Category: Current Events

Picture Postcard Perfect

The Holiday Stroll is my favorite event in town. Basically, the town where I live, which is at this point a suburb of the expanded New York City metropolitan area, pretends to be an independent village, so that the old money, Ivy League denizens can feel good about themselves living in a small town. This is a town with more millionaires per square mile than homeless. This is a town which, in the six years of my attendance, had exactly two African American students in a school of 4000. This is a town in which it is a routine occurrence for friends to invite each other to Paris for the weekend. After all, what good is a private jet if it just sits on the tarmac? This is a town where the beginning of the top tax bracket is considered poor.

Of course, not everyone who lives in town is wealthy. But regardless of the statistical breakdown, it is very much a wealthy town. Moreover, it is old money. Tom and Daisy Buchanan would fit right in here. The mansion they had in the most recent movie adaptation wouldn’t even be the most impressive of ostentatious house I’ve seen in town.

The town also isn’t without its problems. On the contrary, it has a noticeably higher rate of drug abuse than surrounding towns, despite a lower official crime and arrest rate. Alcohol abuse, especially among teens, is well known to be endemic, but never acknowledged aloud. The public high school continues to pay out millions in lawsuit settlements for discrimination against students, and rates of suicide are alarmingly high.

But these problems are well hidden. The streets are safe and well kept (at least the ones downtown are). Home prices and property values are kept high by refusing to allow rehabilitation clinics or public transport to sully our streets. Schools have exceedingly low dropout rates, and standardized test scores are consistently above average.

The town is really quite good at burying its problems and making everything seem peachy. With just over three hundred years of practice, the town is adept at playing the part of a sleepy New England village. In summer, rows of flags and bunting line the streets. In the fall, vivid foliage distracts the mind and spirit from myriad woes. In winter, the businesses on Main Street string up lights and garlands in order to create the setting of a Christmas special, or else replicate a model train village. So convincing is the transformation that the town is occasionally used as a setting for Christmas movies.

The highlight of all this decorating is the Holiday Stroll. Businesses stay open late, charitable groups host bake sales up and down the street, organizations give out free popcorn and cocoa. Ice carvers create vignettes around the shops with Holiday motifs. Choral groups roam the street singing carols, and people dress up in holiday garb, whether that be woolen sweaters and Santa hats, top hat and coattails, or over the top getups wrapped in tinsel garlands and battery powered lights. Policemen direct traffic to accommodate horse drawn carriages, while Santa takes wishes from children at town hall.

It’s a show that the whole town is in on. It’s beautiful and magical in a way that seems to be, momentarily, perfect. And you forget that this is a town where multiple people have been indicted by the FBI for financial crimes, where husbands commit suicide because they can’t provide the level of luxury expected by the local culture, and where the public schools have made civil rights lawsuit settlements the largest recurring expense in the budget, because they have come to the conclusion that paying off those who don’t fit the mould to attend private school somewhere else is preferable to reforming the system. It leaves me with a kind of Canto Bite feeling- I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.

I don’t know whether other towns without all of the baggage and what I am inclined to see as moral corruption have something similar to the Holiday Stroll. I hope so, because it means there’s hope for keeping what I like about my town while excising the bad parts. But I don’t know whether that’s possible. I know part of what gives the Holiday Stroll its peculiar magic is the sense of authenticity. Hallmark holiday specials choose our town as the location where handsome and rich protagonists must overcome upperclass upbringing to see the true meaning of Christmas and family for a reason. People wear fancy sweaters and top hats to drink fancy liquor served chilled through ice sculptures at the jewelry store’s open house because that’s what this town is.

Which Side Are You On?

So a friend of mine grew up in Thousand Oaks, and has been rather devastated by the shooting there. She’s already pretty upset about how US politics are going, and I think this hit her especially hard. So I decided to write a song, not so much to cheer her up, because me trying to cheer someone else up about politics would be a case of inmates volunteering to run the asylum, but rather, in solidarity.

Among many strong contenders, I think gun control might be the most divisive issue in US politics. Explaining why would itself constitute starting an argument, for which I’m not really in the mood. But the divisiveness of the issue, particularly of late, put me in mind of some of the words of Arlo Guthrie.

