as he is sworn in. Among his opponents, there is a level of gloom and dread over exactly the same topic.

But what is he really going to do? The only sure answer is, No one knows. 

The correlation between What candidates promise and What Presidents perform is not high. 

• Partly this is because Presidents have no control over external events, and those events can override all their plans. George W. Bush campaigned on a plan to be "the education President" and to focus on domestic policy; when Al-Qaeda struck the United States on September 11, 2001, his administration shifted to a wartime footing from which it never recovered. 
• Partly, some candidates for the Presidency—especially those who come from outside the Washington Beltway—seem to overestimate the office's power; then they find out after inauguration that they can't really do things the way they had planned. For example (at least, this is the most charitable explanation) Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Obama served two full terms as President; but even today—sixteen years after his election—that camp is still open and functioning. A similar explanation might serve for the collapse of Bill Clinton's "gays in the military" initiative early in his first term. 
• And of course sometimes candidates make promises with no intention of honoring them. There's a story about Earl Long, the Governor of Louisiana, who reneged on a promise to a group of constituents. When they came to the Governor's office to ask about it, Long instructed an aide, "Just tell them I lied."

Back in 1964, most of my parents' friends were liberal Democrats supporting Lyndon Johnson. But they had one good friend who strongly supported Barry Goldwater. This unusual affiliation caused a good bit of discussion among my parents' friends, and years later I remember the man himself telling the story this way.

"All throughout the campaign, my liberal friends kept telling me, 'Goldwater is such a horrible man! If you vote for Goldwater, six months later we'll be stuck in a war in Southeast Asia!' And you know what? It turns out they were right. I did vote for Goldwater, and six months later we were indeed stuck in a war in Southeast Asia."

In case any of my readers are not American, or don't remember the 1960's, perhaps I should explain the deliberate irony in his remark. Yes, this fellow did vote for Goldwater—but notwithstanding that, Goldwater lost the election overwhelmingly, in one of the great landslides of the Twentieth Century. It was Lyndon Johnson, "the peace candidate," who finally committed American troops to the Vietnam War. 

What candidates say has very little to do with how they govern. With Trump, at least we already have four years of experience from which to guess how he'll perform. But then, Trump has said that he wasn't prepared in his last administration and this one will be different. So who knows?

 

Did Joe Biden just concede the election?

Did Joe Biden just concede the Presidential election of 2024?

No, of course not. At least, not in so many words. But … Those with ears to hear, let them hear!

Earlier today, news came out that Biden supports major reforms to the Supreme Court, including term limits, an enforceable ethics code, and a Constitutional amendment to undo the Court's ruling earlier this month in Trump vs. United States (2024). You can read the Associated Press reporting here.

Doubtless there is much that could be said about the wisdom (or otherwise) of each of these proposals, but we all know that President Biden has been struggling with the Court for some time. And heaven knows that other people have made these proposals before now, in the form of opinion articles or editorials. So I want to ask a different question: WHY NOW?

Before answering, stop and reflect how very difficult each of these proposals will be. 

• The third one explicitly requires a Constitutional amendment. 
• But term limits will require amending the Constitution as well, because Article III Section I—after establishing the Supreme Court and "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish"—explicitly states: "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, …." (In other words, for life.)
• The ethics code is the easiest of the three, but it will still require a majority vote in both houses of Congress. And we should expect a lot of partisan pushback.

In other words, any single one of these proposals—to say nothing of all three together—stands only the slimmest chance of passing, and would require burning an enormous supply of political capital to make any headway.

Traditionally, Joe Biden has been very cautious about burning that kind of capital. If he had any plans to govern for another four years, he would want to keep his powder dry.

So the most logical answer to the question WHY NOW? is that Biden realizes there is no possible way he can win in November. He badly botched the debate with Donald Trump; he has botched interviews and public appearances since then; and most recently, an assassination attempt against Trump has made the latter look like a hero. There is no way Biden can compete with that.

So I think he has decided, To hell with it. You only live once. Time for the Hail-Mary play. Time to swing for the fences.

Of course these proposals will probably fail. Remember what I said about how very, very difficult they all are. But Joe Biden has only six more months on the national stage—at a maximum, provided his health holds out, God willing. Failure doesn't matter any more. Time to go down in a blaze of glory.

               

On the edge

Two weeks ago, or almost, I posted that "The American Empire ended this week." 

I just saw the next step spelled out, in another blog today.

This was a comment to the June 2024 Open Post on John Michael Greer's Ecosophia blog. In case the picture doesn't show up legibly for you, the text runs like this:

Yesterday the US ambassador to Russia was called into the Foreign Office because of the latest attack on Crimea using US supplied and aimed ATACMs that killed several civilians and injured ~150 including babies and small children.

Our Ambassador was told that a state of Peace no longer exists between the US and Russia. This is not a casual description of current events but a formal legal diplomatic message that we are on the precipice of War with the one country in the world that can kill every American. There are rumors that the Russians have already shot down a US global hawk drone over the Black Sea, and a promise that Russia will be suppling weapons and maybe training and funding for anyone who wants to kill American soldiers. Give the 800 bases the US has all over the world the Russians have plenty of targets.

