Pictures help a lot.

Along those lines, this is the best illustration I’ve seen yet on what the U.S. debt looks like, in visual terms that anyone can understand: http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

Note: I don’t know anything about that web site, other than this illustration, so I can’t testify if it’s a bunch of fruitcakes or not. All I know is that they know how to successfully illustrate very large numbers in an effective form.

For the best rendition of the illustrations, go directly to their site here: http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

Here’s a re-creation of their page. It is important to click on the images for the full size versions.

One Hundred Dollars $100

- Most counterfeited money denomination in the world.
Keeps the world moving.

Ten Thousand Dollars $10,000

- Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car.
Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.

One Million Dollars $1,000,000

- Not as big of a pile as you thought, huh?
Still this is 92 years of work for the average human on earth.

One Hundred Million Dollars $100,000,000

- Plenty to go around for everyone.
Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet.

One Billion Dollars $1,000,000,000

- You will need some help when robbing the bank.
Now we are getting serious!

One Trillion Dollars $1,000,000,000,000
When the U.S government speaks about a 1.7 trillion deficit – this is the volumes of cash the U.S. Government borrowed in 2010 to run itself.

Keep in mind it is double stacked pallets of $100 million dollars each, full of $100 dollar bills. You are going to need a lot of trucks to freight this around.

If you spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, you would have not spent $1 trillion by now…but ~$700 billion- same amount the banks got during bailout.

One Trillion Dollars Comparison of $1,000,000,000,000 dollars to a standard sized American Football field and European Football field.

Say hello to the Boeing 747-400 transcontinental airliner that’s hiding on the right. This was until recently the biggest passenger plane in the world.

15 Trillion Dollars $15,000,000,000,000

- Unless the U.S. government fixes the budget, US national debt (credit card bill) will topple 15 trillion by Christmas 2011.

Statue of Liberty seems rather worried as United States national debt passes 20% of the entire world’s combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

In 2011 the National Debt will exceed 100% of GDP, and venture into the 100%+ debt-to-GDP ratio that the European PIIGS have (bankrupting nations).

114.5 Trillion Dollars $114,500,000,000,000

- US unfunded liabilities
To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the
WTC & Empire State Building – both at one point world’s tallest buildings.

If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.

The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government
knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program,
Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not
have to pay all its bills.

If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with
everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve
them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People.

The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic
shifts in US Population.

Note: On the above 114.5T image the size of the base of the money pile is half a trillion, not 1T as on 15T image.
The height is double. This was done to reflect the base of Empire State and WTC more closely.

Everyone needs to see this.

Source: Federal Reserve & www.USdebtclock.org – visit it to see the debt in real time and get a better grasp of this amazing number.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good compilation of Mr. Yon’s blog posts plus some original material from the relevant period of his war reporting in Iraq. The story is worthy, but the book is fatally flawed by a lack of professional editing. Mr. Yon’s war reporting deserves 10 stars, but the book, as a book, does not.

Michael Yon is unsurpassed in current-generation, in person, ground-truth war reporting. His honest perspectives on the day-to-day lives of the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen (and women) are comparable only to the previous generations’ Ernie Pyle and Joe Galloway.

Mr. Yon has done his best to leverage the modern day’s blog and social media channels to get his message out, and is perhaps the world’s best known example of an independent, consumer supported, front line reporter. He is independent, works for no news agency, and is entirely economically supported via donations and book sales.

If you haven’t read his blog or his Facebook stream, they are worth the time. They are probably the only unfiltered information you will ever see about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By unfiltered I do not mean entirely objective. Mr. Yon has a point of view and he is very honest about reflecting that point of view in his messages. That honesty is what makes his reporting real, believable and, ultimately, valuable.

He has not been immune to being used by the media, the military, the politicians and others seeking to leverage gain. Even so, the net-net of what you gain from his raw dispatches from the field more than offset the spin-machine manifestations of his material.

* Blog: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
(You will struggle to find a way to read his blog posts/reports from beginning to end. The blog site is not reflective of current-era content management system (CMS) capability so it’s nearly impossible to read things in a chronological order. Again, Mr. Yon’s work deserves better.)

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPa…
* Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Michael_Yon

All of this adds up to an extraordinary person who has made amazing sacrifices to bring back stories and photos from wars and trouble spots all over the world, but especially Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are all in his debt for his efforts.

