November 20

Still dark but the weather forecast predicted cool and sunny today--if you can actually count on the forecasts. I didn't have much to comment on over the weekend because I just didn't want to read much.

Stray thought at this too very early time of the morning: are we, people all over the world, getting used to the idea that someone might use nuclear weapons? That was once unthinkable. Almost every country that had those weapons already fell all over themselves to assure everyone 1) that they wouldn't use them first and 2) that they would work to make sure nuclear "club" didn't expand. But over the last couple of decades things seem to have changed. The "club" expanded and the original members found that they could do very little to stop the expansion. And we have seen Putin bring out the "nuclear" card whenever he felt his push into Ukraine was stalled. And this morning Tom Engelhardt noted that Netanyahu suspended his Minister of Heritage from regular cabinet meetings for suggesting that the best way to deal with Gaza was to nuke it. Somehow it didn't seem all that shocking and the "punishment" may have been a less than severe tap on the wrist.

Tomdispatch contributor Joshua Frank has a long piece recapping the history of nuclear weaponry over the last 70 years concentrating on Israel.

Thomas Zimmer asks a good question: Do Americans Value Democracy? The answer seems to be that we do so long as the people who vote agree with us. You can't turn on the news/commentary programs without someone hyperventilating about the "threat" to "our" democracy. What is missing in all the verbiage is anyone asking "What kind of democracy, how much, and for whom?" More years ago than I like to think, when I taught Western Civ, some student would always ask how the ancient Greeks could be considered democratic. I usually wrote the word on the board and underlined the two parts: demo-cracy. Demos refers to the people and in ancient Greece that meant the citizens a term restricted to those whose parents were both citizens. The pool of those who had the right to rule was further narrowed by the exclusion of women, children and slaves all of whom were under some male citizen's control. Our early Republic restricted the franchise to men who owned property which generated a specified income. It wasn't until the 1830s when that was broadened to essentially white male citizens. Recently I have read that some bloggers on some of the really radical sites have suggested women should not be allowed to vote. And some politicians in a South American country (can't remember which) suggested the franchise should be returned to what it was in the early 1900s when only the well off men could vote. And Hungary's Orban calls their system an "illiberal democracy."

Peter Turchin has an interesting article: When A.I. Comes for the Elites. He makes some interesting points. One is about the evolution of the two political parties both of which now are more aligned with the upper 10% of the economic pyramid leaving the rest without much influence at all. Second, as A.I. advances those in that 10% will face increasingly bleak prospects.

Stray thought about a segment on political polling showing that, at this point in time, Biden seems to be losing support among the 17-34 age group and much of that loss involves that group's attitudes toward Israel and what Biden has done (or not done) in the matter. I find it interesting that that is the first post-Cold War cohort of voters. They grew up when our foreign policy was thoroughly engaged against the Soviet Union. Israel was a reliable ally in that because so many Jewish settlers there were refugees from the Soviet Union. Other considerations are now coming to the top.

Bill Astore provides an interesting piece on Napoleon, Hitler, and our American Empire: "Liberty at the Point of a Sword."