Politics – Page 8 – Pat the Expat

Messy Elections

A group called the Transition Integrity Project just held a series of “serious games” simulating a variety of catastrophic outcomes for the impending US presidential election. You might have seen the headlines “What if Trump refuses to leave the White House?” or “The Dangers of the Red Mirage.” They also considered the delays inherent in large mail-in voting or what-if Joe Biden were to pass way shortly before or after the election. If you don’t have enough keeping you awake at night, I highly recommend you read the link!

Seriously, there are several factors combining a la “The Perfect Storm” to make this a particularly contentious election in terms of public confidence. But how unusual is that? Consider the history:

The standing record-holder for most contentious election is the 1824 John Quincy Adams’ victory. How bad was it? Well, for starters, there was only one political party at the time (The Democratic-Republicans), so the nominee was guaranteed the Presidency. Several states didn’t hold votes; they so distrusted democracy that the state government simply named electors (which was and still is constitutional!). However, the party leadership was fragmented, and ended up with four different nominees splitting the electoral college so that no one got a majority. This threw the Presidential election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts a single vote. Adams, who had come in second in the electoral college, cut a deal with Henry Clay, who had come in fourth, to secure the state delegation votes of Ohio and Kentucky, thus defeating Andrew Jackson (who had the most electoral votes) thirteen states to seven. The deal became known as “the corrupt bargain” (Clay was named Adams’ Secretary of State) and set the stage for Jackson establishing the new Democratic Party and whipping Adams in 1828.

A pro-Jackson political cartoon from the 1824 election that attacks Republicans, the press, blacks, Indians, the US Treasury, you name it.

The runner-up for messiest election has to be 1876. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat from New York, easily beat the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes from Ohio, winning an actual majority (not just plurality) of the popular vote. Tilden also held an electoral college victory of 184-165, but twenty uncounted electors from four states were in dispute. Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the controversial twenty votes. This body developed a compromise whereby all twenty votes and the Presidency went to Hayes (!) in exchange for (1) his commitment to serve only one term, (2) the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, and (3) the end of Reconstruction. This might be the most consequential messy-election, but for:

Third place, one with which you might be more familiar: 1860. Jackson’s dominant Democratic Party broke in half over the issue of slavery, and the new Republican Party ran a little known Illinois legislator: Abraham Lincoln. Southern states left Lincoln off the ballot, but he still got an electoral college majority. The possibility of a President who would prohibit the extension of slavery (the Republicans were not then against the continuation of slavery in the South) was enough for seven states to secede before Lincoln took office: the ultimate denial of legitimacy is open warfare.

Fourth place in my rankings goes to the little known vote tabulations after the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Everyone knows who won, and that Kennedy did so with a sizeable electoral college advantage: 303 to 219. You may have heard Kennedy’s electoral advantage belied the popular vote, which historians originally thought Kennedy won by just .17%! But subsequent review of contested Alabama votes shows that Nixon probably won the popular vote by 50,000 even though he still lost the election. Nixon’s resentment at pro-Kennedy political shenanigans and favorable press treatment led to his early retirement from politics (He famously said, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!”). This was of course short-lived, but the lessons he learned in 1960 (i.e., do whatever it takes to win, and take nothing for granted) would tarnish his later landslide victories.

Finally there is the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote 48% to 47% for Bush, but Bush won the electoral college 271-266. Most everyone here remembers the drama of the “hanging chads” and lawsuits contesting the results of one key state: Florida. Bush originally won Florida by only 537 votes out of six million cast. The popular story is the Democrats pushed for a Florida recount, which would have given Gore the state’s electoral votes and the Presidency. This effort was halted by the US Supreme Court, in effect giving the victory to Bush. There is one small problem with this story. Long after the election, the Florida Ballots Project, a consortium of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago did a deep dive into Florida’s ballots. Over ten months, they had 153 specialists examine 175,000 disputed ballots at a cost of one million dollars. All the results, with one exception, show Bush won Florida. The exception? If one counts the overvotes (ballots where more than one candidate is indicated) and assumes all were actually Gore votes, then Gore wins. Of course, candidate Gore never requested a recount of overvotes–nor does anyone–as assuming which of two (or more!) candidates marked was the final choice is impossible. Most people only know the popular story, since the results of the Florida Ballots Project weren’t released until two months after the 9/11 attacks, and were thus immediately forgotten.

Hope you enjoyed (?) this rundown. Here’s hoping this year’s outcome doesn’t merit inclusion in this list! It is (a little) reassuring to see what the country has been through before. I would note that in most cases short of violence, the biggest effect of a messy election has been to cause change in the parties or processes of the election, showing a system capable of changing to correct past errors.

“Watch your mouth, . . . “

I’ll wash it out with soap!”

I don’t recall ever hearing this threat from my parents (correct me if I’m wrong, Dad). But it was commonplace back when, what you’d call a meme today. And I think it’s a good self-admonition, due to the growth and increasing acceptance of polemic language. Polemic language degrades communication, demeans both the speaker and recipient, and generally poisons the atmosphere. You may infer that I don’t like it.

What, you say, is polemic language? Let’s consider a hypothetical example rather than a cold definition. Imagine you’re sitting in a bar and strike up a conversation with the person on the next stool. After a few (too many) drinks, you’re debating religion, and your drinking buddy says “God? Oh, I don’t believe in God.”

As a Christian, this is an opportunity to spread the Good News; there are so many ways the conversation could go! You might ask whether your friend EVER believed, or what do they believe now, or even were they familiar with the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche (an atheist who hasn’t read Nietzsche is like a Christian who hasn’t read the Bible). But imagine the same situation, only this time your drinking buddy says “religion is just the opiate of the masses.” This phrase, which doubtless rings some bells, is a bit of Marxist drivel, and is polemic language. It marks the speaker as someone not interested in discourse, only domination. You can argue religion with an atheist influenced by Nietzsche, but not a Marxist.

What does polemic language do? It replaces thought with slogans, and not only slogans, but slogans designed to enforce an orthodoxy of belief. George Orwell’s 1984 captured the nature of polemic language in slogans like “War is Peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”

In today’s America, polemic language exists all along the political spectrum. On the right it is superficial and less well-developed, mostly revolving around invoking the terms “deep-state” and “swamp.” Even the latter term is borrowed, as it long predates the Trump administration, and was earlier invoked by Ronald Reagan to identify the cozy relationship between publicly antagonistic Washington politicians, who (along with their families and friends) seemed to thrive despite animosity or even the economic conditions of the country writ large. Progressives originated the term decades earlier as “drain the swamp of capitalism.” Since I previously remonstrated on the deep-state, let’s look at the other side.