Having said all of that, Mr. Yon desperately needs a professional editor. His books are primarily compilations of his blog posts and are mostly direct copy and paste efforts. Consequently, they suffer from misspellings, grammar errors, reptition/duplication and other things you expect in a blog post pounded out while under fire at the front lines but don’t expect to find in a professional level book. Mr. Yon’s writing and photography deserve better.

As a writer, Mr. Yon shows continuing development since his early days, and has found his voice.

As a photographer, Mr. Yon demonstrates the power and capability of modern camera equipment. By that I mean that he has been able to bring back good, solid imagery, even from his initial efforts. He continues to improve as a shooter and his hard work and dedication in learning this new medium are obvious in the improvement he has shown over the years.

Summary:
* As a war reporter: Among the best – ever – from any era.
* As a writer: Good, with a mature and capable voice. Very much needs a professional editor for his books.
* As a photographer: Still a work in progress. The camera is not yet a fully formed tool in Mr. Yon’s hands, a tool that he can use as a medium of expression as he can his writing. He’s been moving through the stages of learning what all the controls are for, but even then his camera gear has been capable of bringing back amazing imagery. He’s at the point where he can capture a shot. As a shooter, that is different from creating a photograph as a means of expression. I believe he will continue to evolve and grow and will eventually develop an eye as a shooter, as he has developed a voice as a writer. Endless kudos to Mr. Yon for taking the gear into battle and capturing the shots.

Again, we are all in his debt for his efforts.

Regardless of how you feel about any of the conflicts, countries, regions or religions Mr. Yon covers, you will be hard pressed to find a more open and direct channel into what is actually happening there. Other information sources bring you the remains of multiple layers of filter, skew and spin. Mr. Yon brings you the ground truth.

View all my reviews

The political destiny of the U.S. for the next 25 years is sealed.

Here’s how:

In the United States, the proportion of the population aged >65 years is projected to increase from 12.4% in 2000 to 19.6% in 2030 (3). The number of persons aged >65 years is expected to increase from approximately 35 million in 2000 to an estimated 71 million in 2030 (3), and the number of persons aged >80 years is expected to increase from 9.3 million in 2000 to 19.5 million in 2030 (3). In 1995, the most populous states had the largest number of older persons; nine states (California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas) each had more than one million persons aged >65 years (4). In 1995, four states had >15% of their population aged >65 years; Florida had the largest proportion (19%) (5). By 2025, the proportion of Florida’s population aged >65 years is projected to be 26% (5) and >15% in 48 states (all but Alaska and California) (5).

(source: CDC http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5206a2.htm )

Here’s how it looks graphically in one of those demographic pyramid charts I’m always ranting about. (Note that the axis scale changes; what’s important is the shape)

(click image for larger size)

(source: US Census Bureau)

The disaster of Japan’s demographics:

(click image for larger size)

Sources: Japan Statistics Bureau, Japan MIC, Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Note the inverting demographic pyramid as Japan moves through time. The point is that there are not enough young workers to pay for the social cost of the aging, non-working population, especially health care. Northern and western Europe and Russia exhibit similar demographic pyramids.

The only reason the U.S. chart doesn’t look like Japan’s is immigration. Immigration is the only chance to have enough young workers to pay for the older population. If you strip out the immigrant population in the U.S., the demographic pyramid looks a lot more like Japan’s.

So, what’s the point of this as it relates to politics?

Older people tend to vote more conservatively.

Sources:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/106042/age-vote-more-strongly-related-obamamccain-matchup.aspx

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html

Older people tend to vote for older people.

Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1987.tb00318.x/abstract

Older people vote more than young people.

(click image for larger size)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/elections/voting-age_population_and_voter_participation.html

Older people watch more television.

Sources:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988273

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/16/broadcast-tv-audience-agi_n_683009.html

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/prime-time-tv-viewers-by-age-demog

Older viewers watch conservative news.

Sources:

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/05/05/average-age-of-fox-news-viewer-is-65/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/live-feed/fox-news-oldest-cable-audience-54230

Older people are the fastest growing segment of internet users and blog more than younger age cohorts.

