J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 35

Drum: An Unprecedented National Catastrophe���Noted

I want to put Kevin Drum here in touch with Anne Applebaum here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/. Kevin is definitely asking the right questions here: Kevin Drum: How Did Republicans Become a Cult of Trump? https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/06/how-did-republicans-sink-into-a-cult-of-trump/: 'Bret Stephens writes today: "We are in the midst of an unprecedented national catastrophe... not the pandemic, or an economic depression, or killer cops, or looted cities, or racial inequities.... What's unprecedented is that never before have we been led by a man who so completely inverts the spirit of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.... We have a president who wants to replace rule of law with rule by the gun. If Trump now faces a revolt by the Pentagon's civilian and military leadership (both current and former) against his desire to deploy active-duty troops in American cities, it's because his words continue to drain whatever is left of his credibility as commander in chief..." What kind of party, or ideological movement, ends up nominating a person like this? And not just nominating, but nominating by a landslide against a perfectly competent and ordinary set of conservative opponents. Trump won the nomination with a pure grassroots campaign, during which he lied, insulted people, made up juvenile nicknames, displayed epic ignorance, and just generally acted the buffoon. His supporters knew exactly what they were getting, and they got it. So what has the Republican Party---Bret's party---been doing that led it to this point? And what will it do to avoid a repeat in the future? This requires some introspection and some interrogation. It's not enough to say that Trump is a catastrophe. Anyone who can pour piss out of a boot knows that. But what brought Republicans to this awful point? That's the more important question... .#noted #2020-07-09

Stafford: Quentin���s Zoom Webinar Checklist���Noted

Quentin Stafford: Quentin���s Zoom Webinar Checklist https://statusq.org/archives/2020/07/05/9701/:

[Consider] Webinar mode... a paid add-on,... [with] an Eventbrite-style registration system, polls, Q&A chat windows, post-call surveys, the ability to livestream to YouTube, etc.
Make sure your camera is around eye-level or higher. Laptop users, I���m looking at you!...
Make sure there���s more light in front of you than there is behind you.
Use ethernet rather than wifi if you possibly can.
Use a decent microphone....
Avoid distracting (or boring) backgrounds.
Don���t use virtual backgrounds or automatic blurring.
Mute yourself when your microphone isn���t needed....
Have at least one trial session!... You, any speakers, and one or two other helpers. You want everyone to know what it���s like to be a panelist, and what it���s like to be an attendee. Things you���ll want to find out:
Can attendees take part in the chat?
If so, will that distract the speaker?
If, instead, you���re using the Q&A window, who sees what and when?
Have one of your test attendees submit questions and answer them privately, publicly, or reject them. What do they see?
Suppose you want to allow an attendee to say something using audio, how do you do it?
How much of this will the speaker be able to see when they���re sharing their Powerpoint presentation?
If they have a video embedded in their presentation, will everyone hear its audio?
You need more than just two of you to try this kind of thing out.
Don���t hold your trial session just before the event!
If your speakers are going to be sharing their screen, test that out in advance with every speaker.
Giving the talk, running the meeting, and collating questions are three jobs and ideally need three people.
You will get lots of last-minute requests for the meeting link, no matter how many times you���ve sent it out beforehand. Have it to hand at all times.
reate a TinyURL link to it in case you have to text it to someone at short notice.
Consider disaster scenarios.
Make yourself a checklist.
Are you recording this? Have you notified everyone? Will you make it available afterwards?
Do you want attendees to be able to use the chat? Turn it off if not.
Do you want attendees to be able to use/see the Q&A window? Set appropriately.
Have you enabled screen-sharing for participants? That���s an option on the host���s screen-sharing menu.
Tell the panel: turn off your phone, turn off notifications on your desktop and quit all other apps, make sure your family and dog know you���re not to be disturbed.
Make contingency plans so you aren���t distracted if your doorbell rings?
Tell the attendees: whether you���re recording the meeting, whether the video will be available, where the video will be available, whether you���re using Zoom���s ���Raise Hand��� feature, and how you���re handling Q&A.
Have a backup plan for what to do if something suddenly goes badly wrong?
���Spotlight��� the current speaker���s video.
���Spotlighting��� the speaker���s video is a good safety measure to stop unexpected switches when somebody���s dog barks in the background after you forgot to mute them!
Think about how you are going to finish the meeting professionally. Consider the final words you want to be ringing in hundreds of people���s ears as they depart.
Beware the still-live microphones and cameras.
Stick around afterwards for a while

