Linked List: July 19, 2020

Sunday, 19 July 2020

My thanks to Simris for sponsoring DF last week to promote their algae-based omega-3 supplements. One third of the matter in your brain is literally made of omega-3, and many people eat fish and take fish oil as an omega-3 supplement. But the source of omega-3 is algae — not fish. Fish get their omegas from eating algae. Simris Algae Omega-3 is a completely plant-based and superior alternative to fish oil and krill, without the mercury, PCB, and dioxins, and without harming our oceans.

Simris is a Swedish pioneer company growing microalgae. They save and protect endangered marine habitats by replacing unsustainable marine ingredients, and proudly combine Scandinavian innovation and design at its finest.

Everything about Simris’s products is just really nice: from their website to their packaging to the actual capsules.

David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics ★

While I’m on a political kick, please allow me to direct your attention to this interview with political strategist and data analyst David Shor, by Eric Levitz for New York Magazine. Shor’s insights are extraordinarily smart, fascinating, data-driven, and in ways large and small, often counter to conventional wisdom (e.g. big-money donors are pushing the Democrats to the left). I assure you it is worth your time and full attention.

A taste, regarding why non-college-educated voters have been drifting right, both in the U.S. and Europe, for decades:

So why is this happening? The story that makes the most sense to me goes like this: In the postwar era, college-educated professionals were maybe 4 percent of the electorate. Which meant that basically no voters had remotely cosmopolitan values. But the flip side of this is that this educated 4 percent still ran the world. Both parties at this point were run by this highly educated, cosmopolitan minority that held a bunch of values that undergirded the postwar consensus, around democracy and rule of law, and all these things.

Obviously, these people were more right wing on a bunch of social issues than their contemporary counterparts, but during that era, both parties were run by just about the most cosmopolitan segments of society. And there were also really strong gatekeepers. This small group of highly educated people not only controlled the commanding heights of both the left and the right, but also controlled the media. There were only a small number of TV stations — in other countries, those stations were even run by the government. And both sides knew it wasn’t electorally advantageous to campaign on cosmopolitan values.

So, as a result, campaigns centered around this cosmopolitan elite’s internal disagreements over economic issues. But over the past 60 years, college graduates have gone from being 4 percent of the electorate to being more like 35. Now, it’s actually possible — for the first time ever in human history — for political parties to openly embrace cosmopolitan values and win elections; certainly primary and municipal elections, maybe even national elections if you don’t push things too far or if you have a recession at your back. And so Democratic elites started campaigning on the things they’d always wanted to, but which had previously been too toxic. And so did center-left parties internationally.

Microbe Economics ★

Paul Krugman:

Econ 101 has lots of good things to say about free markets (probably too many good things, but that’s a discussion for another time), but no rational discussion of economics says that free markets, left to themselves, can solve the problem of “externalities” — costs that individuals or businesses impose on others who have no say in the matter. Pollution is the classic example of an externality that requires government intervention, but spreading a dangerous virus poses exactly the same issues.

Yet many conservatives seem unable or unwilling to grasp this simple point. And they seem equally unwilling to grasp a related point — that there are some things that must be supplied through public policy rather than individual initiative. And the most important of these “public goods” is probably scientific knowledge.

And this again exemplifies how this abject failure of Republican leadership is not about any traditional left-right conservative-liberal partisanship. It’s science vs. willful ignorance. And the simple truth is that the Republicans used to be — or at least fancied themselves — the party of facing hard truths even when inconvenient or downright unpleasant. They insisted Democrats were “bleeding heart liberals”, who chose policies based on compassion rather than facts.

White House Portraits of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Moved From Prominent Space to a Closet, Like Deck Chairs Being Moved on Titanic ★

Jeff Zeleny and Kevin Liptak, reporting for CNN:

White House tradition calls for portraits of the most recent American presidents to be given the most prominent placement, in the entrance of the executive mansion, visible to guests during official events.

That was the case through at least July 8, when President Donald Trump welcomed Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The two stood in the Cross Hall of the White House and made remarks, with the portraits of Clinton and Bush essentially looking on as they had been throughout Trump’s first term. But in the days after after that, the Clinton and Bush portraits were moved into the Old Family Dining Room, a small, rarely used room that is not seen by most visitors.

That places the paintings well outside of Trump’s vantage point in the White House. In their previous location, the pictures would have been seen daily as Trump descends the staircase from his third floor private residence or when he hosts events on the state floor of the White House. Now, they hang in a space used mainly for storing unused tablecloths and furniture.

The story of these portraits, in itself, is not important. But what’s behind this petty insignificant-in-the-grand-scheme-of-events story is the same fundamental truth that is the cause of so many deeply important problems happening right now: Donald Trump has the small mind and emotional maturity of a petulant child.

The portrait story is all the more clarifying given that Bush is a two-term Republican. It’s hard to imagine a more politically polarizing president than Bush. We do live in a polarized time, and George W. Bush exemplified that polarization on the left-right divide. He was certainly far more conservative than Trump, both in rhetoric and policy. (Clinton was, famously, a moderate, and left office with the highest approval ratings of any president since World War II. Why Trump despises him is plainly obvious and has nothing to do with politics.) Trump’s problem with Bush isn’t partisan. It’s about adherence to foundational American ideals such as the rule of law, and the idea that the President of the United States is the leader of all Americans, not just those who support him. Say what you want about Bush’s presidency, when the nation faced a true crisis on 9/11, he brought the nation together.

When faced with this crisis, Donald Trump, mind-bogglingly, drove the country further apart. His remaining supporters are with him not despite this, but because of it, like pigs wallowing in mud.