Polemic language on the left is far more well-developed, primarily due to decades of work in academia. Theories of race, power, and sex developed into academic studies which generated an alternate language. And as any linguist will tell you, language in turn constrains thought. All this goes back to post-World War II academic debates over post-modernism: the notion that there are no moral certainties — or even truth–and that what we believe to be modern morals or systems are just the remnants of past power struggles. These debates matured into current theories of patriarchy, intersectionality, heteronormativity, anti-racism and the like. Click on the links if you’re unfamiliar, but be warned: like Alice, you may find yourself “through the looking glass.”

So what’s the problem with using such language? Don’t you (I) respect academic theory? Of course, I am a big fan of the theory of gravity, for example, because it has proven itself a useful way to look at how objects behave everywhere and always (except at the quantum level!). But these other theories are not proven, and in some cases are unprovable. Their polemic language blurs the discussion, and that is never good. Let’s take a recent example.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) opined on the statue of Father Damien in the Capitol building, tweeting this is “what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks [sic] like.” The statue is one of two representing the state of Hawaii (the other is King Kamehameha). Now it is true Father Damien was a Belgian, a man, and a white one to boot. By the theories of patriarchy, colonization, and white supremacy, he is guilty as AOC charged.

Father Damien seems unconcerned about the controversy

Unfortunately for the theories, the Hawaiian people chose to put his statue there, because this white, Belgian, Catholic priest chose to come to minister to the Hawaiian lepers in their colony on Molokai. He lived among them, cared for them, caught their (then) incurable disease and died among them. To Hawaiians, he was more Hawaiian than Haole.

AOC later amended her complaint to say she objected to the fact that Hawaii has no female memorialized in Capitol statuary. Assuming this is what she originally meant, she is correct. But that is not what she said. She used polemic language that was inaccurate and unfortunate. Had she tweeted, rather, “why doesn’t Hawaii have Queen Lili’uokalani as one of its statues in DC?” she might have initiated an interesting debate.

Now, if I were a Hawaiian, I might thank the Representative for her interest in Hawaiian affairs, and point out her own great state of New York has two dead white males (Robert Livingston and George Clinton) as its statuary representatives, and suggest she should perhaps turn her attention to getting her own house in order, so to speak.

But I am not Hawaiian. And this is not about statues.

If you see famous people using polemic language, beware. Don’t use it. If you think there are not enough statues of women, say so. Or that police stop too many African-americans. Or that television doesn’t show enough same-sex relationships. Those are arguments to be made. Slipping into polemic language doesn’t help. It marks the speaker as uninterested in the truth. Or maybe just as uninteresting.

And it gives credence to academic theories of little weight.

Goin’ Postal

The United States Postal Service (USPS): where to begin? A national treasure founded by the legendary Benjamin Franklin. A lifeline which literally delivered life-changing news: college acceptance (or denial), love letters between spouses separated by work or travel, family updates and sweetheart encouragements from home to distant soldiers. Calls to mind dedicated civil servants, deterred by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” A path to the middle class and the American dream for millions of employees, many veterans, all over the country.

And dead on its feet. A veritable “dead (post)man walking.” Or in the dry language of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), “unsustainable.”

The sad truth is the USPS as it is today can not long survive. Some seek to kill it and privatize its work. Others want to solve the problem by simply giving it more money. I favor neither. But before we jump to solutions, let’s understand the problem.

Everybody “knows” the Postal Service, but what do you really know about it? It has 600,000 employees (100,000 veterans) and 600,000 retirees and is an independent agency of the executive branch. As a civilian, it looks like a government outfit; as a federal retiree, I can say it looks that way to me, too. But it is very different. It receives no annual federal funding (some say “no tax dollars” but that is a mistake). Both Congress and the Executive Branch influence its day-to-day operations in numerous ways (just try to close a post office building and see how). Its employees have the same job security and nonpartisan rules (Hatch Act) as other federal employees, and get the same generous retirement and health benefits. They run a retail network larger than McDonalds/Starbucks/WalMart combined, own and operate over 200,000 vehicles and deliver almost half of the world’s mail (more on this curious fact later).

USPS was helped by its status as a government monopoly, but technology has proven to be a grave danger. Once upon a time, it was the only reliable way to get something from here to there. Over time, the mandate to provide daily delivery to every home and business in America changed from blessing to curse. New, more nimble rivals (UPS, FedEx, DHL) could run the numbers and start winning the more lucrative routes, and leave the less desirable ones to the Post Office. And then along came e-mail, e-commerce, e-business.

The USPS has run a deficit every year since 2007. Wait, if USPS does not receive annual federal appropriations, but they run short of money, who pays the bill? They can’t borrow from a bank, nor do they have investors like a private business. Sometimes they use funds they should set aside to fund pensions. Also, the Federal government gives USPS a line of credit to spend on things like new infrastructure or life-cycle replacement of vehicles/computers. And USPS has been dipping into it to do all that, and to cover operating expenses. Well, someone has to pay the postman, too. And you do.

But wait, some say, isn’t the cause of the annual USPS operating deficit the fact that the government makes it ‘prepay 75 years of retiree benefits in advance, a rule no other government agency of private business has to comply with (sic)‘? What this Tweet refers to is the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, passed without objection by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Bush (43). Prior to this law, USPS made its own rules on how it pre-funded pensions, and set aside no funding for retiree health benefits. Private companies can always cut benefits or simply go bankrupt and default on pension and health benefits. The federal government recognized if the Post Office ever failed, someone would have to keep paying its retirees’ pensions and health plans, and that would be (again): you.

This was not unusual, since the federal government was likewise concerned about generous federal pensions and health benefits and started trying to raise contributions and reduce benefits at the same time. But now the USPS suddenly had to account for its large funding shortfall; they tried for three years, then decided to stop paying the pre-funding requirement for health benefits. So since 2010, they have defaulted on this obligation every year, and since they paid no money, it can not have affected their annual deficits. The USPS unfunded liabilities are now double their annual revenues. If they were a business, they would be defunct.

The real reason for the USPS deficit is one you already know: who mails a letter anymore? The USPS infrastructure was built for a time when they were the main way to get goods and info to the last mile (your mailbox). That is no longer the case. USPS total mail volumes started declining in 2007 (due to competition, technology, and the Great Recession) and haven’t stopped, generating losses every year. Marketing (aka junk) mail has grown to one-half of Post Office deliveries, even though its cheap rates mean it generates only one-quarter of revenues. Yes, the USPS delivers half of the world’s mail because it delivers the tons (literal) of trash you (like I once did) throw directly into the trashcan next to your mailbox.

The Post Office tries to reduce operating expenses, but as I pointed out earlier, there are both political and labor (union) issues with doing so. USPS has improved productivity almost every year, but improving a failing business model will not succeed. Somewhere the world’s best buggy whip maker can explain why that is so.

However, unsustainable is not the same thing as hopeless. If the USPS keeps operating as is, or simply relies on an infusion of federal dollars (or a relaxation of its unfunded liabilities, which must eventually be paid), it will ultimately fail. What needs to be done? I do have ideas about this.

