Update from the Far East

 It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.  Actually, nothing could be further from the truth, but this afternoon finds me comfortably back in my home office.  Where's Waldo?

I get to watch and hear all the events in the neighborhood, including the continuing march of the ants back and forth along the telephone (internet) wire).  The ants go marching one by one, hurrah!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xa7YN9AgG4GxLGqw6 (Click the play button on the previous link to get the full experience.) 

Before getting into the bad news, and in light of my recent Debbie Downer email, I'd like to share a short video clip which is like water to a thirsty soul, restoring one's faith in humanity:  Click the link below and turn on the volume....

https://twitter.com/rolandgarros/status/1663674562859417600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1663674562859417600%7Ctwgr%5Eed4c13631ff6498419d86efd8657da87a4de4dd5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-10730925632232892875.ampproject.net%2F2303151529000%2Fframe.html 

If you don't get Twitter, you can get the idea on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7__ptFjYhV8 

On the more traumatic news.  

• First, I've come through the last week as a committed Asia-phile.  The people in Singapore were some of the friendliest I've ever encountered.  And the Philippines is not only much more more modern than before, but even more friendly in my experience
• Technology is a big nothing burger in both countries, in a good (Buddhist) way.  .  When it works, and it usually does with some patience, the end result is nothing.   Your bureaucratic problems are solved because of the technology, and all you notice is that you can get on with enjoying the people and environment around you.
• Speaking of technology, our travel arrangements to Singapore, handled completely from Detroit over the Internet, worked out perfectly.  Cebu Pacific Air was a delight, as was the Swissôtel Stamford Singapore
• I've never spent so much on a hotel before, but with Lily's difficulty walking, I wanted to be right in the center of the action.  I was able to save significant money by not buying any travel insurance on the flight and hotel.
• The first 4 days were a challenge but went as I'd hoped.   We toured Gardens by the  Bay, Little India, Kampong Glam, the British colonial district, home of the SIngapore Sling, dazzling technological, floral, and botanical displays, subways, taxis, buses, underground malls, incredibly diverse linguistic and cultural society with apparently thriving markets, harbors, historical treasures, ...
  a few photos

I'm a great believer in the miracles of neoliberal capitalism!  Ok, I'm partly kidding here.  I think technology along with greatly increased trade and "development" are generally good things, but also lead to hardships on the lower classes whose ways of life become endangered prices (e.g. energy) soar). Great for tourists however!

Seriously, though, I've been knocked off my feet by the friendliness of the locals in Singapore and Philippines.  Something serious and cross-cultural is going on.  I had been tipped off by a friend to look for signs of Lee Kuan Yew and his Asian Values movement.  I did look for signs, saw them, and as usual enjoyed an ego boost through confirmation bias.  Hooray for the Lees! (Lee Kuan Yew's eldest son Lee Hsien Loong is current prime minister of Singapore, and BongBong Marcos (son of old favorite dictator Ferdinand) is current president of the Philippines. I've been listening (via Audibile books). to a 1990s   non-fiction classic - The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P. Huntington.  He seems to have pretty much nailed, 25 years before the fact, the Ukraine War and the ongoing crises of civilizations.  

 

Back to the personal saga::  On day 5 of our 8 day pilgrimage in Singapore,  we woke up with what I can only describe as an acute respiratory illness of some sort.  That was pretty much the end of our Singapore vacation, with the main excitement then being getting out of the hotel amidst a non-stop barrage of phlegm and nose running and coughing. and embarking upon the 12 your excursion back here to Home Sweet Home!!!! (Be it ever so humble and all that.) We left the air-conditioned hotel, took a air-conditioned taxi ride to the air-conditioned airport, I lost my cool swearing at the technological obstacles to check-in, we sat on the plane, packed like sardines, wearing n95 masks while continually coughing sneezing and blowing my nose, were picked up at the airport in air-conditioned van by Lily'y neice and additional relatives, drove several hours to the port city of Batangas (southern Luzon), waited several hours on the van which was in turn on a roll-on-roll-off (ferry) boat headed for Lily's hometown of Calapan.  Another relative met us at the Calapan pier, after the 2 hour RoRoRide (say that five times real fast) and took us the last five minutes to Lily's abode here in barangay Libis in Calapan.  I proceeded to have the best night's sleep of my life as a massive storm swept through town in the wake of Typhoon Betty.  