And of course, none of this is being reported in the West.

The Doomsday Clock should be reset to 15 second to midnight.

Didn't I say—just a fortnight ago—that we should expect exactly this?

I would really have preferred to be proven wrong!

__________

P.S.: If you want a report from a reputable news source—and not just somebody's comment on a blog—see, for example this report from Al Jazeera.

               

The American Empire ended this week

When historians in the future look back to try to find the date that the American Empire was definitively finished, odds are good that they will choose this week. In the space of five days, the actions have been taken that will make our ruin inevitable. Of course, nothing has come crashing down yet. It will still take time before the effects manifest. But from this point on, time is all it will take. As of now, the results are certain.

America's dominant position in the world has two aspects: economic dominance, and military dominance. Both are now finished.

End of the petrodollar

On Sunday, June 9, Saudi Arabia allowed the 50-year-old "petrodollar" agreement with the United States to expire, with no new agreement in place. This agreement, dating from the Nixon Administration, guaranteed that America would protect Saudi Arabia militarily; in return, the Saudi government committed to accept only U.S. dollars in payment for oil, and to invest their excess U.S. dollars in American Treasury certificates. (For references, see here, here, or here.) This agreement meant that countries who wanted to buy Saudi oil (i.e., most of them) had to use U.S. dollars to do it; therefore, it created a significant international demand for U.S. dollars. At the same time, it created an international demand for U.S. Treasury bills, because the Saudi government had to have some place to park all their earnings. The result is that the U.S. government could engage in 50 years of deficit spending without ruining the economy.

Give me a minute to explain this. Normally if a country spends far more money than it takes in, the result is runaway inflation. But the reason for the runaway inflation is that there is too much currency in the market (for example, too many dollars) chasing the same quantity of goods. So if there are (let's say) $10 billion in circulation, and suddenly the government prints another $10 billion without increasing the available quantity of goods and services, those goods and services are now worth $20 billion (the total amount of available money). What that means is that the value of each dollar has been cut in half, because it takes $20 (for example) to buy what would have cost only $10 last week.

But notice that this effect only works if all those extra dollars are circulating in the marketplace competing for the same goods and services. If someone comes in with a vacuum cleaner and sucks up all the extra dollars, so that they are no longer competing for the same goods and services, then there's no pressure on prices to go up. There's no pressure towards inflation. At that point the government has generated money out of thin air and gotten away with it.

And that's exactly what the petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia did for us. Since nations all over the world needed dollars in order to buy oil, they regularly bought up all the extra dollars that our government was printing. Since countries like Saudi Arabia needed places to park their new wealth, they (and others like them) bought U.S. treasury securities, thus lending the American government money that it didn't otherwise have. Both steps allowed the American government to spend like a drunken sailor for 50 years and get off scot-free.

No more. 

With the end of the petrodollar, we should expect to see the natural results of our profligate overspending finally catch up with us. What this means is that, as other countries decide they no longer need to hold onto dollars, the value of the dollar will start to drop. How far will it drop? I don't know, but the U.S. national debt is now $34.7 trillion. The U.S. Gross Domestic Product is only $25.4 trillion. So even if every penny generated in the country in an entire year were confiscated and used to pay the debt, there would still be trillions left to pay. I assume the dollar will fall far enough that owing a trillion of them isn't so much of a burden as it used to be. But that is likely to be ruinous for personal savings.

This won't all happen at once. It will take time for the international markets to react. Also, America's internal market and internal economy are huge. Even if the dollar drops compared to other currencies, it should still hold up for a while for buying domestic goods. I don't know what form the future will take.

All I know is that American economic domination of the world will be a thing of the past.

Supporting Ukraine against Russia

Maybe there were things we could have done to stave off the fall of the petrodollar, but to some extent the final decision was out of our hands. The end of American military dominance, by contrast, will be the result of a massive unforced error. We did this one to ourselves.

Today, Thursday, June 13—just four days after the end of the petrodollar—"President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy … signed a 10-year bilateral security pact aimed at strengthening Ukraine's ability to defend itself in the present while also deterring aggression in the future." (Reference.) The Fact Sheet that the White House issued for this agreement lists a number of specific provisions, and then summarizes as follows:

This agreement, together with the mutually reinforcing security agreements and arrangements Ukraine has signed with a broad network of partners under the G7 Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine, is a key part of Ukraine’s bridge to NATO membership. As President Biden said in Vilnius last year and as NATO allies have agreed, Ukraine’s future is in NATO. We are not waiting for the NATO process to be completed to make long-term commitments to Ukraine’s security to address the immediate threats they face and deter any aggression that may occur. (Reference.) [Emphasis mine.]

Do I have to spell out what a bad idea this is? I've talked about it before in other places. 

• If Ukraine joins NATO, then Russia will declare war on NATO. (I discuss that point in this post from two years ago.) 
• Russia still has nuclear weapons. (Everyone remembers this, right?)
• Nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia means the loss of a lot of lives all around the world. What's more, if there are any winners, it won't be us.