I had the opportunity to see and hear Arlo Guthrie live on two occasions. And the thing about Arlo Guthrie is that he’s as much a storyteller as a singer. Just as interesting as the actual songs was the context he gave for them, about how he came up with them, why he sang them, and the like. He talked about how he saw his songs as a living medium. Someday, he said in his lead up to Alice’s Restaurant, someone would write songs that would solve major social issues and bridge the divides that separate us.

He made no claim that his songs were those, but he did say that he thought they might be a stepping stone. And he said that he expected that the next generation of songwriters would use his songs as templates and starting points, just as he had used the previous generation’s melodies and rhymes to give them new life. He said he expected this and welcomed this, in the grand folk and protest song tradition.

So, in the grand tradition, I borrowed a melody from an old labor song, Which Side Are You On (famously covered by Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, and the Dropkick Murphys, among others) to express the new dilemma facing our generation.

Chorus:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Tell me, which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

They say in Parkland County
Kids don’t feel safe in school.
They say they won’t be coming back
Until we change the rules.

[Chorus]

I grew up next to Newtown,
My friends lost friends that day,
Our school goes into lockdown
But it’s not the guns they say.

[Chorus]

Oh parents can you stand it?
Tell me how you can?
When your children are murdered
For lack of a weapons ban?

[Chorus]

Arise all you good students,
Stand up for your own lives
For you know what senators don’t
You can’t be shot with knives

[Chorus]

God Save America

So, something happened this last weekend. I was playing Kaiserreich for Hearts of Iron IV. I’ve talked about Hearts of Iron a bit here already, but to quickly recap: Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategy WWII game. You lead a country through history starting in 1936, with full control from the largest policy decisions down to the individual fighter. It’s the kind of game you imagine army cadets using to test strategies… if the AI were a bit more competent and the game rules a little harder to exploit based on the number-crunching nature of it.

Anyways, one of the few major flaws about the game is that there are only so many variations of WWII that you can really play through before you start to tire of storming beaches in France and encircling spearheads in Russia. Fortunately, the game is easily moddable, and there is a core community of enthusiasts who work tirelessly, dreaming up new abilities, rules, units, technologies, and alternative histories. One of the great products of this community is Kaiserreich: The Legacy of Weltkrieg.

The basic premise of Kaiserreich is simple: what if Germany won the First World War? This simple thought experiment has given birth to a project which is, in some ways more expansive in content and lore than the game in its off the shelf state. Every country is impacted by the changes of a German victory, and no detail is too small for this group. It is evident that this is a labor of love, with untold thousands of hours invested in crafting unique politics and identities for each new country. But the real triumph of Kaiserreich is the variability: Whereas the base game is inherently limited by its mooring to real history, in Kaiserreich, almost anything is possible.

The way the game proceeds is not totally random, but it is variable, and it can hinge on the smallest of things. For instance, rumblings in the Ecuadorian export sector can cause economic ripples in North America which delay the arms shipments which prove decisive to Imperial Germany’s defense of Elsaß-Loringen from the Commune of France. As a result, a good player is always watching the news headlines, of which there are plenty written into the game, to sense potential sea changes before they happen.

Of particular interest is the Second American Civil War, which is not actually inevitable, even in this timeline where the US lacks the post-WWI consensus, and the fall of Britain and France make liberal democracy seem like it is on the way out. The civil war can be avoided, but it is rare to see the AI achieve this if you are playing another country. As a result, the first several months are spent helplessly reading news events, as the United States seizes and spams towards violent collapse.

And there are plenty of events to read about. From the Battle of the Overpass, in which United Auto Workers clash with Ford security, to the infamously racist broadcasts of Charles Coughlin in support of demagogues like Huey Long and William Dudley Pelley, there are no shortage of canaries in the coal mine. The civil war may not be inevitable, but it does not come out of nowhere.

For a moment on Saturday, I thought I was reading the wrong screen. Someone had posted a BBC article about a shooting in a synagogue in New York. My brain took in the information: a politically motivated terror attack, followed by a response from the president that fell somewhere between ineffectual and inflammatory, meaning that within a few hours this terrorist act had become just another geographical feature in the political landscape. Instead of inspiring pause and sober reflection, a blatant act of political violence became just another thing that happened.