End six days a week delivery. Who needs daily mail delivery? Only one percent of Social Security recipients get checks by mail, and that’s once a month. Even those vulnerable, at-home seniors don’t get drugs delivered every day. Splitting delivery into three-days-a-week zones (Mon/Wed/Fri, Tue/Thu/Sat) would halve the delivery burden.

Return to postal boxes where appropriate. Way back when, USPS only delivered mail to local post offices in cities, then people walked to the post office to get mail when they wanted it. Add in mandatory electronic notification (they already have this as an option) when you have mail (and what it is).

Consolidate postal offices. Like military bases, start a commision which decides what stays and what goes. Sometimes it is more cost effective to keep a remote site, sometimes not. Let a nonpartisan, business-oriented commission make the call. Perhaps the USPS could generate one-time revenue by the sales of some choice locations.

Encourage retirement. USPS does this occasionally, and it’s time again. Offering early retirement and retirement bonuses can help. In the end, a retiree costs less than an employee, and if you reduce service, you need fewer employees.

Double the price of junk mail. By the rules of price elasticity, this might decrease the volume by half, which would be a good thing. If the volume reduction is less, it would actually increase net revenue!

Publish data on package delivery costs. Post Office public data cites how much package volume they deliver and the revenue, but not the associated costs. It’s true they are often the lowest cost option for packages, but if they are losing money on every package, well then, the punchline to the old joke is “they’ll make up for it in volume.”

Invest pension/health funds in other instruments. Currently these USPS funds can only invest in ultra-safe Treasury funds. Like the Federal Thrift Savings Program (TSP), let USPS invest in other safe, but far more lucrative funds.

All of the above are in the category of putting out the fire, pumping out the water, and keeping the USPS afloat. But the most important issue is: What is the purpose of the United States Postal Service? If it’s to deliver what those younger than forty sneeringly call “snail-mail” to everybody’s home, it will go away. They don’t write letters, they expect Amazon or WalMart to deliver packages, they do all their business and meet all important deadlines online.

I wish I knew what the answer to this is, but I don’t. Japan’s Post Office is a monster in banking and insurance, and was once the world’s largest financial institution. Germany’s BundesPost was heavy into telecommunications before it divested into separate organizations. Perhaps there is a business model for lots of small locations and vehicles and delivery personnel that will work in today’s environment (and the future). I hope for the Post Office’s sake (and all their employees and retirees) they figure it out.

Mailing it in

There is one thing that MAGA-hat wearers, Never Trumpers, and the Progressive resistance agree upon: everything–and I mean EVERYTHING– revolves around President Trump. Nothing better represents this delusional state of affairs than the debate over mail-in voting. To wit:

Supporters of the President are sounding the alarm that rampant fraud will accompany mail-in voting. President Trump himself has stated he opposes liberalizing mail-in voting because he believes it will only favor the Democratic Party; some Progressives apparently agree and have seized upon the pandemic quarantine as a reason to support only mail-in voting. For the record, there is no data that mail-in voting favors either party, and little evidence of widespread mail-in voting fraud. Perhaps your own view about mail-in voting is driven by these same factors. Please permit me to explain why it’s wrong to do so.

First, mail-in voting is a necessity: not everyone can make it to a polling place on election day. As an expat, mail-in voting is the only way I can participate. However, mail-in voting is an exception, not the norm. Why? While all voting methods are vulnerable to fraud, mail-in voting is more vulnerable (I’ll explain why below). Thus when the number of mail-in voters is small (as an exception), the risk of fraud changing the election results is also small, so mail-in voting poses an acceptable risk.

Second, mail-in voting poses a vulnerability even if there is no evidence of fraud. Several states use only mail-in voting, and cite their success as proof there is no issue here. However, who is interested in interfering in the state elections of Washington, Oregon, or Colorado (places relying on mail-in voting)? There are several nations (e.g., Russia and China) capable of and interested in influencing, undermining, or corrupting US federal elections. Moving to large-scale, mail-in voting changes the calculus for such nations and thus the vulnerability becomes a real threat.

Third, while the 2020 election is a federal one, everyone should know that it is run as fifty distinct state elections, with different rules in each case. Asking states to make sudden changes within months of an election, while their employees are furloughed or working from home, is a recipe for disaster, especially when both political parties are primed to cry “foul” at any suspicious instance. Wisconsin conducted an in-person election in the teeth of the pandemic and had outrageous, unfounded claims of vote tampering by both sides. States would find it difficult to make big changes now, and errors they make would only compound the confusion.

Fourth, massive mail-in voting results in a much greater time lag between election day and when the results are announced. In some cases in the past, mail-in votes weren’t even counted if their total was less than the difference between candidates established by in-person voting (i.e., the outcome could not change). If the mail-in vote total is large, all must be counted, and each mail-in vote requires additional scrutiny and verification.

Fifth, that verification process is also a point of dispute. Anyone old enough to remember the “hanging-chads” debacle in Florida in 2000 knows that the authentication of votes is subjective. Imagine the public debates, protests and the like as days lead into weeks after the election without a final result (and with constant leaks and charges of corruption)!

Sixth, current security for mail-in voting is adequate for optional, small-scale use, but not for widespread use. Every state is different, but let me use my voting experience in Ohio as a example. I am currently registered to vote there, a process that required only a government ID and a banking document with an Ohio address. I mailed in my federal postcard application for a ballot: it contained nothing more than part of my social security number and signature. I opted for an e-mail ballot, which I will fill out and e-mail back to Ohio with my signature. So the security involved is (1) my social security number, (2) my signature, (3) any government issued ID, and (4) some paper documents with my Ohio address. Let’s look at those in turn:

Throw out number four (documents with an address), as any nitwit could have forged and printed those out.
Social security numbers were commonly (and wrongly) used for identification, so the many data breaches out there mean it is likely your SSN has been compromised.
Signatures? More difficult to find, but easy to copy/forge once found.
Government ID? An American passport is incredibly secure, but your state driver’s license not so much. Yet both count.

The bottom line here is it’s not easy for you to pretend to be me and vote in Ohio, but it’s also not impossible. The real problem is not you or me, but . . .

Russia. Seventh, what may be difficult for you is easy for Russia. Or China. Or even North Korea. Remember when the Chinese hacked the US Office of Personnel Management database and made off with the Personal Identifying Information of hundreds of thousands of federal employees? What about the routine credit card data breaches; all that data is available on the dark web for pennies. When Russia was hacking into state voting systems before the 2016 election, they often accessed voter registration rolls. Those could not change votes, but they would provide the Russians with the means to affect future elections. All a foreign actor needs to do is submit the same federal postcard I used and have the absentee ballot sent to a different e-mail or physical address. Whether they may or may not have the ability to forge a signature, they could submit a vote, meaning some voters showing up at the polls would be told they had already voted, and some mail-in voters would have two ballots submitted. All this could be sorted out in time, but at what cost to the credibility of the election process?