.#noted #2020-07-09

Scott: Coronavirus Cases Are Rising, But Covid-19 Deaths Are Falling. What���s Going On?���Noted

Dylan Scott: Coronavirus Cases Are Rising, But Covid-19 Deaths Are Falling. What���s Going On? https://www.vox.com/2020/7/6/21314472/covid-19-coronavirus-us-cases-deaths-trends-wtf: ���If deaths are not increasing along with cases, then why can���t we keep reopening?... I posed that very question to more than a dozen public health experts. All of them cautioned against complacency: This many cases mean many more deaths are probably in our future. And even if deaths don���t increase to the same levels seen in April and May, there are still some very serious possible health consequences if you contract Covid-19. The novel coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, is a maddeningly slow-moving pathogen���until it���s not. The sinking death rates reflect the state of the pandemic a month or more ago, experts say, when the original hot spots had been contained and other states had only just begun to open up restaurants and other businesses��� .#coronavirus #noted #publichealth #2020-07-09

Black: Bedbug Stephens, the New York Times, & the Anti-Mask Brigade���Noted

Duncan Black: Eschaton: The Anti-Mask Brigade https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/07/the-anti-mask-brigade.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/bRuz+(Eschaton): ���I got the play a couple of months ago. Sure it was gross and cynical���these are, charitably, gross and cynical people���but it made sense. The evil libs had a problem in big cities like New York and were trying to impose their Stalinist precautions on the rest of the country, mostly to make Dear Leader look bad. Even New York Times columnist Bedbug Stephens agreed! But now cases are booming elsewhere and they're in their own bases trying to murder their base���

.#coronavirus #moralresponsibility #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-07-09

A Grand Narrative Catechism: The Global Economic History of the Long 20th Century, 1870-2016

What does DeLong see as the proper temporal boundaries of the ���Long 20th Century���?

The Long 20th Century began around 1870, when the triple emergence of globalization, the industrial research lab, and the modern corporation in the context of the market economy set the world on the path that pulled it out of the dire poverty that was humanity���s lot in all centuries before; and when America took the steps that made it the place where much of the action was������the furnace where the future is forged���, to quote Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The Long Twentieth Century ended in 2016, with the sharp shock of the near-return of Great Depression-era macroeconomic conditions, with the failure of the anemic economic recovery from the Great Recession that started in 2008 to bring a restoration of the post-1870 normal pace of productivity growth; and with the election of Donald Trump, an American president hostile to global leadership, to global cooperation, and to the very ideas that America was open to immigrants.

.#berkeley #econ115 #economichistory #highlighted #slouchingtowardsutopia #tceh #teaching #teachingeconomics #teachinghistory #2020-07-08


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Holbo: 'This Maxim Is Patently, Grossly Inadequate for Governing a Blog Comment Box... Let Alone... Public Reason & a Public Sphere'���Noted

John Holbo: '[The Harpers letter says:] "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other" https://twitter.com/jholbo1/status/1280678001395372032. Some thoughts on 2nd-best solutions: This maxim is patently, grossly inadequate for governing a blog comment box... let alone a social media platform, let alone Public Reason and a Public Sphere. Ideally, we would live in a world in which this would be an ideal rule to follow. Ideally, the world contains no trolls, bots, bad faith actors���or few enough they can be dealt with retail not wholesale in the Marketplace of Ideas. In a world in which everyone were exchanging more or less in open-faced good faith, this rule would be good. In our actual world, however, it is not good. No, not really, sadly. Hence a dilemma. Insisting on the rule might seem to pull us towards that better world. Be the ideal discourse change you want to see! On the other hand���here is 2nd best wisdom���there is no guarantee that things fit for the best of all possible worlds also best suit ours...

