Recommended readings: Trans: When Ideology meets Reality, by Helen Joyce

 

In her book Trans: Where Ideology Meets Reality, The Economist writer Helen Joyce presents a compelling study of what is behind the "non-binary" movement.

Joyce argues that while sex is a biological reality and gender a social convention, using surgery to change the former on behalf of the latter is not "liberating" but restricting future options. Joyce studied what is behind the extreme "sex-reassignment" hormonal treatments and surgery -especially in children-.

Rather than focusing on the "non-binary" versus "binary" false discussion -sexuality has a spectrum that determines that no person is 100 percent male or female and cross-dressing and homosexual sex and relationships have always been part of normal sexuality-, Joyce focuses on what she calls "transactivism" and the special interests behind its agenda. She explains:

"It is a story of policy and institutional capture; of charitable foundations controlled by billionaires joining forces with activist groups to pump money into lobbying behind the scenes for legal change. They have won over big political parties, notably America’s Democrats, and big businesses, including tech giants. 

They are backed, too, by academics in gender studies, queer theory, and allied fields, and by the pharmaceutical and health- care industries, which have woken up to the fortunes to be made from ‘gender- affirmative’ medicine. 

This powerful new lobby far outnumbers the trans people it claims to speak for. 

And it serves their interests very poorly. Its ideological focus means it seeks to silence anyone who does not support gender self-identification – which includes many post-operative transsexuals, who are under no illusion as to how much bodies matter. 

It also ignores other possible solutions to problems faced by trans people – research into the causes and treatment of gender dysphoria, for instance, or adding unisex facilities alongside single-sex ones. Its overreach is likely to provoke a backlash that will harm ordinary trans people, who simply want safety and social acceptance. 

When the general public finally realizes what is being demanded, the blame may not land with the activists, where it belongs."

Joyce explores the forces behind "transactivism" and the perils for minors and their parents of itas agenda and clarifies several concepts focusing on the consequences:

"This is a book about an idea, one that seems simple but has far-reaching consequences. 

The idea is that people should count as men or women according to how they feel and what they declare, instead of their biology. It’s called gender self-identification, and it is the central tenet of a fast-developing belief system that sees everyone as possessing a gender identity that may or may not match the body in which it is housed. 

When there is a mismatch, the person is ‘transgender’– trans for short – and it is the identity, not the body, that should determine how everyone else sees and treats them. The origins of this belief system date back almost a century, to when doctors first sought to give physical form to the yearnings of a handful of people who longed to change sex. 

For decades such ‘transsexuals’ were few and far between, the concern of a handful of maverick clinicians, who would provide hormones and surgeries to reshape their patients’ bodies to match their desires as closely as possible. Bureaucrats and governments treated them as exceptions, to be accommodated in society with varying degrees of competence and compassion. But since the turn of the century, the exception has become the rule. National laws, company policies, school curricula, medical protocols, academic research and media style guides are being rewritten to privilege self- declared gender identity over biological sex. 

Roughly, sex is a biological category, and gender a historical category; sex is why women are oppressed, and gender is how women are oppressed. 

In the simplistic version of the new creed that has hardened into social-justice orthodoxy, gender is no longer even something that is performed. It is innate and ineffable: something like a sexed soul. 

What is being demanded is no longer flexibility, but a redefinition of what it means for anyone to be a man or woman – a total rewrite of societal rules. 

liberal, secular society can accommodate many subjective belief systems, even mutually contradictory ones. What it must never do is impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else. 

Gender self-identification, however, is a demand for validation by others. The label is a misnomer. It is actually about requiring others to identify you as a member of the sex you proclaim. Since evolution has equipped humans with the ability to recognize other people’s sex, almost instantaneously and with exquisite accuracy, very few trans people ‘pass’ as their desired sex. And so to see them as that sex, everyone else must discount what their senses are telling them."