Finally, remember that the motivation for a foreign actor need not be changing votes. As the Intelligence Community pointed out in the 2016 report on Russian interference, Russia sought to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The partisan divide in the United States has made this Russian operation one of the highest pay-off influence operations in history. Intelligence officers will be studying that one for decades. And the last straw would be a drawn out, contested, post-election series of public political and legal battles as states deal with a backlog of mail-in votes.

And I won’t even go into the challenge to the US Postal Service. I know you will breathlessly await my review of the USPS in a future blog post (if you’re still in quarantine and desperately bored).

What about the risk of contracting the coronavirus while voting in-person? This is indeed a quandry. I support allowing those who are at risk (e.g., aged, suffering comorbidities, immunocompromised) to get a doctor’s note and vote by mail. But for the vast majority of voters, there is nothing especially dangerous about in-person voting, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. People gather and stand in lines for all kinds of reasons during the quarantine. And we make some people (grocery store employees, truck drivers) work despite the dangers because what they do is essential. So is voting.

I continue to support mail-in voting, as an exception, not the norm. I contend it could be expanded and secured, but not quickly or painlessly. Voting is so important, and in-person voting has many advantages in terms of preventing fraud. Please consider this issue with the seriousness it deserves, not as yet another simple Trump-driven dynamic.

Truth, Belief, Action (III)

In the first two posts, we considered truth versus narrative and the power of beliefs to propel either good or bad behavior. Now is the time for Action!

Peaceful protest is good, even when it’s wrong. What do I mean by wrong? Remember, there is objective truth, and sometimes people get worked up about something that isn’t right or true. Even in that case, protest is good. Peaceful protest is putting one’s belief into action, and that is the right thing to do. I respect people who go out, get together, and make their voices heard. Not with a #hastag, not with a social media frame, with their time, blood, sweat, and tears. If you really believe in something, put away your phone and join in. If you’re a bandwagon fan, re-tweet. #virtuesignalling. That is to say, joining an online campaign is a lukewarm action: it is ok for supporting mass-transit, unacceptably lame for fighting violence or racism. Serious issues demand serious responses. Twitter is lame.

How should we protest? I suggest all protests must be peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful. This is not an original idea: you’ll notice I have borrowed conceptually from from St. Augustine’s Just War theory here. Peaceful is non-negotiable: our right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution is protected ONLY when done “peaceably.” ((The exception often voiced about armed resistance is exactly that: an exception, in that it is no longer protest, it is revolt. This is why I often chide my friends about making broad generalizations today about totalitarianism or comparisons to Nazi Germany. If you make these, and really believe it, you are morally required to take up arms (unless, of course, you’re a pacifist). Failure to act in the face of enormity is morally suspect, so be careful with sweeping generalizations. Sorry for the long aside. Back to the principles of protest.))

Peaceful, yes, but also proportionate and purposeful. Proportionate relates to the size and type: one doesn’t set oneself on fire because of an unjust parking ticket. Thousands don’t paralyze a city over determining trash collection days. Purposeful refers to the target of the protest being the correct one: if your beef is with the police, it is improper to protest at the fire department. ((Two asides in one post? Mea culpa!! I believe that Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest fails in this regard. It is peaceful and proportionate, but the National Anthem is neither the root nor cause of local police violence, so his effort is misdirected. I understand that he feels his views garner more coverage by protesting a national symbol in a mass communications event, but what that also does is invite unnecessary controversy. More importantly, when you decide to re-target your protest to gain maximum publicity, you start down the proverbial slippery slope: why not peacefully jam 911 lines to make your point?))

Violent protest, like violence in general, is evil. It is not understandable, or justified, or necessary, all terms I have heard used to describe what is happening in the States recently. What we need is not violent protest, but protest against violence. I contend that America’s basic issue is not racism, but violence: we have a violence problem.

It’s not an original thought. Back in the 60’s, an activist then-named H. Rap Brown rejected Dr. King’s non-violent approach, and espoused black violence with the slogan “violence is as American as cherry pie.” I think he was right for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t racism when a veritable rainbow coalition of police officers murdered George Floyd. It wasn’t racism when a line of white riot cops knocked down and rendered unconscious an old white pacifist. It wasn’t racism when a slew of federal agencies cleared peaceful protestors out of a public park with pepper spray. It wasn’t racism when someone decided to try to execute two black cops in New York City. It wasn’t racism when people of color and pasty white suburban dudes looted stores together. It’s violence.

Think about it. Other cultures remark on America’s tendency to violence and it does stand out. We relish American football when it is at its most violent. When we play what the rest of the world calls football, they criticize us as unskilled and “too physical.” Our heroes are most often men of action who stand up and fight, often viciously. Take that tendency to violence and a constitutional right to bear arms and what do you get? More gun violence than anywhere else, including other nations that are heavily armed. More armed robberies and violent assaults. More road rage. People fighting over sales in stores. People screaming at diners in restaurants. Violence.

Solutions?

Let’s start with the problem du jour: not police racism, but police violence. Demilitarize the police. They have added ever-more elaborate weapons and riot control gear at the same time the crime rate has plummeted. Go back to community policing, which puts cops on the streets not looking to pad statistics but in a non-adversarial role. Camden, New Jersey, did this with solid results. In what moral order is a choke hold still a police policy option? Pass rules requiring officers to intervene immediately in the case of active violations by fellow officers. Require training for recruits coming from a military background on the differences between the two cultures. Don’t bust up police unions, but perhaps make them liable for on-duty crimes committed by their members, thus turning the blue wall of silence into a self-policing community. And for God’s sake, stop the “defund police” nonsense. People who were screaming about the President’s defunding of WHO during a pandemic are calling for defunding the police during riots? Can we be intellectually consistent for a few moments here?

Protestors? Peaceful, Proportionate, Purposeful. Immediately turn in anyone fomenting violence (which has sometimes happened recently, but nowhere near enough). And no more quick bail/dropped charges: violate the order and go into lock up and face full prosecution (remember, this would only apply to those inciting or committing violence). It would be nice if the slogans protestors used bore some relation to the truth, since the slogans tend to become part of a narrative, and I think I showed how dangerous false narratives can be.

Government? Spend more effort on stopping violence and less on the motives of the violent. I don’t care whether Officer Chauvin was a racist or not: he needs to be tried (and convicted) of murder. I don’t care whether the people throwing Molotov cocktails or looting stores are animal liberationists, boogaloo boys, or anarchists: charge and convict them for their actions. In general, government at all levels should seek de-escalation during protests. This isn’t even 1968, let alone Shay’s Rebellion. Leave the Insurrection Act for when it is needed. It is not needed today.