...If you set this high bar and then���predictably���fail to clear it (you block people on Twitter rather than debating them ad nauseum, even though they are obviously trolls) you open yourself up to criticism of hypocrisy. Maybe things go backwards as a result. But there isn't really an obvious, simple 2nd best rule for our 2nd best world. It's easy-and therefore very proper!-to point out cases in which people and things and ideas have been 'cancelled' when they clearly should have been tolerated/debated. Not easy to articulate a stable norm about this, even a rule-of-thumb. One of the main obstacles is the discourse ethics of partisanship. Partisanship is not bad faith, but partisanship is, to some degree, a thing that should be damped in debate. The whole point of arguing is to consider changing your mind, via trying to change others' minds. So, ideally, partisans should-not disarm, that isn't it-but observe exacting dueling protocols when entering the debate arena. But this is hard to articulate and enforce.

Here's another problem. Nazis are bad. In a politically liberal world in which there are only a few Nazis, you can argue with them. It's like a vaccine. You are inoculating the discourse by injecting it with small amounts of moribund evil, to build antibodies. Unfortunately, it is a fallacy that, if vaccines are good, virulent diseases must be good, too. R's whine that they get called 'evil', but they support a President who tweets out 'White Power' and they are, no kidding, working to dismantle or hobble democracy. Why are leftists 'cancelling' right-wing ideas? Because the center of gravity of conservative thinking in the Republican party has lurched rightward. The R party really is laying its bets on securing minority white rule by manipulation of anti-democratic levers of power.

This is within the 'rules of the game', because the game was to some degree designed to be anti-democratic. But it is not something they are arguing for openly and honestly. It's not clear it's a good idea arguing with them as-if they were good faith actors about this. Future historians will debate 'cancel culture in the 2020's'. I hope they will be sensible enough rightly to identify as its main, root cause: breaches of norms of commitment to liberalism and democracy by the American right. 'Unless and until conservatism crawls out of its deplorable basket there isn't much realistic prospect of normalizing its tenets as non-deplorable, in discourse terms.' It is not reasonable to ask the left to pretend things stand otherwise than they do.

Another nexus of dispute is things like trans rights. I don't want to get into the whole JK Rowling thing. On the one hand, people ought to be more open to more perspectives on these things. Life is mysterious and strange and needs many perspectives on it. On the other hand, it isn't really reasonable to ask people to open themselves up to���to render themselves incapable of having reasonable discussions in the face of���bad faith attacks. I believe Rowling is arguing in good faith, even if I don't agree with what she is saying. But the pressure to 'cancel' that sort of thing does not seem to me to be due, primarily, to intolerance on the left. Rather, the problem is that MOST arguments and arguers on Rowling's side (but not her) are in bad faith. So it's hard to debate Rowling in good faith without polluting the discourse, absolutely, by letting a lot of bad faith sewage seep in.

If you want a world in which a good faith argument is possible between Rowling and her critics (which I do!) work to bring about a world in which there is less bad-faith arguing from the right on trans rights. Let me be very specific about that. The bad faith arguments all have the same form. They are what I call 'downstream worries' arguments. If 'trans rights are human rights' we have pronoun trouble, or need new norms for bathrooms or women's sports or in womens' shelters. Or philosophical ideas about the metaphysics of gender will be problematized. All this is true and some of it may get bumpy. But there's really no point arguing about it without a high baseline of initial acceptance of trans rights. If trans rights are human rights, how are we going to run sports/use pronouns? But the bad faith arguers are not willing to debate the antecedent honestly. They have a sense they'll lose, and they are right. So they fuss about bathrooms to pollute discourse with issues that can only be reasonably discussed after we accept something they don't, but aren't willing to argue about honestly. There is no reason to put up with the debate being rendered nonsensical.