Joyce explores and predicts several backlashes that transactivism is already generating in different areas such as:

Sports

"Their entire purpose is to enable fair competition, since the physical differences between the sexes give males an overwhelming athletic advantage, and competing separately is the only way that exceptional females can get their due. 

Allowing males to identify as women for the purposes of entry to women’s competitions makes no more sense than allowing heavyweights to box as flyweights, or able-bodied athletes to enter the Paralympics, or adults to compete as under- eighteens. And yet, under pressure from transactivists, almost every sporting authority right up to the International Olympic Committee has moved to gender self-identification. The sight of stronger, heavier, faster males easily beating the world’s best female athletes is sure to outrage deep-seated intuitions about fair play – once it comes to wider notice. "

Pediatric Gender Surgery

"Until recently, hardly any children presented at gender clinics, but in the past decade the number has soared. Every one of the dozen or so studies of children with gender dysphoria – discomfort and misery caused by one’s biological sex – has found that most grow out of it, as long as they are supported in their gender non-conformity and not encouraged in a cross-sex identification. Many of these ‘desisters’ are destined to grow up gay: there is copious evidence of a strong link between early gender non-conformity and adult homosexuality. 

But as gender clinics have come under activists’ sway, the treatment they offer has taken an ideological turn. Instead of advising parents to watch and wait with sympathy and kindness, they now work on the assumption that childhood gender dysphoria destines someone to trans adulthood. They recommend immediate ‘social transition’– a change of name, pronouns and presentation – followed successively by drugs to block puberty, cross- sex hormones and surgery, often while the patient is still in their teens. This treatment pathway is a fast track to sexual dysfunction and sterility in adulthood."

The book also covers the negative impact this agenda has on women's rights and the cultural acceptance of alternatives such as bisexuality and homosexuality as not just lifelong but personal, private, and changing options.

Ancient societies such as Classical Greece had already achieved a better balance as any reader of Plato can verify. But Plato and the Great Books are temporarily (we hope) out of fashion, so Joyce's book is a very helpful alternative to distinguish between reason and nonsense. 

Adam Smith: The Invisible Founding Father

 

The documentary that starts this article, written and narrated by Donald L. Miller, professor of History at Lafayette University, explains some interesting but lesser-known facts about the United States' early economic development.

Adam Smith could be considered an "invisible" Founding Father of the United States economic system. Although Smith never visited the British colonies that proclaimed their independence the same year he published The Wealth of Nations, the seeds of the system he described had already traveled with the early settlers in the form of entrepreneurial capitalism. 

These are some interesting facts that Professor Miller points out:

• During its first 100 years, in the period between 1801 (Jefferson) and 1901 (Theodore Roosevelt), the United States population grew from 7 to 77 million, and the territory quintupled to the West and South.

• The first American factory was established by Moses Brown in 1789 using a water mill to power looms in  Pawtucket Falls, Rhode Island. A few months later, they acquired a patent to use a 32-spin loom to expand. Facing problems with the new technology, they hired a British partner, Samuel Slater, who had worked with the system in Britain. The factory employed mostly women and children from what continued to be a rural community. Men kept working as farmers, and women and children earned extra income working in barns turned into factories. What would be called today illegal child labor was in fact a bonus for the new employees, who already toiled 70 hours a week in rural labor much harder and exacting to the body that working on looms inside the barns.
• Hamilton was strongly in favor of the urban capitalistic model. Jefferson preferred the agrarian version of the part-time farm/factories, farmers/workers.
• At the time "child labor" was normal, particularly in farming, where having as many children as possible was a competitive advantage over hiring (and paying for) hands outside the owning family,
• The westward expansion between 1801 and 1901 went hand-in-hand with the entrepreneurial capitalist model embraced by all parties. 
• Business-financed channels and railroads connected the East Cost, NY transatlantic trade with the Great Lakes and prairie land beyond the Appalaches. \

The "invisible hand" of the growing markets and free enterprise created a century of prosperity and growth, making Adam Smith an "invisible" founding father.