It took me a moment to realize that I was reading from the BBC, and not the in-game story. For a split second my brain had categorized this attack as happening in the game, because obviously this was a sign of a country in a deep political crisis bound for violent dissolution. And for that split second, I was content in the knowledge that even if it was a particularly realistic interpretation of alternative history, it could never happen here, in today’s America. I could enjoy the game because I don’t have to deal with it. But no. This is not a game. The people killed in the synagogues of Philadelphia, and the churches of Charleston, and on the streets of Charlottesville are not mere pixels, but people.

It is true that it is easy to make prophecies of doom, to claim that the end is nigh and the fall of the republic is imminent. And it is also true that plenty have made such forecasts before, some under circumstances which seemed far more dire, and have always been wrong so far. The trouble with extrapolating from bad events is that there’s a difference between a cluster of bad results, and symptoms of a doomed system. The former is troubling, but fails to take account of the enormous collective effort required to overcome the inertia of stability.

What concerns me so deeply about reading about this latest shooting is not the event itself, but how easily my mind mistook it for part of the story of how the US fell apart. What concerns me is that we might already be on that path, and it will be impossible to know unless we learn it too late. If we are, then it means that urgent and energetic action is needed to restore norms to our society and political system. It is not yet too late, but it means we may no longer be complacent.

It is no longer enough to complain idly to friends when we see others degrading the democratic norms and principles that this country great. I include myself in this statement. The earlier we commit, the better the chances are that we will be able to overcome the present impasse with a minimum lasting collateral damage. And if this alarm turns out to be the momentary reaction to passing circumstances, then this commitment will not be in vain. For our investment in this great democracy will serve as an investment in the future of our society.

Of note; the single event in Kaiserreich which has the largest impact on whether the United States lives or dies, isn’t Huey Long’s paramilitaries, or Jack Reed’s strikes, nor the machinations of MacArthur and his stratocrats. The thing that decided the fate of America more than anything else is the results of the 1936 election. All the efforts of those larger than life figures are moot if the election swings the other way. The election itself isn’t enough to singlehandedly avert the civil war, but if the American voters don’t do their part and vote, it becomes only a matter of time until thins collapse.

So for the love of god and country, if you’re eligible, go and vote. Get involved. Whether you believe things are headed for trouble or not, whether or not you agree with me, take part in democracy.

Attn Millenials

The website analytics suggest that the majority of my audience are young Americans, so I’d like to take a moment to address this group specifically. Everyone else can take the week off.

Alright, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, listen up: I think we may have made a mistake. I’m concerned that recent events indicate that the oldsters don’t actually know what they’re doing any more than we do, which is what we assumed when we, collectively as a demographic, decided we could get away with not voting. According to the census bureau, less than half of us who were eligible voted in the last election, compared to more than 70% of oldsters.

Now, I’m not going to try and pin the blame everything bad that’s happened in politics on the elderly, but I am starting to think that we might need to step in. The geezers have had their chance, now it’s our turn.

The bad news is that this is going to require a commitment, from all of us. How much of a commitment will depend largely on where you live. Voting is easier to do in some states and localities than others. Some towns you can waltz into a polling place without any wait, and even register day of if you’ve forgotten. Other places require you to have your papers in order months ahead of time, wait in lines that rival Disney world, and endure cross examination from misanthropic poll workers.

This discrepancy is not accidental. These are the jurisdictions that fear us and the power we hold as voters, as well they should. These measures are designed to frustrate you into apathy. Don’t let them.

The good news is, no matter where you live in the United States, your right to vote is sacrosanct. To this end, there are resources you can call upon to help ensure your voice is heard. There are multiple nonprofit organizations dedicated to ensuring you have all the information necessary to jump through whatever hoops exist for voting in your jurisdiction. Your state government will have sample ballots with voting instructions. Local organizations provide transportation to the polls on voting day, and if necessary you can enlist help to cast your ballot if you have a disability.

Ideally, you will want to be an informed voter. This is where having access to a sample ballot is especially helpful. You can research candidates and issues beforehand and take notes. Don’t worry about studying; you’re entitled to take notes with you into the voting booth. But above all, don’t lose the forest for the trees. Voting at all is far more important than researching until you find a perfect candidate.