Parts of Western Visayas and Mimaropa see heavy rain from 

the southwest monsoon, which is being enhanced by Typhoon Betty 

(Mawar), on Tuesday evening, May 30

Okay -- Back to watching the ants!

Classic Literature is Relevant

 We are living through times that bring to life classics such as these:

• The Scarlet Letter
• The Lottery
• The New Testament
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• The Crucible
• Catch 22

See Durham, FBI Whistleblowers, and "The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade" (pay walled but I can forward text upon request to danielsecrest@gmail.com).  Excerpt:

The whole New Testament is about Captain Black, because the whole New Testament suggests that the reigning religion of Jerusalem has become hidebound and bureaucratic, and the priests are serving themselves. And then along comes this revolutionary Jesus who says, “Hey man. You’ve forgotten the spirit of your faith in the name of all of these requirements.” So whatever side of the New Testament you’re on, whether you’re a Jew or a Christian, I don’t know. But that’s the spirit of that book, which is anti-bureaucratic…

I highly recommend the whole article linked above.  It reflects my deepest beliefs.  Human nature does seem to be such that societies come to absurdity at moments in history like the present.  American, Russian, Judean -- it occurs repeatedly in different times and places.  I've learned to accept this and try to deal with it constructively, which means occasionally sharing my thoughts with those I love the most. 

Reassessing Western Democracy, Part 1

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

The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book of political philosophy by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such

It now seems to me that Fukuyama was wrong, and that Samuel Huntington was right --

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

The Clash of Civilizations is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. 

Western liberal democracy is now descending. What are the alternatives, and how do we get from here to there?

Note the issue of agency.  Biden the person has little agency.  He is credited or blamed, but few believe that he is running things.  Compare this to Putin.  People, in the West especially, believe that he is running the Russian show and deserves all the blame (but strangely not the credit).  My view is that this reflects Western corruption.  Accountability is masked by weak and expendable political leaders.  

As an example of this, see Senate Report: Nearly 700 Former High-Ranking Pentagon and Other Government Officials Now Work at the Top 20 Defense Contractors.  

Derek Seidman details in a recent article in Truthout how many of the key architects of the Iraq War have benefited from the revolving door, finding positions with defense industry giants, tech firms and Wall Street investors, and enjoying the good life, raking in consulting and speaker fees, their images washed as they profit handsomely from the insider access they provide.

Where is the accountability in our democratic system for this disastrous war?  Putin and Xi are personally accountable and have lost zero wars between them in a combined 30 plus years of rule. Perhaps the Russian and Chinese systems have certain advantages that we should consider?

My knee jerk reaction is that  the Russian and Chinese systems merely look good because the West is self-destructing.  These are autocracies.  I am a child of the enlightenment and want to believe in democracy.  But democracy does not seem to have the record of success that is the conventional wisdom in the West.  I believed in this conventional wisdom, but now have doubts.

Neither liberal democracy nor conservative dictatorship (where fascism is an extreme outlier) can claim an obvious historical advantage in terms of social coordination at scale.  For example, the Roman Empire started out as a democracy of sorts (a republic), but morphed midway into an autocratic empire. Similarly, Greek democracy burned brightly for only a short time. American democracy has been going for a couple of hundred years, but is showing increasing signs of burning out as a liberal enterprise.  Neither China nor Russia have ever been liberal democracies, but are two of the most powerful states today.  European countries are mostly liberal democracies today, but came to power as conservative kingdoms 

The first step to building a better system of government is to recognize the deficiencies of our current system.  I favor an incremental approach, leveraging what works in our current system, and addressing our failings in light of what currently work elsewhere.  In subsequent posts, I will consider alternatives in a more detailed manner.