Recommended readings: Cuba, an American History, by Ada Ferrer

 

A significant part of the relationship between the United States and Latin America during the 20^th century was defined by our relationship with Cuba. What turned Cuba and the US into rivals was not the 1959 triumph of the young guerrilla men and women that defeated and deposed the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, but instead on December 2, 1961, when Fidel Castro declared his new government communist and turned to an alliance with the Soviet Union at the onset of the Cold War. Until then, the American press primarily portrayed Castro as a freedom fighter that would deliver some form of liberal democracy after Batista.

From 1957 to 1961, the US and Cuba were, as during much of their previous history, a sort of quarrelous allies. And in 1959 friendship reached a high point. Castro put special care into befriending American media during his guerrilla campaign. US reporters interviewed Castro, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos several times in their Sierra Maestra quarters. The US and Fidel were undoubtedly playing both ends of the nascent Cold War until the CIA fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 signaled the final break with the US and the beginning of a direct alliance with the USSR.

 "Cuba, An American History," by historian Ada Ferrer provides a long-view perspective of the Cuba-US history. As an American citizen born in Cuba who has continued to return to the island since she left it as a child, Ferrer combines her personal experience with solid scholarship in terse prose to provide a well-balanced portrait of the complex relations between Cuba and the United States.

The result is a picture of unusual clarity, precisely because Ferrer does not fudge complexity and stick to historical facts. The book starts the history of Cuba and the US  with the first trip of the now vilified Christopher Columbus and follows up to the times of Donald Trump. Ferrer's focus on the people's history rather than the government's only shines light on the US and Cuba's critical common ground and ideals rather than on the apparent confrontations. To do so, it avoids the political narratives espoused and promoted by the rival governments to focus on the actual relationships between Americans and Cubans from 1959 to -almost- the present.

Ferrer shows how history repeats itself in both directions. How American independence was supported and launched from Cuba (which controlled Spanish Florida), secession and the slave trade, and how the Cuban flag and its independence founders came from New York and New Jersey.

The book prologue provides a good example:

"Prologue: There and Here 

"The connections between Cuba and the United States stretch back over centuries and run in both directions. Few Americans have likely considered the significance of Cuba for the United States. During the American Revolution, Cubans raised funds in support of Washington’s army, and soldiers from Cuba fought against the British in North America and the Caribbean. 

As the thirteen colonies lost access to other British possessions, the Spanish colony of Cuba became a vital trading partner. In fact, Havana’s storehouse of coveted silver currency helped finance the new nation’s first central bank. Later, after Florida and Texas became states of the Union in 1845, propertied southerners—and even some northerners—looked to Cuba as a potential new slave state or two, as a way to buttress the power of slavery and its economy. 

In 1898, the United States intervened militarily in Cuba and declared war on Spain. With that intervention, the United States turned what had been a thirty-year movement for Cuban independence into the conflict that history usually remembers as the Spanish-American War. 

The end of some four hundred years of Spanish rule was ritually observed at noon on January 1, 1899, with the synchronized lowering of every Spanish flag on the island. But the flag raised in its place was not a Cuban flag but an American one. With that began a full-fledged military occupation that ended four years later, only after Cuban leaders, under enormous pressure, agreed to grant the US government the right of intervention in Cuba. If the events of 1898 were fateful for Cuba, they also helped produce two consequential developments in the United States: first, the reconciliation of the white South and North after decades of disunion and, second, the emergence of the United States as an imperial power on the world stage. 

For more than a century, the role of the United States in Cuban independence has been the subject of disagreement— a shared history viewed in radically divergent terms. Historically, American statesmen have tended to view US intervention in 1898 as an illustration of American benevolence. The United States had rallied to the cause of a neighbor’s independence and declared war to achieve it. In this version of history, Cuban independence was a gift of the Americans, and for that Cubans owed them a debt of gratitude. In Cuba, however, 1898 represents something entirely different: more theft than gift. There, 1898 was the moment when the United States swept in at the end of a war the Cubans had already almost won, claimed victory, and proceeded to rule over Cuba as a de facto colonial power. Cuba Does Not Owe Its Independence to the United States read the title of an important book published in Havana in 1950. 