I've argued some of this in other places. I don't know if I have the heart to dig up all the links and reproduce them here. Suffice it to say that I remember the peace movement from the 1970's. Back then people on the Left did the calculations and came up with horrific numbers of deaths, in case of a nuclear war with what was still (at that time) called the Soviet Union. The argument throughout all of polite society was that we had to do whatever it took to avoid such a war, because the consequences would be catastrophic for everyone involved.

Am I the only one in this country whose memory reaches that far back?

Sometimes it feels like I am.

Anyway, there are one of two possible outcomes for this pact with Ukraine.

The less-likely option is that the Senate will reject it, or that Joe Biden will lose the election and his successor (whoever that might be) will tear it up. I don't expect that, I don't really believe it will happen, but logically it is possible and so I have to leave it on the table. But of course if that happens, American credibility around the world will be shot to hell. And since the looming economic crisis (see above) will make it ever harder for us to pay for troops around the world, we will retreat from our hegemonic position with our tail between our legs.

The more-likely option is that we will be stuck with this treaty. Then we will have war with Russia. Then we will lose. Again, it will mean the end of American hegemony, but in a much more sudden and painful way.

I wish I could see another option. If you see one, please comment to let me know.

                

Puritanism

We all know what the word "Puritan" means, right? 

I don't mean the historical group of dissenting Protestants who fought in the English Civil War and settled in New England. I'm thinking more of the way the word is popularly used. H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy." And in casual conversation, Puritans are taken to be people who disapprove of booze and sex. They are also routinely assumed to be wrong. Even people who advocate caution in the use of alcohol (because of risks like addiction and early death)—or who advocate selectiveness and discretion in choosing sexual partners (because of risks like abuse or disease, among many others)—hate to be called "Puritans." Even as they argue in favor of temperance and a restraint on indulgence, their message is always a little apologetic: "I'm not a Puritan, but …."

Of course, even in this casual sense, Puritans have something to say in their own defense. It is a simple fact that alcohol abuse can have devastating effects. Drink too much, and your judgement is shot to hell; drink too much, and your nervous system is never quite right again; drink too much, and your liver starts to shut down. These are all terrifying consequences. In the same way, unchecked sexual libertinism can result in recklessly unplanned pregnancies, not to mention the spread of nasty diseases. It can also mess with your emotions, leading people into abusive and exploitative situations that they find themselves powerless to leave. Again, when you go to the extremes the risks can be terrifying.

Why then are Puritans mocked so badly, when they are warning against real dangers? Simply because the vast majority of people who drink alcohol or engage in non-marital sex never get near the extremes. Plenty of people drink beer or wine with dinner, and maybe even something stronger while watching TV, but never let it ruin their lives. They don't get fired from their jobs, and they never experience delirium tremens. In the same way many couples live together without benefit of clergy, but their lives are in other respects boring, respectable, and normal. And when Puritans warn that these people are playing with fire, that they are just one bad day away from catastrophe, … the people laugh at them. And rightly so.

This is why so many people make fun of what used to be called "political correctness" and is now called "woke-ism." The speakers of the Left—preachers, activists, harridans, or what have you—condemn racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and other similar scourges. And the folks who hear them, mostly laugh at them. This persuades the activists on the Left that those other people actively support racism. It's why the Left genuinely believes that every recent Presidential election has been a contest over racism, and that every registered Republican is a racist at heart. The accusation is absurd (and often means that people laugh at them a second time for believing it). But for the Left it is logical: Why would they laugh at us, unless they supported all those things we oppose?    

Before I answer that question, let me pause for a minute to explain that the Left has sober reasons for opposing all these things. The way they see it, racism is the root cause behind lynching; if you allow racism to flourish unchecked, lynching is the inevitable consequence. In short, racism means murder. In the same way, homophobia, transphobia, and all the other phobias also mean murder, because those things have led to murder in the past. Sexism might not mean murder (although remember Bluebeard!) but it certainly means exploitation and servitude, just because we all know that in extreme cases women have been reduced to terrible conditions in the past.

In short, the Left are Puritans. They see that racism, sexism, and the rest can have terrible consequences in the extremes, and so they insist that all these tendencies be eliminated root and branch. But of course, just as with alcohol or non-marital sex, the vast majority of people never come anywhere near the extremes. Let's say we're all together at Thanksgiving Dinner. When Uncle Ernie gets a bit drunk and makes a jovial remark about the cute little "pickaninnies" down the street, he's not about to murder them. When Aunt Esther shakes her head primly while talking about the "confirmed bachelors" in her apartment building, she's not contemplating foul play. And when Dad slaps Mom on the ass at the end of the feast and announces loudly to everyone in the room how lucky he is to have married such a good cook, he's trying to convey affection and devotion, not ownership.

Normal people know this. 

Normal people know that the extremes are a distant memory, and almost never a risk in real life. 

Normal people know that the United States has already made huge progress along all of these fronts in the last sixty years, and has come as close as any society in history to embodying the ideal where racism, sexism, and the rest have disappeared as meaningful threats. Any vestigial remnants are harmless.

Normal people know all this. But Puritans can never let it go.