Citizens? Be active. Protest if it really means something to you. I disagreed with the gun-toters protesting CoVid19 restrictions a few weeks past, but they were peaceful, proportionate, and purposeful: have at it! Police your fellow protestors. Just make sure you’ve done your homework (find the truth, not the narrative) and you always approach your effort from love. What about the “we’re really facing evil this time, it’s different” claim? Check your narrative bias. The civil rights movement faced an entrenched system of racism backed by dogs, guns, and fire hoses. It won by facing all this hate and violence with love, cementing support from Americans who couldn’t stand to be on the other side any longer. Think it’s worse today? Where’s that data? Is it worse today than in 1852? I’ll give the last word* to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who ended Uncle Tom’s Cabin thusly:

There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? Or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?

* This quote was brought to my attention by Dale M. Coulter in a recent First Things essay. Lincoln allegedly said to Stowe “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

PS. If you think I am overstating the danger of narrative, consider this: Uncle Tom, the protagonist of Ms. Stowe’s masterpiece, is a hero. He is a model of quiet dignity and refusal to respond with violence to violence. In the book, his example even elicits grudging admiration from his slave masters. In the world of the 19th century, his example won over countless people who previously were on the fence about slavery. During the civil rights movement, those espousing violence started a narrative that such a peaceful response to evil was a cop-out, and turned the character’s name into an epithet, which is what it is to this day.

Truth, Belief, Action (II)

In part I we focused on truth versus narrative. Now, let’s turn to belief.

Beliefs can be profound or casual. Let’s focus on deeply-held beliefs here. The casual ones will come up again in Part III, about Action. Suffice it to say you can always tell the difference. To borrow a sports analogy, if someone says they are a fan of a team, but they don’t watch the team, attend games, or know the players, they aren’t much of a fan: they have a casual belief in the team. They’re known as bandwagon fans; nobody likes bandwagon fans.

Our beliefs (in general) come from our experiences. You can be given a belief system (say from your parents), but if your experiences don’t confirm that system, you will reject it. Belief can become a powerful force, shaping how we view future experiences, and thus creating a vicious cycle: we see only what we want to see. A police officer who arrests criminals all day starts to see criminals everywhere, not fellow citizens. A young black man constantly told he will be mistreated by the police might act rashly when confronted by officers, providing the excuse for that mistreatment. You can find evidence of this daily. A President who sees any criticism as a personal attack becomes unable or unwilling to admit a mistake, however trivial.

Yet belief can also be the force for a virtuous cycle: ignoring the harmful, rejecting the hateful, and focusing always on the good, which then elicits a positive outcome . . . in the fullness of time. It was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolence which eventually won the day; it was he who said “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” This emphasis on non-violence and love works because it is in accord with the truth. Violence may make progress in the short run, and hatred or rage may feel good for a sort period of time, but in the end, they are futile.

Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong

Some people believe that the American system is inherently racist. Some people believe that American police forces are racist. These beliefs stem from a experiences that, while real, are not true. Data deny them. I have lived in three countries, studied and visited many more. Every one which with I am familiar has a problem with racism. I endured lectures from my European friends about the racism of Americans only until their sisters were dating black US GIs. Sweden was a progressive racial utopia until it admitted dissimilar refugees. The Soviet Union? Read about the experience of African communists there. Asia? Perhaps the most brutally racist area of all, although many times its racism hides behind a polite smile. Mexico? Check out the furor over last year’s indigenous star of the movie Roma.

I am not arguing American racism is an illusion; rather, it is inherent in the human condition. We have a natural experiment in history to help understand this. The Republic of South Africa was the one country in modern times to believe in and enact a policy of state-sanctioned racism: apartheid. From this, we know what an inherently racist system looks like. A black RSA President was impossible to fathom under apartheid. Black athletes, black cultural stars, black academics, black professionals, black leaders: unlikely. All things modern America has enjoyed. Understanding the role racism plays–as a universal problem–is key to the way forward.

Likewise, those who see any criticism, any protest, any resistance to the current administration or the American system as unjustified, un-American, or treasonous are also wrong. They clutch at unfair criticism–which there is plenty–and reject all criticism. The MAGA crowd, the press, and the President have something in common: they believe it is all about Trump. It’s not. And we can’t get to the root of the problem until we get past that misapprehension.

Like Dr. King, I am not arguing for passive acceptance, or standing by idly and waiting for change. I am arguing that in order to make change, you must first accept truth, remove the blinders of your narrative, and love one another, unconditionally. Any other approach will end with more fear, more hatred, and more recriminations and revenge. That sets the stage for Action, my final post in this series, tomorrow.

Truth, Belief, Action (I)

There is so much emotion out there right now: pain, hate, fear & loathing. As a friend recently reminded me, catharsis has its use. If there is a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), then there is a time for rage, too. But then, too, “let us stop talking falsely now, the hour’s getting late.” (Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower)

When the dust settles and the smoke clears, we must put down our signs, our bricks and bottles, our tear gas and shields, and reason once again. In the end, there are truth, belief, and action; the first of these is truth.

Truth matters. There is only one truth, not your truth or my truth. We each have experiences which can be (in fact, always are) different. But there is objective truth. The truth is that a man was apprehended, then needlessly and intentionally murdered. Another truth is that thousands of people of all races and nations are so upset by this fact that they are peacefully protesting. A third truth is that a not insignificant number of people joining the protests are then fomenting violence, ending in destruction of property, looting, and violence to both police and innocent bystanders.

The problems start when we stop worrying about truth and start considering the term in vogue today: narrative. We used to call this a meta-story, or spin, or even propaganda. Narrative places truth at the service of a larger idea. This idea then colors how we understand the truth, sometimes directly undermining it. Which is dangerous.

How does it work?

If you’re a progressive, your narrative includes the ideas that the American system is fundamentally racist, that blind justice is not justice at all, that the system is rigged against minorities. The murder of George Floyd typifies an epidemic of police violence against African-Americans, the arrests at protests the willful authoritarianism of the American police state. Looting is the act of clandestine cells of Boogaloo boys or the understandable outrage boiling over after centuries of mistreatment and marginalization.

If you sport a MAGA hat, the suspect was a defrauder. You scan his autopsy for the tell-tale signs of alcohol or drugs and presume he resisted arrest. The protests are either the beginning of a race war or a carefully-staged provocation funded and organized by George Soros to undermine the President’s re-election. AntiFa is the cause of violence; looting is what bad people always do, given the opportunity.

Exaggerations? Hardly! I would provide links to these views, but then I don’t want to encourage their spread. But they are legion. You may have visited a site espousing them.

How do such narratives undermine the truth? Mr. Floyd was only a suspect–not a criminal–there is no evidence he ever resisted anything except to beg to be allowed to breathe. If you want to check the data on police violence, the Washington Post and The Guardian have the best data sets: but you won’t find evidence to support an epidemic against minorities. Believe it or not, the numbers haven’t increased for years. As to the protests, most were peaceful, and while no one doubts outside instigators were behind some of the violence, there is no evidence of a vast, coordinated conspiracy. As it happens, there was violence at protests long before the Boogaloo movement or AntiFa existed. It happens when masses of emotional people get together.