Alongside that American presumption and Cuban resentment, however, existed dense networks of human contact forged over decades by people of all kinds in both countries. 

Cuba’s flag was designed and flown for the first time by Cuban exiles in the United States. 

The first pro-independence Cuban newspaper was published in Philadelphia, and the first national novel was written in New York. 

Cuba’s most famous patriot and writer, José Martí, spent more of his adult life in the United States than in Cuba, and the largest memorial service for Cuba’s most important war hero, Antonio Maceo, was held at Cooper Union in New York. 

Cubans traveled to the United States to study at Harvard and Tuskegee, to shop in Miami, to play baseball in the American Negro Leagues, to escape dictators, and to view the famous falls at Niagara. 

Americans traveled in the other direction: to drink during Prohibition in the States, to buy land and cigars, to convert people to Protestantism, to forge networks of Black solidarity, to honeymoon and to fish, to hear jazz and get abortions. 

Americans listened to Cuban music, and Cubans watched American movies. Americans bought Cuban sugar; Cubans bought American appliances. Actually, Cubans bought just about everything (except sugar) from the United States."

Then Fidel Castro came along for almost 50 years and Cuba-US relationships seemed to take a 180 turn at the political level. At the social level, relationships remained like those of a family divided by forced migration, with one-third of Cubans living in the United States -most barely 100 miles away in Florida- while the other two-thirds remained -willingly or not- in their home country. After reading Ferrer's book the concept of "home country" for Cubans becomes healthily extended. 

The video at the beginning of this entry is worth watching in its entirety. Ferrer was interviewed in 2018, shortly after Barak Obama's trip to Cuba, and spoke candidly and presciently about its repercussions. At that time, the book we are discussing was still unpublished -Ferrer read the manuscript here and there-, and a well-informed American and Cuban audience made sharp and enriching questions and comments.

The book now includes Trump's four-year return to hostilities and Biden's more recent return to Obama's opening. 

Cuban-American history is still in the making, but it is clear that it will not be long before returning to its traditional roots. Cubans will be freer, and Americans will discover more about their Southern cousins.

Isolationism is not an option: Lessons from Munich, Saigon & Kabul

"Be careful with what you wish, because it can become true"

The fall of Kabul and the collapse of Afghanistan shows several of the unavoidable consequences of being a global power:

1. You can't "opt-out" 
2. Safety can only be achieved through strength
3. You cannot negotiate with totalitarian extremists
4. You cannot "build" institutions for others
5. You must trust but verify
6. Powell Doctrine, Truman Doctrine, Monroe Doctrine, TR doctrine are all proven true 
7. Blockades, permanent military occupation, and immigration control are the lesser of evils against evils
8. "Multinational government" doesn't work, economic globalization combined with strong military power and alliances does.
9. There is no shame in being a global power. There is shame in appeasement and self-blame
10. Ignorance is lethal. Pandering to ignorance and conspiracy theories must be criminalized. 

I can expand later on all these 10 points, but they are self-explanatory. 

Churchill, FDR, JFK, Thatcher, Truman, Reagan did the right thing in confronting all-out the enemies of the West.

The enemies of the West are also the enemies of the basic principles and freedoms that its foundations:

1. Rule of law
2. Division of Power
3. Checks and balances
4. Independent Judiciary, Monetary authority
5. Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948

Those 5 elements cannot be negotiated. They must be defended and imposed at any cost. There is no "pacific coexistence" with regimes or civilizations that don't share them.

A House Divided – Again – By Vaccination Rates

 

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."  Abraham Lincoln June 16, 1858

“The common and continual mischief's of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.”

George Washington, Washington's farewell address: delivered to Congress on September 19, 1796 

History repeats, but not always as a farce, as Marx had it. There seem to be secular themes in the US and other countries that come back in rather dramatic ways.