Sources:

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/social-networking-rises-especially-among-younger-set-11886/pew-change-internet-use-age-feb-2010jpg/

http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/2010/Internet-acess-by-age-group-over-time.aspx

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1093/generations-online

There are 76 million baby boomers coming down the demographic pipe, 24.4% of the 2011 population.

Source: U.S. Census bureau

(click image for larger size)

Chart source: CDC

People in the U.S. are living longer.

(click image for larger size)

Source: World Bank

The boomers will be around for a long time: 1955 + 80 = 2035.

Source: elementary math

Political Implications:

As the rat of the boomers moves down the demographic snake and the U.S. population ages out, the U.S. will go through an extended period of conservative voting driven by an increasingly aging population that has little more to do than sit in front of the television and the internet.

In parallel to the aging out of the boomers and their increasing political conservatism and intellectual isolation and decline, the U.S. will go through an extended period of political, social and cultural crisis of confidence and identity as the rest of the world catches up economically and collectively threatens and attenuates the multi-faceted global dominance the boomers’ world view took for granted.

If geopolitics remain comparatively stable, the U.S. will remain relatively center-right politically when compared to OECD peers, as they also trend toward conservative politics driven by their own similar demographic shifts and perceived geopolitical and domestic threats.

Due to the demographics, there will be an opportunity for a radical shift in the U.S. to a far-right, ultra-nationalist political movement if a significant and extended crisis threatens “life as we’ve always known and remember it” in the U.S. Examples of disruption that could trigger such a move include: energy, food, climate, large-scale regional war, world war, financial collapse, etc.

Conclusion:

It is difficult to imagine any demographic or geopolitical scenario conducive to a sustained left/liberal political agenda in the U.S. for the next 25 years.

Some people want to abolish federal taxes. Just about everybody would like to pay less federal taxes. I think it’s safe to say that everyone would like to see federal tax dollars used more efficiently.

I don’t think it’s realistic to champion an idyllic version of a U.S. society that can exist in the modern world with no tax funding, so I can’t support the first group.

I agree wholeheartedly with the last group, but have enough time under my belt working with governments and large corporations to know that there is not enough waste, fraud and abuse to make the up the gap between what things cost and how much will soon be available to pay for it. So, yes, more efficiency is good. But, trying to sell a version of the near future where massive budget shortfalls will be covered by arresting a few beltway bandits and embezzling secretaries is itself fraudulent.

However, the middle notion, that of reducing the federal tax burden–and how to do it by 40%– is achievable.

It won’t happen overnight and it won’t be without hard work and compromise, two things our current government and especially our elected representatives are apparently incapable of achieving.

Nonetheless, it can happen. Here’s how.

In 2009, U.S. federal income taxes brought in $915 billion dollars, according to the U.S. federal budget.

In 2009, the U.S. sent at least $1 billion per day overseas to buy foreign oil. Some say it’s more like $2 billion per day, but I’ll use the more conservative numbers and go with $1 billion per day. That adds up to an easy-to-remember number: $365 billion dollars.

You can probably do the math in your head, but the precise number is that we are spending 39.89%, or a nice round 40% of our federal income taxes, on buying foreign oil.

Want to see your federal income taxes go down by 40%?

Support energy independence and ensure you only elect people who promise to, and actually do, take concrete action towards that goal.

I read a good article on the radical re-making of the advertising market today: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/mayhem-on-madison-avenue.html

The article referenced a classic post by Clay Shirky that I’d read before, but was worth revisiting: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

Clay, in turn, referenced a book by Joseph Tainter,  The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Tainter makes many compelling observations, as summarized by Shirky:

“Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden decoherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.

When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.”

Although Shirky was using Tainter’s work to illustrate a point about the revolution in media and content production, specifically video, and it is perfectly applicable to the collapse of the old business models in advertising, it is also worth considering in Tainter’s original context: societies as a whole.

I’ve long had an essay simmering in my head regarding the brittle nature of the United States, as a pure reflection of that word: brittle, meaning very strong in compression but lacking the ability to resist stresses across its internal structure. For instance, if you put a brittle pane of glass on a flat surface, it will easily support a very large amount of weight placed upon it. However, if you support each end of that pane of glass and place even a small weight on the center, it will crack and shatter. The pane of glass, like the U.S. and most nation states, is capable of resisting huge amounts of external force when those forces are perceived as being placed uniformly against the entire structure of the nation. However, if those forces are applied unevenly, in a way that stresses the internal bonds of the structure, disunity results.