The Boston Massacre: without AntiFa or the Boogaloo boys, yet violence ensued!

What both sides get wrong is their reliance on narrative in place of truth. See how the man, George Floyd, gets lost in the narrative? He becomes a symbol, a prop, a cudgel used to bash a competing narrative.

What was the simple truth? A man was accused of committing a misdemeanor crime. He was murdered, without resistance, by the police after being apprehended. All four policemen involved were fired twenty-eight hours after his death. None of the officers involved cooperated in the investigation (i.e., they all pled the Fifth Amendment), thus prolonging it. The policeman directly responsible for his murder was charged within four days. The other officers were charged five days later, and the initial charges upgraded to murder in the second degree. According to the Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, the decision to charge and the timing of those charges were unrelated to the protests. Don’t believe him? Google him and try to stick him in your narrative.

When people replace truth with narrative, bad things happen. People start to believe in narrative the way that honest people believe in truth. And that can have terrible consequences. Which leads to Part II on Belief.

Part Two: The WABAC machine

If you never watched the original cartoon Rocky & Bullwinkle, you missed something good, so go find it on YouTube or Cartoon Network. If you did watch (like me), you’ll remember the original Sherman and the talking dog, Mr. Peabody, who had various historical adventures using the WABAC (Way-back, get it?) time machine.

As I was writing the last blog post on media bias, I had a WABAC moment: what was the media coverage like during the last pandemic: the 2009 H1N1 or Swine flu outbreak. To remind, this virus was a new strain of the infamous Spanish Flu bug which terrorized the world in 1919-1921. This time, it lasted about twenty months. Note this: confirmed cases worldwide were 1.6 million, deaths 18,000; estimated cases were 700 million to 1.4 billion with 284,000 deaths. Yes, ten years later, we still can’t narrow down the data within an order of magnitude. That might give some pause, even today, when making instant judgments about the coronavirus. But I digress.

H1N1 hit within the first hundred days of the Obama Administration, right next door in Mexico, oh, and simultaneously with that pesky little Great Recession. So I began searching the paper of record, the New York Times, to see how it covered the administration’s response and unfolding crisis.

Was I in for a surprise!

You will want to read the hyperlinks on this one. What I found was telling, in the “I can’t believe I’m reading this” way. My comments below are italicized.

Early on (in April) The Times published an opinion piece by a doctor entitled “Sound the alarm? The Swine Flu bind” noting “History teaches that the influenza virus mutates to cause worldwide spread about twice a century, on average. But scientists have yet to figure out what causes the mutations, when they will occur and what makes certain viruses more lethal than others.” and that public officials faced a damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don’t decision. Oh for that sane, balanced perspective today!

On May 1st, the Times noted how seriously the Obama administration was taking the threat. The Times reported the President was deliberate in trying not to cause a panic:”It was no coincidence, his aides said, that he played golf the day his administration declared a national emergency.” Oddly enough, no reporter asked about the recently eliminated NSC staff position covering infectious disease. Yes, believe it or not, it happened first way back then, but no one seemed to care. Golf as a crafty signal: yes, that’s it!

White House spokesman Robert Gibb was asked about the fact that there was no Health and Human Services Secretary and only five Presidential nominees (out of twenty positions, none confirmed) in the department, he said “‘Our response is in no way hindered or hampered.’ When pressed to say whether White House officials would prefer to have a full team in place, he said, ‘We’d rather not have a swine flu.'” There was no follow-up on how the Department could possibly be effective without any appointees, nor any opinion from the Times.

Asked about Mexico’s more drastic actions responding to the outbreak, CDC acting director Richard Besser said “You don’t know if this is a virus that will fizzle in a couple of weeks or one that will become more or less virulent or severe in the diseases it causes.” Perhaps President Trump should have suggested the coronavirus may “fizzle.” That appears to be the scientifically appropriate term, or at least no one in the media objected when the CDC head used it.

Another Times story the day after the US declared a public health emergency noted that “only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case” and that Besser “praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.” Only two labs, but no follow up about why, or when would more come on line? And no questions about the lack of a national policy? Enquiring minds apparently didn’t want to know!

In October, HHS Secretary Sebelius was asked to account for the fact that only 23 million of the 120 million promised doses of vaccine were available, she responded, “If we could wave a magic wand or have the tools in our government shop to fix this, I think there would be a different expectation.” Noticeably absent from the questions was any mention of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which was ready and available for use. Maybe it grew into a magic wand later?

Regarding that shortage, the Times created a helpful video explaining that it was due to “old technology” and “an inefficient process.” The video says the federal government “responsibly” contracted with all five vaccine producers, but “in a weird confluence” all five had problems. “Some people will die” due to the vaccine shortage, the video intones, and the federal government has confirmed that. That’s it. Nobody at fault? People will die. Move along now.

When the President’s daughters got the coveted, in short-supply vaccine shots, the Times did cover it by saying, “The vaccinations could raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment” but quickly noting “The White House may be trying to set a good example amid concerns about the vaccine’s safety. Sharing the news that the president has allowed his daughters to receive the shots could ease the fears of ordinary Americans who are wondering whether to get vaccinated.” This was simply embarrassing. President Obama’s daughters were in a high-risk group and deserved the vaccine; couldn’t the Times have left the defense to the White House Spokesman?

Finally, an otherwise irrelevant opinion piece by Gail Collins, which has this jewel: “The swine flu scare has made it clear why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden for vice president. As the White House’s unfiltered talking head, Biden is the perfect warning bell to show the White House when things are veering out of control. A kind of mental canary in the governmental mine shaft.” It also provides the following Biden story: “‘If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing,’ Biden babbled happily on the Today show. He also assured Matt Lauer that he had warned his family away from subways and that he ‘wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,’ but unfortunately Lauer did not inquire whether the Oval Office counts as free range.” This has nothing to do with my point, but I bet you a stiff drink that this quote will show up in an ad during the campaign, whenever the former Vice President attacks the President about coronavirus.

I could go on, but you get the point. Look at any of these articles (less the last one) from the paper of record and compare how the coverage was different. Assertions left unquestioned. Off-hand comments unexamined. Difficulties and challenges highlighted; failures explained away. Note I am NOT comparing how the Obama and Trump administrations performed; just how the media covered them in remarkable similar circumstances. The Obama administration response is on the books: probably a “B+” for messaging (smooth, reassuring, consistent), a “C+” for actual work (slow to enact national guidance, failure in vaccine mass production). Most importantly, the swine flu that year didn’t turn out to be the big one; extending the analogy, swine flu was a quiz, not the final.