160+ years ago, Abraham Lincoln warned for the first time that “a house divided cannot stand.” That was the last, desperate warning before the Civil War that still reverberates in the North-South cultural divide.

Back from a road trip across seven states -Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida- I noticed the differences between the world of the big cities and small-town America. I found most of those differences enriching and valuable. But also noticed how easily they could be exploited by populist politicians to sow divisions for political gain. The cemeteries and battle sites I found along the 1,300 miles of my trip reminded me that this happened before.

This time history repeats in dramatic form. Almost one million Americans died during the 1861-1864 Civil War, and 608,000 have died already during the 2020-2021 COVID 19 pandemic that is still in course. The final count might be very close, primarily because of the “house divided” factor.

The current house is divided by politics once again. This would not be news but for a dramatic, life-threatening factor: vaccination rates.

Although Trump could take credit for speeding the development of new vaccines,  it must also take responsibility for encouraging vaccine avoidance in the states that voted for him. County by county, the vaccination map reproduces the 2020 election map. Unfortunately, the infection rates -90+percent among non-vaccinated- also reflect the partisan divide. And that is a lethal difference when the new Delta variant starts to spread in the United States.

I cannot avoid remembering George Washington’s warning against partisan factions. I already wrote about his farewell speech, prescient of the Civil War. Back then, populist politicians and politics turned the partisan division into a deadly war between Americans. Now, once again, toxic populist politics -fanned by the speed and reach of social media conspiracy theory networks- are exposing unnecessarily millions of Americans to a deadly virus.

Lincoln’s advice stands even more prescient than Washington’s. A house divided -half vaccinated and half not- cannot stand in the war against a virus that can mutate and reinfect almost endlessly unless checked by vaccination.

Hard as it is to believe in the 21^st century and in the country that developed the vaccines against the disease, the United States runs the risk of losing thousands of lives unnecessarily.

Blaming the Internet or Facebook for vaccine avoidance deflects responsibility from those who should be criminally accountable for spreading conspiracy theories, rumors, and false information. That buck stops right at the table of former President Mr. Donald J. Trump, who still could use his significant influence to encourage vaccination among his followers. He seems so far too busy disputing the 2020 elections and campaigning for a return in 2024.

The alternative is much less effective and painful: a combination of fear of dying and the negative self-selection of death will undoubtedly do the hatchet job.

Looking for a silver lining is very difficult. Perhaps if there is a lesson to be learned -as it happened after the Civil War- we can hope it will last for a couple of generations, which -as Ronald Reagan said of freedom- will be that far from extinction.

Immigration's long view: welfare state or open borders? you can't have both.

In a first, unforced strategic error, the Biden administration reversed critical policies instituted by the Trump Administration to control immigrants' flow.  The reversal not only was hurried but plagued with ambiguous messages such as "don't come... now".

The response was a colossal and predictable surge:

"U.S. Border Patrol agents made about 97,000 arrests of migrants crossing the border illegally in February, the highest monthly total since 2019 when there was also a surge in U.S.-bound migration. Record numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing the border have posed the greatest problem for U.S. immigration authorities."

Biden was forced to use a Trump-era COVID resolution to justify sending back thousands of unaccompanied minors illegally smuggled from Central America to the border and put VP Kamala Harris in charge of negotiating a temporary halt with Mexico and Central American governments.

Milton Friedman explained almost 50 years ago the fundamentals to think about immigration policies between underdeveloped neighbors and a high-income society with a large welfare state like the US.:

The current crisis proves Friedman right by way of the absurd. Opening the border to poorly defined "asylum-seekers" is the equivalent of inviting millions across the border to come to a Black Eye Friday sale.

The long view of the problem is clear: immigration can be managed much better only through an internal agreement between special interests represented by both Democrats and Republicans. 

Extremist, simplistic fixes such as "building the wall" or "humanitarian asylum" not only don't solve the problem but exacerbate it. 