A similar situation is at work in China, where its recurring cycle of tension between the rich trading provinces along the coast and the still-mired-in-poverty interior provinces is placing stress on its internal bonds. China uses two primary means to maintain its internal coherence: rising economic prosperity and stoking nationalism via the boogey men of Japan, the West and the U.S., not necessarily in that order. When economic prosperity falters, there are coincidental, and certainly convenient, international incidents with Japan or other neighboring countries, often accompanied by a revisiting of Japanese WWII atrocities inflicted on China. If local conflict isn’t enough to incite unifying nationalism, then a few rounds of anti-West or anti-U.S. rhetoric or parallel international incidents usually does the trick.

You may or may not notice a similar pattern, with a reversed set of roles and leading villains, in the U.S. In geopolitics, stoking nationalism to increase internal cohesion and cement the political power of the ruling class is typically the first official act in the face of dis-unifying challenges. The U.S. is no exception to that rule.

I perceive a potential unhappy confluence of forces in the near- to mid-term in this regard.

It wouldn’t take much of Tainter’s reduction in circumstances to produce enough internal stresses to shatter a brittle U.S.

The only thing that could hold it together would be the same basic tools that China (and everybody else) uses: economic prosperity or supposed external threats to fuel cohesive nationalism. Excess economic prosperity sufficient to offset reduction in circumstances does not look to be likely in the U.S. in the foreseeable future. Lacking economic prosperity, there’s only one typical, basic, blunt tool remaining: artificially induced and inflated nationalism.

Since the rise of the nation state, inflated nationalism coupled with the perception of external threats has a direct correlation with negative outcomes.

Stay tuned.

I had an interesting exchange of Facebook comments with my friend Lee Wochner  regarding the post Six Lessons. Since I keep my Facebook world pretty cloistered, I thought I’d share the comments with the wider world here on Autopsis.

10/16/2010

Lee Wochner commented on your post.

“I’m not sure your metaphor applies to politics or governance. Capitulation and agreement and consensus are not always better than the toussle of strong wills. Slavery didn’t go easily into the night; neither did the Great Depression. Integrating the schools, building the social safety net, and passing financial reform all were championed and achieved by one faction over the objections the other. Perhaps bipartisanship is over-rated. Perhaps we need better partisans actively arguing their cause and pushing their platforms — and let the better argument win.”

10/19/2010

Lee, 93% of Americans think there is too much partisanship in politics (NBC/WSJ poll). Even Bill White, Democratic candidate for governor in TX didn’t vote a straight ticket yesterday, saying, “We need to get away from this strident partisanship and sound bite politics.” I agree on all counts. For more info on why partisanship doesn’t work, read the “Getting from A to B” section here: http://hackneys.com/blog/2010/06/12/facing-the-future/

10/19/2010

Lee Wochner commented on your post.

“Doug, 93% of Americans are wrong about everything. Isn’t that a theme of your posts? We eat too much, exercise too little, follow celebrity advice, don’t plan for financial collapse, and on and on. The country wouldn’t have been founded had it been contingent upon a survey. What I’m asking is, can we identify examples in U.S. history where bipartisanship led to great success? I can’t think of any. Perhaps it’s over-rated.”

10/19/2010

Lee, The theme of the compiled posts is that there are a converging set of existential threats that are not well understood or appreciated, hyper-partisanship being a major contributing factor among those. For examples of success via bipart…isanship, a good recent one is the financial stimulus. Economic policy-wonk, academic and non-partisan observer consensus is that it prevented another global depression. Working back from there, you should consider the lesser known, counter-intuitive / out-of-partisan-character changes such as medicare pharma benefits (W. Bush), welfare reform (Clinton) and the doubling of spending on the poor (Nixon). The iconic examples of U.S. bipartisan success are outspending the U.S.S.R. into oblivion, the Apollo program, WWII, etc. For non-U.S. examples, you don’t have to go any further than 33 miners in Chile. Anything is possible when people work to achieve a common goal. The challenge here in the U.S. is that there is no sense of national purpose, thus no common goal.

10/19/2010

Lee Wochner commented on your post.

