The political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote that the most successful totalitarian leaders of the 20th century instilled in their followers “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism.” When they were lied to, they chose to believe it. When a lie was debunked, they claimed they’d known all along—and would then “admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” Over time, Arendt wrote, the onslaught of propaganda conditioned people to “believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.”

I read the article “The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President” in The Atlantic this morning (of which the above quote forms part of the conclusion) and it struck a chord. A campaign of uncertainty and lies, whispered into people’s ears. If the truth-checkers are themselves discredited, as the article points out, appeals to correctness won’t work. According to the article, some in the opposition think that using the same techniques is the answer, but to me that just opens them up to justified charges of dirty tricks which’ll be exploited by the administration and it’s representatives.

I’m not sure what the remedy is. Worth a read, and a think. One thing for sure, though: invalidating our tools for coming to grips with reality is a negative-sum game – reality will always bite you in the ass.

Take a road trip from Greece to Sweden, from Portugal to Hungary. Leave your passport behind. What a rich, teeming bundle of civilisations – in food, manners, architecture, language, and each nation state profoundly and proudly different from its neighbours. No evidence of being under the boot-heel of Brussels. Nothing here of continental USA’s dreary commercial sameness. Summon everything you’ve learned of the ruinous, desperate state of Europe in 1945, then contemplate a stupendous economic, political and cultural achievement: peace, open borders, relative prosperity, and the encouragement of individual rights, tolerance and freedom of expression. Until Friday this was where our grown-up children went at will to live and work.

Ian McEwan, in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/01/brexit-pointless-masochistic-ambition-history-done

So, the government won’t do it, at the local, regional, site or federal level. Let’s have the churches do it. Follow the example of https://boingboing.net/2020/01/22/a-pittsburgh-church-held-a-gun.html and pay money for guns. Fund it from the congregation. Hold it as a multi-day carnival. Point and shame the churches that won’t participate. Big finish, where guns are destroyed in a big metal press or something, to the cheers of the crowd. Freedom of religion, baby!

Donald Trump has been calling the press for decades using pseudonyms, passing on rumors that cast a favorable light on Donald Trump. Using this technique, he has inflated estimates of his net worth and his desirability amongst rich and powerful women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonyms_of_Donald_Trump

There’s an article in Fortune magazine from 2016 that describes his practice. Apparently still doing it as President.

https://fortune.com/2016/05/18/donald-trump-fake-names/

One of the most interesting papers I’ve read this year, and it comes in at the end of December:

Is Inequality Inevitable, Bruce Boghosian et al, Scientific American Nov 2019

(Via a post from Brewster Kahle where he implements the authors’ model as a dice game, The Game of Oligarchy

It shows how a simple model of free trade between equals degenerates into classes of rich and poor, even when the trade is voluntary, the value of the trade to each partner benefits one or the other randomly and the mechanism is iterated for a large number, how this reflects many well-understood processes in nature where phase changes emerge from chaotic interactions between individual elements, and how a simple model of redistribution can (and does, in real societies) fix the problem.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.^[

Source: John Gall (author) – Wikipedia

The Economist notes that the median age in China is on track to exceed that of the US. Bit of a game changer.

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/despairing-about-climate-crisis

In the conclusion she talks about the function of humans to sustain other forms of life, and I thought “that’s what my mum does when she’s working in the bush!”

Ian’s flying in from London, and he’s bought me a ticket to the MLS Cup in Seattle on Sunday. Going with him and Grant Neubauer; Ian and I have been watching the Sounders since they were pre-MLS and he was 8 or so. We’re going to have a ball.

That’s how he described this when he sent me the link

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Enterprise-Mobility-Security/Behind-the-scenes-How-Microsoft-and-Google-work-together-for/ba-p/987654

He came out to the Microsoft campus for a couple of days to shoot the video. The face of Google! I love it. Proud Dad.