Border control -as Biden has learned the hard way- is a first priority and necessity and top-rated demand in the border states exposed to uncontrolled inflows of migration managed and promoted by a mix of human traffickers, failed states, and political extremists.

For all his harmful and insulting rhetoric, Trump addressed that claim. Biden's reversal shows that moderates understand reality much better than extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. Immigration policy is neither an academic debate nor a campaign bumper sticker.

The welfare state party can do better to serve it by keeping control of the border before negotiating a true migratory reform that serves and prioritizes US stakeholders.

Long view trends: The Sunbelt turns Democratic, the Midwest might go Republican, will Populists go with Trump ?

 

Like Sarah Palin in 2008, Donald Trump's populism has become a deadly boomerang for the old GOP. 

Populist leaders and party rules and principles make odd and short-lived marriages. 

Trump's 2016 narrow victory over an out-of-touch Hillary Clinton might have been grossly overstated as a sign of a trend towards conservatism and republican values.

Except for his tax cuts and deregulatory measures, Trump's nationalistic and protectionist policies fit better with Bernie Sanders' Left-wing democrats than with orthodox Milton Friedman-Ronald Reagan republicanism.

The underlying demographic trend shows a fast migratory transformation, explained in detail by Nate Silver.

Arizona, Georgia, Florida, and Texas are moving towards the Democratic party, as millions of college-educated Californians and Midwesterns move towards the Sunbelt states looking for lower taxes, affordable housing, and more efficient government. 

Republicans' success in state government has attracted liberal voters that are already turning the tide towards a more progressive, minority-friendly type of politics than Trump's populist version of the Republican party.

Trump's three consecutive defeats between 2018 and 2020, losing control of the Senate and the White House are the price for extreme polarization and catering to a steady but not expandable segment of the traditional Republican electorate: white, non-college-educated voters in traditional protected industries.

If Trump keeps veering to the Far-Right his populist agenda and doesn't check his personalist impulses, he will put in jeopardy GOP governors and senators' tenure in the states that are turning demographically and culturally to more progressive politics.  Such fracture would make possible a Harris 2024 presidency, in the same manner as Ross Perot helped Bill Clinton defeat Bush 41.

Future trends are clear for both traditional parties to be aware of: republicans must move back to the center to keep chances with a new, younger, better educated, and more diverse electorate moving to formerly "red" states. Democrats must take account of their slim 2020 victory in such states doing the same and moving away from Sanderism and the Gang of Four.

So far, both parties seem to be uncertain and in a process of internal divisions.

US After Trump (3): A return to normalcy?

 

All the signs indicate that Trump's Alt-Right populism has reached its limits. Trump's constant aggression and lack of civility towards those who criticize him or don't seem to be part of his 2016 base has set a low ceiling to his chances.

Fear-mongering is a weak strategy against a moderate, well-known rival with a 47-year long track record -in addition to a two-term VP stint during the still popular Obama Presidency-.

The coronavirus pandemic has dissipated the doubts about the need for universal, affordable healthcare coverage, including pre-existing conditions such as Covid infections that will continue to spread in another or perhaps two more waves before a vaccine can set an end to the pandemic ordeal.

Most Americans know that the economy's outlook will not be very different with a Biden or Trump's presidency, but healthcare and pandemic management will. And on those accounts Trump is evidently on the wrong side of the events. 

Still under the impact of the pandemic, the country is eager for a return to some sense of normalcy and civility.

War on Cops: Just another lost war

A growing wave of unrest is pushing back silently against the campaigns for defunding police departments based on blaming the police for the growing violence against black lives and black communities based on charges of "systemic racism" that cancel any possible request for confrontation with actual data.

Scholar Heather McDonald has been for decades publishing such data, which reveals that over 80 percent of black lives are taken by black-on-black crime and -more critically- than most black community members want more and not fewer police to keep them safe from shootings and looting.