Our time is nigh. We, the young voters of America must stand up and take charge. The old guard have demonstrated that they do not know any better, and are no more qualified to vote or make decisions about our the fate of our country and our world than any of us. It is in our best interests, as well as our obligation, to step up and take responsibility, before outside events thrust that responsibility upon us.

Keeping Our Country Great

The United States is a truly marvelous country. It isn’t that other countries don’t have similar freedom, domestic tranquility, or prosperity. What makes the United States truly stand out isn’t any of these in particular, or even in combination. It isn’t anything that can be measured or exported. Rather, it is the notion that all of these things listed; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; are not only inviolable, but sacred. Freedom of speech, security of property, and opportunity without discrimination are not merely tools to help society progress and prevent other injustices, but are fundamentally good in themselves. This, not our army, or economy, or laws, or geography, is what makes America unique. These are what make America great

But while these things make us strong, they also makes us vulnerable. That we hold such things to be sacred means that we often take them for granted. After all, if something is God-given and ordained, how can we mere mortals mess it up? This kind of attitude leads to a dangerous complacency, making us believe that freedom is free, or that only one kind of sacrifice from a small handful of brave souls is required to defend it.

The truth is that freedom, even American freedom, is fragile, and easy to lose. Like any sacred thing, freedom is only maintained through conscious dedication. The moment Americans stop treating freedom as a tangible practice that needs to be defended, and instead refer to it as an abstract thing that will always exist, the United States is just another country with laws and rhetoric that reference strong principles, rather than the bastion of democratic values. On that day, Americans will still have all the same rights, but it will become a simple task of modifying the laws to take them away, because there will be no more taboo.

So, how do we do it? How do we keep our principles alive and strong in such times? How do we make sure that the freedom, prosperity, and security we enjoy will survive to be passed onto our grandchildren? The answer is surprisingly simple. We must, all of us, make a commitment to partake in the rites of this country, not just in obligatory way that we pay taxes, but with the zeal of citizens who believe in the vision of their country’s future.

We must engage with our political system, force our representatives to earn their pay by engaging with us, and above all, vote. We must become and remain engaged citizens. We must earn our values through our actions.

The Protest No-Vote

Among my friends, the most common excuse I hear for not voting is spite. People think that not voting is a form of protest. In their minds, the system is deeply flawed, all of the candidates are bad, and so the only way to have a truly clear conscience is to abstain entirely. With respect to my friends who believe this, and I do indeed respect them, this behavior is childish and self-defeating, and needs to stop.

Now, to be clear, if you honestly believe that all of the candidates are exactly equally bad on all matters; that they are truly not only morally equivalent, but morally identical, and if forced to choose, you could genuinely do no better than tossing a coin, except that presumably you respect the process enough to feel shame at being so capricious, then I will begrudgingly concede that indeed, you oughtn’t vote. If you tragically lack the comparative reasoning and foundational convictions to come to any inkling of a preference, then I suppose it would be above you to fill out a ballot paper. You leave me disappointed, but if you genuinely can’t see a difference, I won’t ask you to fake it.

Fortunately, I have met exactly no one who believes that at their core. Everyone has some set of beliefs and values that they reckon are fundamentally correct, and want to see in the world. Some people are more upfront, some are more nuanced, but everyone has an idea of how the world ought to be run.

There are two main arguments I hear in protest non-votes, both of which are similar, but subtly different. The first holds that withholding one’s vote is a radical act of defiance by refusing to participate in the system. This is seldom justified, but when it is, usually has something to do with “the system being rigged and elections are all for show” and “by refusing to vote, we send a message that the government doesn’t have the consent of us governed”. The first justification is, at best, misleading, and at worst, a conspiracy theory. If rigged refers to gerrymandering and biased voting laws, then this is a great reason for voting and changing the system. If rigged refers to a conspiracy to prevent change, then there’s not really anything to be lost by voting, is there?

The second justification has a little more to unpack. It refers to the language used in the founding documents of the United States and the philosophical writings it draws upon in turn. If you never learned civics, the basic idea is that government derived its power from the consent of the governed, and this consent is required for the enforcement of laws to be justified. This is most directly exemplified in democratic elections, but theoretically can be more abstract, like a popular revolution that installs an unelected government (this usually works better on paper than in practice).