It's fine to 'cancel' those who monkey wrench liberal discourse, rather than engage in honest debate. Unfortunately, that means those who are adjacent to bad faith actors, but in good faith, get cancelled-by-association. That's unfortunate but hard to rule out, with a rule. So I can't agree with the letter of the letter, although I do wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of the letter. So, in spirit, I sign the letter. In the best of all possible worlds. But not, like, with the letters of my name in a 2nd best world. (Is that right?)...

.#cognition #noted #publicsphere #2020-07-07

Popehat: The Problem of the Preferred First Speaker���Noted

So now Jennifer Finney Boylan self-cancels for signing the Harpers letter, and Emily van Der Werff says that Matt Yglesias's signing it makes her feel "less she" at vox.com���thus triggering Vox Media's Human Resources Department by putting them on notice that other employees are creating an environment unsafe for her. My first reaction to the letter was "in the world of Trump, of COVID-19, of global warming, of the murder of George Floyd, of the clearing of Lafayette Park of peaceful protesters with tear gas so the President accompanied by the CJCS can walk through���this is the type of action in the public sphere you think you should take? What's wrong with you?" But my second reaction is turning into: "Well played, John R. MacArthur, well played!": Popehat: ���I like and respect many of these people https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1280662627014721536[who signed "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate"]. But I continue to struggle with the concept. The distinction between ���silencing��� and more/responsive/critical speech eludes me. I see instead the problem of the preferred first speaker. ���The problem of the preferred first speaker��� is the tendency to impose norms of civility, openness, productiveness, and dialogue-encouraging on a RESPONSE to expression that we do not impose on the expression itself. On the other hand, some of the reactions to this seem absolutely devoted to making its point. Ugh. No seriously, now I wonder if the letter was crafted to make its point not in its text but through the anticipated reactions. Good Lord above people. I mean if that was their intent���to illustrate their proposition through anticipated reactions���I have to compliment them on their craft, even if I don't agree with them entirely.

Jennifer Finney Boylan: I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company.

Also, "public shaming and ostracism" are free speech and association, and I guarantee you that you support them���you just disagree with me about when they should be used. Be suspicious of free speech philosophies that require you to refrain from speaking to promote speech���

.#noted #publicsphere #2020-07-07

De Tocqueville: "Property... a... badge of fraternity. The wealthy... elder... but all... members of one family..."���Noted

Alexis de Tocqueville: Recollections. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37892/37892-h/37892-h.htm: ���The steward of my estate, himself half a peasant, describing what was taking place in the country immediately after the 24th of February [1848], wrote: "People here say that if Louis-Philippe has been sent away, it is a good thing, and that he deserved it...." This was to them the whole moral of the play. But when they heard tell of the disorder reigning in Paris, of the new taxes to be imposed, and of the general state of war that was to be feared... and when, in particular, they learnt that the principle of property was being attacked, they did not fail to perceive that there was something more.... I was at once struck by a spectacle that both astonished and charmed me.... In the country all the landed proprietors, whatever their origin, antecedents, education or means, had come together, and seemed to form but one class: all former political hatred and rivalry of caste or fortune had disappeared from view. There was no more jealousy or pride displayed between the peasant and the squire, the nobleman and the commoner; instead, I found mutual confidence, reciprocal friendliness, and regard. Property had become, with all those who owned it, a sort of badge of fraternity. The wealthy were the elder, the less endowed the younger brothers; but all considered themselves members of one family, having the same interest in defending the common inheritance. As the French Revolution had infinitely increased the number of land-owners, the whole population seemed to belong to that vast[116] family. I had never seen anything like it, nor had anyone in France within the memory of man... .#equitablegrowth #history #noted #politicaleconomy #politics #2020-07-07