The last piece of evidence was provided by the parents of an actual victim of police abuse, Jacob Blake, who denounced publicly the looting and property destruction that destroyed Kenosha, Wisconsin property and businesses 

This self-defeating campaign of protests during the pandemic has handed President Trump a winning card in the coming elections. Polls show that protests that work as a perfect cover for looting are overwhelmingly unpopular and play in the hands of President's Trump "law & order" campaign theme. Black voters are mostly moderates (43%). Also, white suburban voters are increasingly worried about the looting, arson, and violence of street protests.

Systematic violence against property across all major cities in the United States is the perfect argument for re-electing the current incumbent.  

New York and Chicago are already reeling from looting, violence that challenges the rationalizations and denial of progressive rhetoric and fuel a mass exodus of millennials and tired liberal taxpayers to "law & order" cities.

War on cops is another self-defeating form of cultural wars. Reality will correct those who engage in them harshly.

US After Trump: Millenials Coming of Age (Part 2)

Millennials are reaching homeownership age, that stage beyond college politics and free-spirited idealism to enter the realities of paying off student debt and family home mortgages. In five more years they will be also paying for their children's education.

Much has been said about the M generation, and most could be wrong or at least outdated. Coming of mortgage age has taken longer -thanks to the many tankings of boomers' roller coaster  economy- than the two generations before. But as older millennials hit their 40s, financial responsibility, taxes and jobs become priorities.

The view from this perspective is certainly sobering: record student debt maturing right when the economy rolls down in a likely record recession; low rate-mortgages fueling a binge of homeownership and a forced flight from overtaxed, overpriced and overcrowded coastal "liberal blue" urban centers to affordable and safer "conservative red" small(er) town-America.

This migration will likely have several consequences that should be the basis for realistic assessments instead of rosy or gloomy projections of the past.

1. Millennials will become more tax-conscious and government-averse
2. Blue cities will lose population and political and economic power, turning red
3. Red cities will turn "bluer" in social and cultural politics but will remain "red" in economics
4. Multicultural happy talk will be replaced by realistic nationalism and protectionism
5. Left-wing populism might swing to right-wing populism

Progressives used to consider the party of the future as much as conservatives were the party of the past. There is a role-reversal going on already, as small businesses and cities struggle with unintended consequences of protest rallies -so popular in college years- run in their own hard-paid backyards and shops.

Conservatives used to spell "doom and gloom" and fear for the future but might now have to deal with a more positive message for a new generation dealing with debt, poor economy and broken government.

It's time to look to the present with the perspective of a new generation.

US after Trump - Millennials coming (part 1)

For those taking the long view perspective -that of generational changes in voters and workforce- the 2020 elections have a different meaning. Both candidates are over 70 years old -well into retirement age-. Both are white, anglo Saxon men raised in the urban states of the East Coast. 

Trump's "base" is a dwindling, less mobile, non-college-educated sample of what was the majority of America around 1950. They have been pictured in countless books since "Hillbilly Elegy"

and in many documentaries like 'American Factory, that explain how China took over jobs and even companies from the Rust Belt during the past 20 years, killing middle-class "union jobs" by way of technological revolution and global supply chains.

The reality is -or shall we better say will be- that the United States has become more diverse in the past 20 years and will become even more multicultural and multi-ethnic in the coming 20.

No matter how much (some) Trump supporters howl "they will not replace us" or wear MAGA hats, their hope for a return to 1950 is as futile as the fixation of equal old-timers in the Left with the politics of the 1970s.  

Neither 78-year-old Bernie Sanders nor 74-year-old-Donald Trump will be inactive roles within the next 5 years. 

Progressive governors and mayors have left the "blue" states with such heavy levels of taxation, public and student debt that a solid migration of millennials is changing the demographics -and politics of formerly known "red states" such as Utah, Arizona, and Texas.

Some move for increasing costs of living

Pandemics and remote work have made other Millenials more mobile and eager to escape expensive urban decay and stressful levels of social conflict

Progressives can't claim victory either: millennial migrants are turning more conservative as they become financially strapped with student debt and start their own small businesses away from the corporate rat race tracks.