The idea here is that not voting is a way to undermine the whole system; that if enough people don’t vote, the government won’t have the legitimacy to pass and enforce laws, and presumably those who don’t vote won’t have to pay taxes. The myriad problems with this line of thinking are apparent, but here are my two big ones: First, this bets a lot on everyone interpreting your signal the same way and agreeing to act on it. In practice, this is like trying to make a speech without talking. Politicians don’t put in the effort for people who are t participating. And second, it doesn’t really undermine the legitimacy of the government so long as you willingly waived your right to vote.

The second main argument I hear for not voting as a moral stance holds that voting is a moral exercise, and that a person casting a ballot must be willing to accept all of the elements of a candidate: policies, character quirks, scandals, and the like, good and bad. The argument goes that if you don’t accept all of this, then you have no moral standing to say that one person is better than the other. You have to own your choice, and if you can’t get behind it one hundred percent.

This is a classic argument in philosophy, deontology versus consequentialism. The argument boils down to: it is morally worse to add any amount of evil to the world than to do good at the cost of some small evil. This is the line of thinking that says that it is immoral to divert a runaway trolley from hitting five people to hit one person instead, because the act of diverting it is a moral choice as opposed to a consequence of existing factors.

I am not totally unsympathetic to this argument. But it falls apart when applied to elections. The underlying moral argument here presupposes that everyone is supposed to act in this way, always behaving according to strict and inviolable principles of right and wrong. The argument holds that a bad person being elected is not an individual wrong so long as a given person did not endorse them by voting; it is mere circumstance. But elections are precisely the summation of individual choices. There can be no mere circumstances in elections. They are always the consequences of moral choices.

Sometimes these choices turn out to be wrong in retrospect. But if a lack of hindsight can be called a failure, it is a failure of analysis, not of morality. Failing to vote does not disclaim responsibility, but actively avoids a moral choice out of cowardice. Let me submit then that the superior maxim is to always vote in the manner which best aligns with one’s own sense of morality. Your goodwill does no good if you do not express it in your actions.

The lesser of two evils is still the less evil choice. You will not find a flawless human being, let alone a politician, but someone has to be elected, and you have to do your part to decide who, and hold them accountable. Failing to do so is a failure of your moral obligations as a citizen. You don’t have to make the perfect choice. But not making the choice of voting is abandoning your good will and intentions in favor of the security of cowardice. If you decide you truly can’t live with any of the mainstream candidates, there are always third party and write-in candidates. Or failing all else, a spoiled ballot is a far more effective protest than inaction. But do not allow yourself to give up your choice because the choice is hard.

Why Vote?

Yes, this is a theme. Enough of my friends and acquaintances are on the fence on the issue of voting that I have been stirred into a patriotic fervor. Like Captain America, I have, despite my adversities, arisen to defend democracy in its hour of need. Or at least, I have decided to write about voting until my friends are motivated to get out and vote.

Why vote? In today’s America, why bother to go out and vote? Elections these days are won and lost not at the ballot, but on maps and budget sheets, with faraway oligarchs drawing boundary lines that defy all logic to ensure their own job security, and shadowy mega corporations spending more on media campaigns designed to confuse and disorient you to their advantage than the GDP of several small nations. The mathematics of first past the post voting means that our elections are, and for the foreseeable future, always will be, picking the lesser of two evils.

Statistically, you live not only in a state that is safely for one party or another, but an electoral district that has already been gerrymandered. Depending on where you live, there may be laws designed to target certain demographics, making it harder or easier for certain groups to get to the polls. The effort required to cast a ballot varies from place to place; it might be as easy as dropping by a polling place at your leisure, or it might involve waiting for hours in line, being harassed by officials and election monitors, all in order to fill out a piece of paper the effect of which is unlikely to make a major difference.

So why bother? Why not stay home, and take some well deserved time off.

It’s an older poster, but it checks out

Obviously, this logic wouldn’t work if everyone applied it. But that’s not a compelling reason why you specifically ought go to the effort of voting. Because it is an effort, and much as I might take it for granted that the effort is worthwhile, to participate in and safeguard the future of democracy, not everyone does.