The short version? Covid19 is much more contagious, perhaps more than five times as deadly.

in comparing that coverage to today’s, one could assert today’s media was only responding to the incompetence of the Trump administration, but that assertion fails because Obama’s team was new and unproven, understaffed, and made similar mistakes (e.g., reorganizing out the NSC staff position, failing to respond quickly with respect to vaccine production, making bold/rosy projections).

You might say the media treats the Trump administration differently because it acts differently. There is no doubt the President sees the media as an antagonist, if not an enemy. But this is not a personal relationship, it’s an institutional relationship. I don’t claim the media is a neutral observer; they do. If you’re going to make that claim, you forfeit the right to say “we have to be confrontational because he was first.”

Read those articles again. Read any article today. Tell me this is the rightful, impartial role for the media.

We all know how important it is (from the Times coverage) that the US has the most deaths from coronavirus. Bonus quiz, before you look at this graphic: who had the most deaths (worldwide) from the H1N1 pandemic, despite having only the fifth highest number of cases?

Other countries with more cases but less deaths? Germany & Italy

Of course, the Times went back and did an in-depth review of the Obama administration’s performance based on the discrepancy between how the US did and other nations. Well, I am sure they will eventually.

Part One: All the news that fits your bias

The New York Times masthead proudly proclaims “All the news that’s fit to print.” Some call it the newspaper of record, the official version of what’s happening, and to some extent that’s true. Some call it the home of “fake news.” I dislike the later term, only because it seems to have become shorthand for “news I don’t like.” Several friends have asked me my views about media bias. The Onion captures it well:

I like my bias like my whiskey: straight up, with a satire chaser!

As I’ve said many times, everyone has bias. Bias is simply the accumulated opinion of your experiences. It’s what makes you, you. Media personalities like to claim they are unbiased, but of course they aren’t. A day does not pass that I could not find three examples of biased coverage in the news sections of the major media sources.

What does media bias look like? Much of it is subtle, shaded by determining what is news and what is deemed not news. One example:

Two marches happened in Washington DC in January: the Women’s March (January 18th) and the Annual March for Life (January 24th). Both gathered “tens of thousands” but local traffic reports confirmed the second was somewhat larger. The Times had one news report on the March for Life, one on the Women’s March. Under normal circumstances, neither of these events may be news. In this case, the President spoke at the March for Life, the first to do so (and a major change). One march had a precedent-shattering speech, which several Times opinion writers commented on; absolutely nothing of news importance happened at the other march. This even but unequal coverage represents an improvement: almost every year since 1974, generally, the only coverage the March for Life gets is arguments over the crowd size.

Earth-shattering? Hardly. I chose this example because it’s one I have been following for decades with consistent results. The media usually covers larger marches, but somehow neglects this one even when the total surpassed half a million marchers. In this case, the media determines that the views of one side aren’t newsworthy–or as newsworthy–as the other side: bias. A worse type of bias is only telling one side of a story. Try these on:

On Saturday, March 14th, ABC’s Weekend News led with a story of chaos at US airports, as Americans fled back to the States on the eve of the President’s just announced travel ban from Europe. I was deeply interested, as I had a pending flight stateside. They repeated the story, with the same videos and images, on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Now it’s not unusual for networks to rerun stories from the weekend, as their viewership on those days is different and much lower. And the chaos was certainly newsworthy on Saturday. Except, it wasn’t newsworthy on Tuesday, or Monday, or even Sunday. Because the ICE and CBP personnel at the airports adjusted and eliminated the lines . . . before Sunday morning! In this case, the Times led its Sunday edition thusly “After a night of chaos at some of the nation’s busiest airports on Saturday, officials scrambled on Sunday, with some apparent success, to reduce lines . . .” ABC went days and days and never reported that things were fixed. How come?
No doubt you heard about the April 15th coronavirus outbreak at the meat packing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When the national media caught the scent, they descended on the story with a vengeance: The Times cited it as the #1 coronavirus hot spot in the nation, and lamented the poor immigrants (some war refugees) who were about to lose their lives or jobs. Other media called out Smithfield Foods for endangering its workers, and ridiculed South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for resisting stay at home orders for her state. This much of the story was well covered. There was palpable glee by some that the rubes were finally getting their just desserts. What happened? Over eight hundred employees were infected, most asymptomatic. Two died. The county reported under two thousand cases and eleven deaths linked to the plant. Sioux Falls hospitals weren’t stressed. The President declared the industry vital and the employees are cautiously getting back to work with new policies. You can only find local news coverage of this part of the story.

Another bias is how much attention the media pays to a subject and why. As in:

Are you embarrassed by the President’s hawking of various treatments or cures for the coronavirus? #Metoo. Even with all the disclaimers he makes, he shouldn’t be highlighting anything that hasn’t come out of a reliable, properly conducted and peer-reviewed study. Get this! Have you heard about the positive effects of Remdesivir? The problems with Hydroxychloroquine? Clinical use of HIV/AIDs drugs? #Metoo! And all these results were initially covered extensively in national media despite being preliminary: not final, not peer-reviewed. Even the President’s ludacris observation about UV light and disinfectant: how many of you saw that press conference live (I did)? How many of you saw the clip during the entire week when the media continuously covered it? Now riddle me this: if the point is it’s dangerous for the President to say such things (because people might do something stupid), who has given more people the opportunity to do something stupid? In this case, the need to ridicule the President (however deserved) outweighed the life-and-death calculation the media claimed as the reason for the coverage.

And of course there is sensationalism:

As the US and nearly every other country on the planet begins to reopen, we’re starting to see stories like this: why we are heading into trouble reopening. This was a Times opinion piece, but it got picked up by various news sites and networks. Look at the key chart:

The point is clear: the decline in CoVid19 cases is illusory, driven by a decline in several major metropolitan areas. Now look at this chart:

During the same time period (March-May) the US went from almost no tests to over eight million tests total. And what happens, the more you test? The number of confirmed cases goes . . . up. The original opinion made no reference to it, but that’s ok, an opinion piece is trying to convince you. It’s like a lawyer’s summary, not a judge’s ruling. But then several news media outlets reprinted the chart, and made no mention of the testing issue. I did see one article where an expert commented that ‘tests had greatly increased, but that wasn’t the reason for the increase in confirmed cases.’ Now I’m willing to follow experts, but I would an explanation based on some multivariate analysis, a little less “because I said so.”

Sensationalism bias is sometimes called “if it bleeds it leads,” meaning bad news gets the headline. Some might see several of these examples as simple sensationalism. But when was the last time eleven deaths over the course of a week in South Dakota elicited front page NYT and major television network coverage? Heck, a tornado killing twice that in an hour would merit 30 seconds or a weather section article.

I have little problem with bias or partisanship in editorial or opinion pieces, (except when they then get cited by the straight news side). Television networks have news and entertainment departments, and people who get them confused have nobody but themselves to blame (if you get news from Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, good luck!). No, of course I don’t think Fox News is unbiased, either. Fox was explicitly created to provide a different bias.