It's time to look at how 2030 or 2040 US will look like rather than imagining that Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders' "retro" politics will dictate the future.

And those are indeed the good news.

Post -Pandemics II: A Long View Approach (2)

The Munk Dialogues and Debates produced a series of high-interest interviews to explore Post-Covid scenarios.  Financier Mohamed Al-Erian,  foreign affairs expert Fareed Zakaria, "big picture" writer Malcolm Gladwell, economic historian Niall Ferguson, China experts Victor Gao, David Li, and Henry Kissinger produced a variety of valuable insights from different angles.

Mohamed Al-Erian emphasized the long-lasting effect of the pandemic over the global economic system and the re-globalization or reconfiguration of global value chains as a result of the pandemic experience. In Al-Erian's view, the re-globalization will involve nearshoring to reliable partners with higher health and communication standards and reciprocal trust.

Malcolm Gladwell points to a different but critical angle: the key importance of looking to the weakest link in the world and local societies and economies instead of focusing on the "competitive advantages". The weakest links such as healthcare capacity and prevention, poverty, and welfare networks are likely to stay front and center.

Ian Bremmer added a critical insight regarding the relocation of global value chains: "just-in-case" criteria will not be sustainable. Stronger links based on mutual agreements and reliable partnerships will have priority over mere cost-cutting or universal coverage plans.

Fareed Zakaria pointed out the rise of China as a global factor but also with increased pressure and challenges to meet health and trade requirements

Niall Ferguson, Henry Kissinger, Victor Gao, and David Li debated the role of China, with the Chinese defending the strong points and the Brit and American pointing to China's weaknesses.  

Cancel your Cable News - And your Social Media "Feed"

Once upon a time, there was "news" in-network news and professional journalists like Walter Lippmann, Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite, or Jim Lehrer. 

CNN  -the first Cable New Network that covered 24/7- had news around the world, delivered by independent, professional journalists and sources.

Those were the days of reporters -not commentators- such as Bernard Shaw and Wolf Blitzer

Even Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War I checked the news in CNN instead of relying on his "Baghdad Bob" because in those early days CNN offered information, not opinion or commentary.

There were, of course, op-ed shows and even debates, on both sides of the political spectrum and with solid arguments, such as CrossFire

Or debates such as Baldwin vs Buckley:

Then came the Clinton years and Fox channel and cable news became partisan mouthpieces of each one of the two main political parties: CNN and MSNBC for Democrats and Fox Channel for Republicans. 

Twenty years into the 21st century, there is no more "news" in the news network. Just endless, 24/7 partisan "talking points" delivered by the media equivalents to a Press Secretary.

The rest of the world disappeared from US news. So did the rest to the United States other than what matters for campaign strategists. Cable news became a 24/7, endless "yellow pages" of political ads.

Is time to turn them off and get some news. You can try C-SPAN, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC (finances are still outside the partisan range) Reuters, and all the other international sources now available online.

Save money. Save sanity. Get some actual news. Drop Cable "News" Networks.

Campus "Unsafe Zones" - How to Defend Freedom from "Social Justice" Agendas

Please take some time to watch the video that precedes this paragraph. It shows in full display the experience of students and faculty in current US campuses.

"Safe zones", "political correctness" and historical revisionism defeat the purpose of higher education. 

The "higher" in "higher education" stands for the respect for free-thinking regardless of its direction and content. Higher education is about learning how to think, not about learning what to think.

Under the guise of "safe zones", "critical thinking" and "social justice" extremist and intolerant minorities regularly impose their views, suppress dissent, and -more dangerously- use peer pressure, student debt, and faculty job stability to blackmail and coerce into silence.

Philosopher and Portland State professor Peter Boghossian has found an interesting way to fight back. It consists of letting students speak out and communicating their views through the same social media used to bully dissenters.

It seems a promising way to restore the "higher" purpose and spirit in higher education.