Well, I’ll start by attacking the argument itself. Because yes, massive efforts have been made, and are being made, by those who have power and wish to keep it, and by those who seek power and are willing to gamble on it, to sway the odds in your favor. But consider for a moment these efforts. Would corporations, which are, if nothing else, ruthlessly efficient and stingy, spend such amounts if they really thought victory was assured? Would politicians expend so much effort and political capital campaigning, mudslinging, and yes, cheating through gerrymandering, registration deadlines, and ID laws, if they believed it wasn’t absolutely necessary?

The funny thing about voting trends is, the richer a person is, the more likely they are to vote. Surely, if elections were bought and paid for, the reverse would be true? Instead, the consistent trend is that those who allegedly need to vote the least do so the most.

The game may not be fair, or right, but it is not preordained. It may be biased, but it is not rigged. If it were rigged, the powers that be wouldn’t be making the effort. They are making an effort, on the assumption that they can overcome your will to defend your right to vote by apathy and antipathy. Like any right, your right to vote is only good when exercised.

The American Promise

One of my more controversial opinions regards the founding of the United States regards the circumstances of its foundation. See, having read the historical literature, I’m not convinced the colonists were right to revolt when they did. The troops that were stationed in the colonies were there to keep the peace while the colonies were reconstructed following the damages of the Seven Years’ War, while the Stamp Act actually lowered taxes from what they had been. The colonists were getting more services for lower taxes right after a war had been fought on their behalf.

The complaints about taxes mostly stemmed from enforcement; in order to abide by the terms of the treaties that ended the war, the British government had begun a crackdown on smuggling, which had previously grown to such a state that it was almost impossible for legitimate businesses to compete with the colonial cartels. This epidemic, and the ineptitude or collusion of local enforcement, was the reason for the extraordinary enforcement measures such as the oft-cited writs of assistance. Meanwhile complaints about land claims in native territory- that the crown was being oppressive by restricting settlers from encroaching on native land -are hard to justify with historical retrospect.

So the idea that the American Independence War was justified from the beginning by the actions of the British administration is nonsense. The British were in fact one of the most progressive and representative governments in history. The only possible justifications for independence lay in a total rejection of ordained authority, a prospect so radical that it made the United States comparable to the Soviet Union in its relation to its contemporaries; the idea that men hold inalienable rights, that defending these rights is the sole mandate of governments, and that these governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

And this is what really made the United States unique in history. Because republics, even systems that might be called democratic, had existed since antiquity. But these had always been a means to en end. Allowing the governed, or at least some portion thereof, to have a say in matters normally confined to kings and emperors was only incidental to the task of administration. This was already the case in Great Britain, and several Italian states. But the idea that power of government wasn’t an innate thing, but something that had to be willingly given, was revolutionary.

The problem, aside from the considerable logistical feat of organizing a heretofore unprecedented system of governance, is that this justification, if not necessarily retrospective in itself, is at least contingent on those promises being achieved. It is easy, not least from a historical perspective, to promise revolutionary liberation, and then not follow up. Indeed, depending on how one views the Soviet model as to whether it ever really came close to achieving the promises of revolution (which really depends on how one reads Marx, and how much one is willing to take Soviet talking points at their word), most of the revolutions of the modern period have failed to live up to their promises.

Washington could have declared himself King of America, either as a hereditary appointment, as a monarch elected by the states, akin to the Holy Roman Emperor, or even as a non-hereditary dynasty, like the Soviets, or the strongmen of the developing world. Most European states presumably expected this, or they expected the United States to collapse into anarchy. Instead, Washington set a precedent in line with the rhetoric of the USA’s foundation, with the intention of living up to the promises laid out in independence.

But while Washington certainly helped legitimize the United States and its promise, he didn’t do so singlehandedly. After all, he couldn’t have. The promise of the United States is not that those who happened to fight, or be present at the constitutional convention, be granted certain rights. No, the promise is that all are granted inalienable rights by a power higher than any government, and that everyone has the right to participate in the process of government. Notice the present tense. Because this is not an idea that expires, or will eventually come to be, but how things ought to be now.