“Hm. The recent financial stimulus (which I agree was a success), was pushed through by the majority party (and now, by the way, the minority party is actively campaigning against it — including those who went with their hands out for funding projects back home). Welfare reform was driven by the Republicans (Clinton reluctantly signed it). Spending the USSR into oblivion was less a concerted endeavor spurred by policy, and more the excitement of everyone at lining up at the trough. Slavery was ended by the Republicans; the social safety net was created by the Democrats during the Great Depression. World War II was entered into late and reluctantly — after we were attacked; once we were threatened, then of course national purpose swung into view. I don’t see a great historic pattern of bi-partisanship achieving great results. What I do know is that a committed faction often achieves tremendous change (for good and bad).”

The cherry-picked examples you provide do not overcome the disastrous negative effects of gridlocked government populated with partisan ideologues. Politics, and thus public policy, is the art of the possible. The only thing that is possible with partisan ideologues is more partisanship.

The “tremendous change” you celebrate is the rallying cry of partisans everywhere. The tribal inclusion, emotional reward and status of believing in and participating in that “tremendous change” is what drives partisan recruitment and participation. That emotional reward comes from rallying the side to fight against the opposing partisans and the personification of all that is evil, the other side’s leader.

The resulting battle swings the nation left, then right, then left and then right again. During those about-face turns and charges left and then right there are overwhelming levels of righteous indignation and energy expended running this way and then that way. But none of that energy matters, nothing really matters, except defeating the other side.

Opposing, then advancing, back and forth the battle rages. From down in the partisan trenches, there is alternating euphoria and then terror, with certain doom only averted when the direction is changed once again.

From that perspective, down in the trenches, each side is filled with energy, sending wave after wave of true believers, Kool-aid drinkers and loyal foot-soldiers into the fray. Each side is bursting with the certain knowledge that they are saving the nation by opposing, at any cost, the other partisan side.

But, from an external perspective, from the outside looking in, it is clear that all the partisans are doing is running from sideline to sideline, left and then right. They are so consumed with partisan hatred they don’t realize that they are actually supposed to be on the same side, much less realize they are supposed to advance the ball down the field instead of running back and forth, left and then right.

In the country’s current situation, the partisans, locked in their eternal struggle to achieve and retain power at any cost, are extremely unlikely to notice that there are multiple common opponents, multiple existential threats, bearing down on them. The partisans will almost certainly remain locked in their internecine battle and never look up before they are steamrolled, en masse.

But in the meantime, there will be plenty of bread and circuses to keep the masses entertained, watching the partisans rush laterally left, then right, then left, then right…

I am in full agreement that money in politics is the essential starting point to meeting the challenges of effective governance in the U.S. It’s estimated that more than $4 billion was spent on the campaign for today’s 2010 mid-term elections. That’s more than the GDP of 67 countries. That’s more than four times what the U.S. spends on the Small Business Administration (0.8B) and more than half what is spent on the National Science Foundation ($7.0B). Where are the U.S.’s priorities?

I agree that there is little chance for an eminent reduction in partisanship in the U.S. I believe hyper-partisanship in the U.S. will get much worse before, or if, it gets better. I also believe the ongoing negative effects of hyper-partisanship will continue to act as a retrograde force on the U.S. in all respects, e.g. economic, cultural, education, domestic policy, foreign policy, etc.

I agree wholeheartedly that everything, be it the light bulb or women’s suffrage, most often begins with a single person and their drive, will and determination to see it through, often with a group of committed followers.

However, in the case of public policy, I disagree regarding the most effective way to craft, pass and sustain public policy. I do not believe that today’s hyper-partisan environment is conducive to the implementation of public policy that reflects the broad consensus of citizens or that is likely to survive the next election cycle.

Thank you for providing the examples of social policies you believe to be examples of partisan accomplishments. I think they illustrate my point well in that they are all examples from previous centuries. In those times, it was common to have inter-party personal relationships and regular social interaction. Cross aisle cooperation was part-and-parcel of the legislative process.

In that era, the movement of the partisan cycle created a waveform that was of low amplitude and low frequency, meaning the changes from left to right were generally moderate in their extent and the period between changes of extremes was often long. That was what made the public policies you call out as examples possible.