Some media do better at times: look at the NYT lead on the airport chaos story: solid work! PBS NewsHour generally only displays the “what we cover” bias, so kudos to them, too. All that said, if you don’t think the media is biased, if you’re not taking all your media reporting with a big bag of salt, you’re too gullible! The key is to access multiple media sources and to know and account for their biases . . . not to believe they’re unbiased.

Coming next, an extra-special bonus: something I stumbled across while researching media bias! Stay tuned!

Testing, testing, one, two, three

Several friends have asked me about the importance of, and status of, coronavirus testing in the States. It is the single most important factor in returning to the status quo ante virus, so why is the US behind other countries? Let’s focus on virus testing today (tests to determine if one has the virus now), but what we’ll see also applies to antibody testing, certification of equipment (like ventilators) and even “proof of” processes (like testing protocols).

The President trumpets (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) the fact that the US has completed more virus tests (3.7 million, all data as of 5/19) than anybody. Which is true. The numbers change daily, but the US has done twice as many as Germany amd six times more than South Korea. Still a little behind the EU, which is a better comparable. The President’s many critics point out that total numbers of tests are not the right way to compare nations: you should compare tests adjusted for population. They are correct: it is a better way to compare, and here the US lags in forty-second place, behind such notable nations as Russia and San Marino, with the Faeroe islands leading the pack.

Let’s take a analytic look at the data, which tell an interesting story.

All scientists and health officials agree testing (in all its types) is the long pole in the tent (a military phrase meaning the thing in a sequence of things that takes the most time, thus is critical to on-time mission completion). All agree it is essential to restoring society to normal working order. All governments are trying to get to this end state: sufficient testing to achieve normalcy. No one is sure how many tests or what percentage of the population must be tested to get there (that is a judgment call, not a scientific determination), but all agree it is large. And no one is anywhere near there yet.

Data does not include Germany, as this site does not recognize Germany’s data, but the German numbers are very close to Russia’s. If you want to play with the data yourself, go here.

So per capita testing is a valid way to describe how well a country is doing on the road to getting back to normal. But let’s go back to the total testing numbers to see how they influence how to assess the progress. Only the US, Russia, Germany, and Italy have exceeded 50,000 tests daily, and the numbers are not increasing rapidly in any country. The US has achieved around 150,000 tests daily. If testing is the long pole, and everyone needs to do a lot more testing, why haven’t those numbers spiked?

Some suspect a failure in governmental leadership, so let’s compare.

Look at Germany, considered (rightly) a world leader. They had a head start on the regional crisis (it started in Italy), a favorable set of initial cases (younger by half than that of Italy), universal health care, and a world-class pharmaceutical sector. The acclaimed technocratic German administration was alert and responsive, led by the capable and experienced Chancellor Angela Merkel. They recognized testing was a challenge, and engaged both government and commercial resources on the problem. And the end result is they have done 1.7 million total tests., about 70,000 a day, with a goal of 200,000 a day.

Look at South Korea, another obviously positive case. Again, an early start at social distancing, a culture accustomed to wearing masks and willing to abide government restrictions, universal health care, good high tech manufacturing, world’s best internet penetration and adoption, and recent experience with MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, a coronavirus which hit in 2015 and left ample lessons). Which resulted in half a million total tests, stuck at 10,000 test a day.

Is Germany not as sophisticated as we imagined? Did Angela Merkel not emphasize the importance of testing? South Korea has done well in many areas, but if testing is the key, they have only tested about one percent of the population, with almost no growth in the testing rate per day. Who’s to blame in these countries?

The answer lies in a simple observation: testing is hard. It is not at all like surging to make tanks in World War II (which were cheap and functional–long unrelated anecdote at the end of this post*). If testing were easy to scale, some scientist or company or leader would have done it. If you look at the testing numbers, they roughly correspond to a nation’s pharmaceutical research and/or production capability, nothing more, nothing less. And they are increasing at a roughly the same rate, everywhere.

To paraphrase what my old Army Master Sergeant would have said, “You can crap out a a zillion M4 tanks, but you can’t crap out a zillion coronavirus tests.”

How hard can virus testing really be? Well, every year we have to prepare a new test for that season’s flu virus (not talking about the rapid diagnostic flu tests, those are a shortcut we accept). We know it will only be a variation of what has come before, we know roughly when the flu season will start, and we know many thousands of people will die without tests (and vaccines). And it takes the full year between flu seasons to get it done.

Testing itself is a complex, multi-step process: You need the different reagents, production capability for the test kits, distribution and training for end users, a system for administering the tests and collecting samples, logistics to consolidate tests and transfer them to labs, lab capacity to evaluate tests, and a system to provide results. Some parts can be streamlined: there are multiple sources for reagents and training may be simplified. The government can play a role in establishing mass testing sites and moving materials. The internet provides an easy means to transmit notifications. But building tests? Creating evaluation capability? Not easily scalable, or someone, somewhere would be doing it.

Virus testing is closer to “nuclear power” complex than to “WWII tank” difficult. No one ever said, “hey, let’s spit out a thousand or so nuclear power stations in order to move to clean energy now.” Setting aside the politics, nuclear plants are difficult to build, require costly engineering and rigorous testing, and we have no tolerance for failures of any kind (rightly so). No nation wants faulty tests, or insensitive (false negatives) ones, or nonspecific (false positives) ones. The infrastructure for making tests can’t just be inflated. They can be increased at the nargin, and we are seeing that in many countries right now. New test equipment or processes have to go back through the same rigorous protocols, so again there is no shortcut.

Some things just take time. We are right to be impatient, but wrong if we ascribe blame when there is no alternative. Perhaps the problem is we’ve become used to modern medicine’s ability to do the seemingly impossible. We’ve come to expect science and medicine to do miracles. Read that sentence twice; the non sequitur should be obvious. That is the root of the problem. When science and medicine fail, we look for someone or something to blame. It may be rational, but it may not be correct.

* Back in the US Army in Germany in the eighties, we would go out on maneuvers for weeks, tramping around the German countryside. At the end of an exercise (ENDEX), there would be a day or so pause to re-organize before heading back home to garrison. The officers would find the nearest gasthaus and go for dinner and bier with the locals. It served two purposes: first to thank the locals for indulging our tearing up their farm fields, and second to blow off steam with a schnitzel and a great beer. We’d inevitably meet up with some old German WWII vets, who always told us they fought against the Russians. (Thus began a local joke: we won WWII because when we landed, Normandy was empty, since all the Germans were on the Eastern Front). One night, there was only one German left at the stammtisch when the night ended, and after several rounds of bier and Jagermeister, he fessed up to fighting on the Western front! We had to ask: what was it like fighting the US Army? “Ja, ich hatte es gern” (I liked it) he slurred, “when you hit the American tanks, the top popped off like a champagne cork!” We all grew quiet at the weight of what he said, and what it meant. “Good thing you got that fixed!” he quickly added.