The measure of this promise; the independent variable in the American experiment, is not the wars that were won, nor the words that were written on paper long ago to lay the foundation, nor even the progress that has been made since, but rather the state of affairs today. The success of America is not what was written into law yesterday, but what percentage are participating today.

The notion that, as the world’s superpower, America has already succeeded, and we need only sit back and reap the dividends of the investments made by our forebears is not only false, but dangerously hubristic and misleading. The failure of America does not require foreign armies on our streets, or a bottomed out economy; only complacency on our part. If we forget what our forefathers fought for, if we choose comfort over our values, indeed, if we decide voting isn’t worth the hassle, then we lose. And as a proud American, I believe both we, and the world, would be worse off for it.

Creative Commons License
In the interest of encouraging discussion about voting, this post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Mr. Roboto

I’m a skeptic and an intellectual, so I don’t put too much weight coincidence. But then again, I’m a storyteller, so I love chalking up coincidences as some sort of element of an unseen plot.

Yesterday, my YouTube music playlist brought me across Halsey’s Gasoline. Thinking it over, I probably heard this song in passing some time ago, but if I did, I didn’t commit it to memory, because hearing it was like listening to it for the first time. And what a day to stumble across it. The lyrics, if you’ve never heard them, go thusly:

And all the people say
You can’t wake up, this is not a dream
You’re part of a machine, you are not a human being
With your face all made up, living on a screen
Low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline

I think there’s a flaw in my code
These voices won’t leave me alone
Well my heart is gold and my hands are cold

Why did this resonate with me so much today of all days? Because I had just completed an upgrade of my life support systems to new software, which for the first time includes new computer algorithms that allow the cyborg parts of me to act in a semi-autonomous manner instead of relying solely on human input.

It’s a small step, both from a technical and medical perspective. The algorithm it uses is simple linear regression model rather than a proper machine learning program as people expect will be necessary for fully autonomous artificial organs. The only function the algorithm has at the moment is to track biometrics and shut off the delivery of new medication to prevent an overdose, rather than keeping those biometrics in range in general. And it only does this within very narrow limits; it’s not really a fail-safe against overdoses, because the preventative mechanism is still very narrowly applied, and very fallible.

But the word prevention is important here. Because this isn’t a simple dead man’s switch. The new upgrade is predictive, making decisions based on what it thinks is going to happen, often before the humans clue in (in twelve hours, this has already happened to me). In a sense, it is already offloading human cognitive burden and upgrading the human ability to mimic body function. As of yesterday, we are now on the slippery slope that leads to cyborgs having superhuman powers.

We’re getting well into sci-fi and cyberpunk territory here, with the door open to all sorts of futurist speculation, but there are more questions that need to be answered sooner rather than later. For instance, take the EU General Data Protection Regulation, which (near as I, an American non-lawyer can make heads or tails of it,) mandates companies and people disclose when they use AI or algorithms to make decisions regarding EU citizens or their data, and mandating recourse for those who want the decisions reviewed by a human; a nifty idea for ensuring the era of big data remains rooted in human ethics.

But how does it fit in if, instead of humans behind algorithms, its algorithms behind humans? In its way, all of my decisions are at least now partially based on algorithms, given that the algorithms keep me alive to be able to make decisions, and have taken over other cognitive functions that would occupy my time and focus otherwise. And I do interact with EU citizens. A very strict reading of the EU regulations suggests this might be enough for me to fall under its aegis.

And sure, this is a relatively clear cut answer today; an EU court isn’t going to rule that all of my actions need to be regulated like AI because I’m wearing a medical device. But as the technology becomes more robust, the line is going to get blurrier, and we’re going to need to start treating some hard ethical questions not as science fiction, but as law. What happens when algorithms start taking over more medical functions? What happens when we start using machines for neurological problems, and there really isn’t a clear line between human and machine for decision making process?

I have no doubt that when we get to that point, there will be people who oppose the technology, and want it to be regulated like AI. Some of them will be Westboro Baptist types, but many will be ordinary citizens legitimately concerned about privacy and ethics. How do we build a society so that people who take advantage of these medical breakthroughs aren’t, as in Halsey’s song, derided and ostracized in public? How do we avoid creating another artificial divide and sparking fear between groups?