How many of the votes that passed and sustained those policies were due to back-room horse trading, votes of conscience and party-line votes only once it was assured the opposition had enough votes in hand to reach its goals? Only close academic study and deep knowledge of the actions and personalities of the majority and minority leaders, as well as their whips, could enable an answer.

No such mysteries exist today, or any such possibilities.

We live in a new century with a U.S. political partisan waveform that is high amplitude and high frequency, meaning it swings from one ever-more extreme to the other at very short intervals. The U.S. suffers a congress that is run by caucus; party caucuses that require lock-step compliance with ever more extreme ideologues. Success is measured only in opposing the other party and anything it proposes. The only route to implementing public policy is when one party dominates the legislature and the executive branch. However, even in that circumstance, whatever public policy they implement, regardless of its true merit, is used as a partisan lightning rod to rally opposition for the next election. As soon as the opposing party gains some measure of control, any public policy that was the product of the opposition is repealed, gutted or de-funded.

As a society, the U.S. suffers greatly from the gridlock and lack of progress the current hyper-partisan system engenders. While other societies and economies progress, the U.S. idles or slides backwards, in both real and comparative terms. And, as I mentioned earlier, while the partisans enjoy the rush of energy and brief celebrations of victory at each swing of power, left-right-left-right, those who have an external perspective note that there is zero forward progress.

The challenge for the country is twofold. First, as more and more radical ideology is required to stand out and differentiate among the partisan ideologues (read: get media and blog coverage to drive celebrity), along with higher and higher party-required levels of compliance with that ideology, human history illustrates that at some point it will become ideologically impossible to accept any group being in power other than the group that has power. When the partisans get to the extremes of the ideological spectrum, it becomes inconceivable that power could be entrusted to the opposition. When you can’t give up power, you become a totalitarian regime. The U.S. political hyper-partisans are moving very close to, if not already on, the slippery slope that leads directly to the totalitarian regime scenarios that you mentioned.

The second scenario is not violent seizure or illegal retention of power, but conscious choice by the electorate. In previously democratic societies, those totalitarian regimes you refer to are almost always a preferred choice to chaos, which can be the chaos of violence, such as when the Taliban are preferred over bloody anarchy, or a preferred choice to political gridlock and chaotic social policy and economic conditions, such as when the National Socialists were chosen as the salvation of the Weimar Republic.

Partisan ideological purists offer simple solutions to complex, intractable problems. Those simple solutions almost always feature external causality, meaning the blame for any problems lies elsewhere than among the followers of the ideologue. People, especially people under societal stress, very much prefer simple solutions, especially solutions that cast the blame on someone other than the electorate. Thus, in times of societal, economic and cultural crisis, the masses tend to be susceptible to charismatic ideologues who proclaim simple solutions while demonizing others as the cause for all the problems.

Consequently, in almost all previously democratic system cases, it seemed like a really good idea to the people at the time to choose what was known to be or turned out to be a totalitarian regime: they offered the best choice versus chaos or gridlock.

In the U.S.’s current situation, those who support and encourage partisanship support and encourage gridlock, lack of progress and continued deferral of the imminent, societal-scale challenges that the U.S. faces. The closer the U.S. gets to the looming existential threats, the more it will feel like chaos is imminent and that gridlock is unacceptable. That could very well be an inflection point in U.S. political history, a point where a well-funded, media-powered charismatic ideologue, surrounded by uncompromising acolytes and blindly loyal masses, rises to supreme and unquestioned power. Stay tuned.

Something that mitigates the probabilities for that scenario, and a real challenge for the partisans, is that the hyper-partisans only make up about seven percent of the U.S. electorate. As I mentioned, ba…sed on recent polling, just about everybody else thinks the country needs less partisanship. In particular, poll results show that independents, who are currently vacillating every two years between left and right while swinging the elections accordingly, support more bi-partisanship and less hyper-partisanship.

The question is, while it is easy for the hyper-partisans to keep their foot soldiers, true believers and Kool-Aid drinkers enthusiastic about the energy-laced, rapid-fire oscillations from left to right and back again, how do the hyper-partisans keep the other 93 percent of the U.S. electorate from noticing that almost nothing is being done, what is being done is being quickly undone and the existential threats are only growing more ominous by the day?