Scalzi: Five Things: July 7, 2020���Noted

John Scalzi: Five Things: July 7, 2020 https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/07/07/five-things-july-7-2020/: ���Donald Trump a father-damaged sociopath: Or so suggests niece Mary Trump in her new book.... My own very quick take.... Honestly at this point if you don���t know Donald Trump is a terrible person, it���s because you���ve decided you don���t want to know.... Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus: Which, well, good, since he���s pretty much the only major world leader further into denial about the virus than our own president.... I wouldn���t feel entirely put out if the virus kicked his ass... a lot. Him coming out... with minimal effect... would probably be even worse... since he really does seem like the ���see, it wasn���t so bad, f--- you for thinking otherwise��� sort.... This wouldn���t have any upside for that country���s citizens. Lin-Manuel Miranda with a healthy response to Hamilton criticisms.... ���I had a lot to cover and two and a half hours to cover it all, choices were made, criticize away,��� which is a) a very sensible way of dealing with criticism, b) easy to say when the art in question has garnered one Tonys and Pulitzers and literally millions of dollars.... Also, bluntly, criticism means the work is still alive in culture. That���s not chopped liver for an artist��� .#noted #2020-07-07

Citino: Death of the Wehrmacht���Noted

Robert Citino: Death of the Wehrmacht: 'Tobruk was just the latest example, but all the German campaigns of this [early 1942] period were essentially similar. In Kerch, Kharkov, Gazala, Tobruk, and Sevastopol, the Wehrmacht had won five of the most decisive victories in its entire history. It was an amazing run that represented a climax for the German way of war as it had developed since the 1600s. It had taken nearly 600,000 prisoners in that stretch, its own casualties had been low���almost nonexistent if we exclude Sevastopol. It had fought each of these battles from a position of numerical inferiority. If the highest military accomplishment is the ability to "fight outnumbered and win," the Wehrmacht seemed to have the market cornered by 1942...

...It achieved this enviable record of triumph by conducting its operations in the time-honored Prusso-German tradition. All were carefully prepared, highly aggressive, and centered around an operational-level maneuver designed to get onto the opponent's flank and rear with a significant portion of the available force. From that point on, the intent was always the same: to kessel most or all of the enemy's main body, subject it to concentric attack in the classic style, and destroy it. The breakthrough against the carefully chosen left wing of the Soviet line at Kerch; the maneuver at Kharkov, finding the deep left flank of the Soviet position and driving it in relentlessly; Rommel's drive into the British rear at Gazala, landing a first-round blow from which the enemy never recovered; the Afrika Korps's drive far to the east of Tobruk, followed by the sudden turnabout; Manstein's nighttime crossing of Severnaya Bay, bypassing the still unbroken Soviet defensive line in front of Sevastopol: again and again in this period, it was the surprising operational-level maneuver that delivered a shock to the adversary and brought victory even against unfavorable numerical odds.

None of this was new. Tanks and aircraft had given it a more modern sheen, but the essence was historical. It was an operational approach that had been burned into the German officer corps since Frederick the Great. As one German officer wrote in July 1942:

When we think of the decisive sources of strength that make up the concept of German soldiering, not the last among them is tradition. The military fabric of our day is not the result of a single deed. It has formed it- self organically by a difficult, centuries-long process.

Here is the authentic voice of the German officer corps, one that had emerged from an old and traditional historical matrix:

Tradition is bound up with memory of all the warlike events that have played themselves out on all the battlefields of the centuries. Leuthen and Kunersdorf, Jena and Auerstadt, Leipzig and Waterloo, Koniggratz and Sedan, Tannenberg and Gorlice-Tarnow: all the victories and battles that German soldiers have sealed with their blood arise before our eyes...

In other words, the great victories at Kerch and Kharkov, Gazala and Tobruk did not emerge from nowhere. They were instead part of a tradition, and they owed as much to the legacy of Frederick the Great and Moltke as they did to the genius of a Manstein, Kleist, or Rommel.

The decisive nature of these triumphs notwithstanding, they had been mere preliminaries to the upcoming main event. As spring yielded to the high summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht would return once again to the grand offensive. Operation Blue would take the army to many places that it had never dreamed of before: to the industrial city of Stalingrad on the Volga River, to the oil fields of Maikop in the Caucasus Mountain region, to forbiddingly remote places like the Kuban and the Taman and the Kalmuk���and, for the first time, to a place that was truly terra incognita to officers and men of the Wehrmacht alike: an annihilating defeat in a campaign of maneuver...

.#noted #2020-07-09