As usual, I don’t know the answer. Fortunately for us, we don’t need an answer today. But we will soon. The next software update for my medical device, which will have the new algorithms assuming greater functions and finer granularity, is already in clinical trials, and expected to launch this time next year. The EU GDPR was first proposed in 2012 and only rolled out this year. The best way to avoid a sci-fi dystopia future is conscious and concerted thought and discussion today.

A Witch’s Parable

Addendum: Oh good grief. This was supposed to go up at the beginning of the week, but something went awry. Alas! Well, it’s up now.

Suppose we live in colonial times, in a town on an archipelago. The islands are individually small and isolated, but their position relative to the prevailing winds and ocean currents mean that different small islands can grow a wide variety of crops that are normally only obtainable by intercontinental trade. The presence of these crops, and good, predictable winds and currents, has made those islands that don’t grow food into world renowned trade hubs, and attracted overseas investment.

With access to capital and a wide variety goods, the archipelago has boomed. Artisans, taking advantage of access to exotic painting supplies, have taken to the islands, and scientists of all stripes have flocked to the archipelago, both to study the exotic flora and fauna, and to set up workshops and universities in this rising world capital. As a result of this local renaissance, denizens of the islands enjoy a quality of life hitherto undreamt of, and matched only in the palaces of Europe.

The archipelago is officially designated as a free port, open to ships from across the globe, but most of daily life on the islands is managed by the Honorable South India Trading Company, who collect taxes and manage infrastructure. Nobody likes the HSITC, whose governor is the jealous brother of the king, and is constantly appropriating funds meant for infrastructure investment to spend on court intrigue.

Still, the HSITC is entrenched in the islands, and few are willing to risk jeopardizing what they’ve accomplished by attempting insurrection. The cramped, aging vessels employed by the HSITC as ferries between the islands pale in comparison to the new, foreign ships that dock at the harbors, and their taxes seem to grow larger each year, but as long as the ferry system continues to function, there is little more than idle complaint.

In this town, a local woman, who let’s say is your neighbor, is accused of witchcraft. After the debacle at Salem, the local magistrates are unwilling to prosecute her without absolute proof, which obviously fails to materialize. Nevertheless, vicious rumors about men being transmogrified into newts, and satanic rituals conducted at night, spread. Local schoolchildren and off duty laborers congregate around your house, hoping to get a glimpse of the hideous wretch that legend tells dwells next door.
For your part, you carry on with your daily business as best you can, until one day, while waiting at the docks to board a ferry to the apothecary, a spat erupts between the woman in question and the dock guard, who insists that he shan’t allow her to board, lest her witchery cause them to become shipwrecked. The woman is denied boarding, and since the HSITC run all the ferries, this now means that she’s effectively cut off from rest of the world, not by any conviction, but because there were not adequate safeguards against the whims of an unaccountable monopoly.
As you’ve probably guessed, this is a parable about the dangers posed by the removal of net neutrality regulations. The internet these days is more than content. We have banks, schools, even healthcare infrastructure that exist solely online. In my own case, my life support systems rely on internet connectivity, and leverage software and platforms that are distributed through open source code sharing. These projects are not possible without a free and open internet.
Others with more resources than I have already thoroughly debunked the claims made by ISPs against net neutrality. The overwhelming economic consensus is that the regulations on the table will only increase economic growth, and will have no impact on ISP investment. The senate has already passed a bill to restore the preexisting regulations that were rescinded under dubious circumstances, and a house vote is expected soon.
I would ask that you contact your elected representatives, but this issue requires more than that. Who has access to the internet, and under what terms, may well be the defining question of this generation, and regardless of how the vote in the house goes, this issue and variants of it will continue to crop up. I therefore ask instead that you become an active participant in the discussion, wherever it takes us. Get informed, stay informed, and use your information to persuade others.
I truly believe that the internet, and its related technologies, have the potential to bring about a new renaissance. But this can only happen if all of us are aware and active in striving for the future we seek. This call to arms marks the beginning of a story that in all likelihood will continue for the duration of most of our lifetimes. We must consult with each other, and our elected representatives, and march, and rally, and vote, by all means, vote. Vote for an open internet, for equal access, for progress, and for the future.