The race seems to be if the hyper-partisans can create enough perception of chaos to generate a societal consensus that their simple answers to complex, intractable problems seem like a better permanent choice than the bi-annual swing from left to right to left to right.

Given infinite prosperity, infinite energy and infinite resources, the current situation, which profits no one but the hyper-partisans and the people who make and sell political advertising, could go on forever. However, the U.S. is slowly waking up to the realization that there is no more infinite prosperity, no more infinite energy and no more infinite resources. What there is more of are massive, societal-scale challenges that are being ignored by the partisans, apparently in the hopes that when they can no longer be ignored, the electorate will choose a permanent, final solution that features the partisans’ ideology.

I learned six lessons today.

The lessons came from over the bridge.

 (click on photos for larger image)

Lesson One: What goes up, often comes down.

We’ve had a long, good run around this part of the world, but now we’re in a downward portion of the cycle. If we don’t pull up, we (and that’s not the royal we, that’s the collective we, as in you and me and just about everyone else you know) will, in aviation terms, “auger in.” That means we’ll “buy the farm.” That means that if we don’t get it together and turn things around, it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.  

Lesson Two: Collective fate.

Lesson Three: The cost of anarchy.

Everybody being able to do their own thing in their own way with no consideration of what the impact is on anyone else sounds great in the abstract. That type of thinking makes a lot of sense when you don’t have anything to lose or you just don’t give a damn.

But, if you’ve got something to lose, and the anarchic actions of someone else around you can not only cause you to lose everything you’ve got, but also cause them to lose everything they’ve got, then it doesn’t make any sense at all.

Lesson Four: The cost of partisanship.

The chances of getting anything done when half of the people are aligned exactly opposite of the other half is exactly zero. If all you want to do is be exactly opposite, exactly opposed, to whatever the other half is attempting to achieve, then collective progress is exactly zero.

When the collective formation is heading into the ground, being intent on being opposed does not help the overall goal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All it does is guarantee that everyone will auger in at more or less the same time.

Lesson Five: Success requires cooperation.

If you want to keep things in the air, then you need to keep an eye on what the overall priorities are—keeping things in the air—and cooperate with who is up in the air with you.

That’s the only way you keep things moving forward.

And return them to an upward trajectory.

Lesson Six: Things are much closer than they appear.

Those who promote diametrically-opposed partisanship or knee-jerk, tangential flight to any other-tribe objective often claim that all obstacles or imminent threats are a long ways away.

 They say there is plenty of time to correct the collective downward trajectory once they seize total control before anybody, much less everybody, augers in.

But in reality, everything, especially the existential threats, are much closer than you’ve been led to believe.

That means all of us, regardless of race, creed, passion or politics, better wake up and smell the jet fuel.

If we don’t, we’re all going to collectively meet the angels a lot sooner than we’d prefer.

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Just like the people of the United States, the Blue Angels team consists of men and women of many different races, origins, beliefs and interests. The Blue Angels demonstrate what is possible when people of many different races, origins, beliefs and interests work together to achieve a common goal.

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The Navy Blue Angel flight demonstration squadron flies Boeing F/A-18 Hornet aircraft.

The Blue Angels performed their first flight demonstration in June 1946.

The name was created by the original team when planning a show in New York City in 1946. The name was discovered when one of the original team members noticed mention of the city’s famous Blue Angel nightclub in the New Yorker Magazine.

In 2009 the Blue Angels performed for more than 8 million spectators. Since 1946, the Blue Angels have performed for more than 463 million spectators.

More information on the Blue Angels is available here: http://www.blueangels.navy.mil/index.htm

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All photographs by Stephanie Hackney

I compiled my thoughts on the primary challenges the United States faces in the coming decade, and ways to overcome them, here: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/facingthefuture.pdf

The primary focus in this collection is on domestic challenges, although some geopolitical issues are addressed.

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Following is a good overview of a current geopolitical situation from Stratfor, a public domain intelligence analysis firm.

If you are interested in the particular issue and region at hand, Israel / Palestinians / rising Turkey / etc., you will probably find it of value.

However, its true worth lies in some pearls of geopolitical wisdom, some geopolitical universal truths, which are sprinkled within.

In particular, these excerpts are of value:

• Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols.
• … on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate.
• It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered.
• Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation.
• …they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard?
• …this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world.
• …controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism.

These constants, these irreducible facts, are applicable to both domestic and foreign policy. They are the fundamentals of geopolitics as it applies to public opinion.

If you grasp them, you can begin to understand what is happening outside the fishbowl.

If you come to appreciate the full scope and implications of this one: “Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols.” you can also begin to understand what is happening inside the fishbowl.

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Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion

May 31, 2010

By George Friedman

On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.

The ‘Exodus’ Scenario

In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.

There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.

It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.

The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.

The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.

The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza

The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.

The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.

The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.

Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.

The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.

In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.

The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.

With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.

While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.

The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).

Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.

And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.

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Reprinting or republication of this report on websites is authorized by prominently displaying the following sentence at the beginning or end of the report, including the hyperlink to STRATFOR: 

“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR“  http://www.stratfor.com/

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 Sources:

• Stratfor

The core of the story is an individual.

The first unit of human organization is the family.

The next unit of human organization is tribe.

Tribe is the fundamental unit of humans everywhere in the world except the United States. Tribes define the most essential social unit for almost everyone on the planet except for Americans. Tribes don’t exist in the U.S. because the nation is made up of immigrants who mixed together to create the society. Because true tribes do not exist in the U.S., it is nearly impossible for modern Americans to understand tribes and world events that are driven by tribal loyalties and conflicts.

In particular, Americans struggle to understand events in countries that were artificially formed by the colonial European empires, empires that created multitudes of artificial borders and entire countries by whim, thereby dividing ancient tribal lands and forcing disparate tribes, often ancient blood-enemies, into shared artificial nation-states.

From Kashmir to Kurdistan to nearly the entire continent of Africa, where there is trouble, it is almost always traceable back to European colonialism and the wreckage the modern world has inherited because of it.

The United States, however, avoided this trouble. From the beginning of the nation, aside from the remaining native Americans, there was no true tribe in America, so the fundamental groups-of-humans units were simpler and more conducive to a nation state with a strong national identity.

For most of its existence, the United States had a strong sense of overriding nationhood. Americans were Americans, first and foremost, because no tribal loyalties clouded or competed for the people’s identity.

That all started to change when the fundamental building block, the family unit, began to disintegrate in the mid to late 20^th century. As the multi-generational family unit weakened, stratified and crumbled it was replaced by pseudo-tribes.

As the family became less and less a reliable structure in American life, pseudo-tribes filled the very basic human need for identity, status and protection. As pseudo-tribes rose in prominence, the nation state diminished in importance in terms of identity and definition.

Pseudo-tribes, such as gangs, institutions, organizations, brands and technologies came to define Americans’ identity. People self-defined themselves as members of pseudo-tribes first and Americans second, third or a very distant fourth, if at all. For instance, people would commonly identify themselves as “gardener” or “Cubs fan” or “metal head” but you would be hard pressed to find someone who would self-identify first as “American.”

In today’s America, pseudo-tribes have been replaced in dominance by bi-polarization that seeks to separate every single person into two very easily defined types, either us or them.

In today’s world of us, meaning those who “get it,” those who understand, those who are paying attention, those who are aware, those who are tuned in, those who are in touch, and those who are true believers—and them, meaning everyone else—the nation has faded into insignificance.

Although both groups, us and them, regularly trot out the flag and claim exclusive rights to true patriot-hood, they both are merely dressing up in the costumes of Americans. Their vitriolic rants about being the only true patriots, the only true Americans, ring hollow. Despite their protestations to the contrary, it is obvious to any non-aligned observer that it has nothing to do with America; it has only to do with us and them.

It is clear that in today’s world, there are only two entities. The nation has ceased to matter for either polarized group, whose only real purpose is the destruction of the opposing camp.

This leaves the few people outside the warring camps as the only ones who have any sense of nationhood, the only sense of what it used to be like to be Americans before us and them took over.

It remains to be seen if those few who remain outside the warring camps can rebuild the nation after the polarized combatants treat the country as collateral damage in their efforts to annihilate their opponents. At the rate the nation is devolving into partisan warfare, there may not be much left to work with.

While there is little doubt that individual people will survive the conflict, it is unknown if they will be merely individual circles or if the nation will survive to encompass them.