Fifth Act--Relying on Connections

I blogged earlier about  Eliot Ackerman's Fifth Act,  Thinking about it some more--one thing stands out is the reliance on personal connections. In the chaos of our exit from Afghanistan, personal connections were everywhere.  Initially it was the personal connection of American soldiers, diplomats, and contractors with those who had worked with them.  The Afghani asked their friends to help. As the days passed and the panic spread, Afghanis who had no such history contacted Afghanis who had the connection: a friend of a friend, a cousin, a neighbor.

Once contacted the Americans, like Ackerman, relied on their own connections. An ex-soldier contacted an old comrade still in Afghanistan.  As the days passed, the calls for help spread, asking any acquaintance who might have any pull over the Marines at the Kabul airport for help.  Sometimes the calls go to the chain of command but those at the gates have more power; the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is eventually at the mercy of and relying upon the grunt, the lieutenant at the gate.

In the situation, the bureaucratic rules get bent and broken, which I imagine is common in extreme cases.

I also see the whole process is dependent on the internet--the appeals for help may be phoned, but the logistics needed to coordinate the arrival of a group at the appropriate airport gate at the time when the right American is there; they all rely on forms of internet communication: email, Twitter, Slack, 

I assume our exit from Saigon back in the day was somewhat similar, but without the internet the connections were much more limited.

The Doomed Quest for Clarity in Government

 The Senate has passed a bill to: "expand and update an existing law on plain language requirements for agencies" which is to apply to all writing which the public might read, i.e., contracts, applications, etc. etc.

Why do I say it's doomed?  We've had almost 55 years worth of campaigning on the subject with no claims of victory.

I remember Jimmy Carter, who had a drive for "Plain English". See this website.  At that time we had to include in the clearance package for regulations a certification that the regulation had been reviewed for plain English. It turned into a rubber stamp exercise.  That's the way it goes in the bureaucracy.  The bureaucrat is most concerned that the document be acceptable to those who clear it, to her bosses whether in the chain of command or with veto power (often the lawyers). Those people are years removed from a personal concern with the clarity of government forms. 

Looking Ahead to 2024

 Sen Sinema's switch to being an independent is viewed as a way to avoid a Democratic primary which she would likely lose.  So if she runs as an independent in 2024 it may be a 3-way contest, possibly splitting the Democratic and independent vote and permitting the Republican to win.  There's lots of possibilities--if it appears Sinema will run, does that mean the Democratic and Republican primaries will be more favorable to the more radical candidates?  

I've also seen discussion over the adverse Senate map for 2024--Tester, Manchin, Brown, Rosen, and AZ are all chancy or adverse.   A Democratic who has rose-colored glasses might predict that by Nov. 2024 the economy will have picked up, having dodged a recession next year, and we can compare the country to 1984.  And Biden will have become popular, and the Republicans will have been flailing in Congress to do anything.  And if the Republican presidential candidate is Trump, or someone equally as unpopular and incompetent (hard to imagine, but don't underestimate Republicans), we could be looking at a landslide.

I estimate the probability of that outcome as <1 percent. 

Why I Envy the Young

 I clicked on this discussion and demonstration of the physics of a ball on a turntable. Though my capacity to absorb the new is limited these days, it's still interesting, just a phenomon--forget the equations.

It's an example of why I envy the young.  There's so much material online to learn from these days.  In the '40's and '50's there were books.  Popular Mechanics might have been the magazine closest to some of the Youtube videos, but still miles and miles away. But with the visual examples and the ability to drill down into subjects, today's world is an autodidact's dream.

There might be tradeoffs--amid all the possibilities and attractions could an autodidact focus enough to contribute to knowledge, but still.. 

Churches--Merging and Splitting, and Also Tech

 I've mentioned some of my paternal ancestors were Presbyterians, so I've a little knowledge of how that denomination has split and merged over the centuries. 

In my youth there was movement towards the unification of many Christian denominations; it was being pushed by the National Council of Churches.  It was generally liberal, based on Social Gospel, internationalism (World Council of Churches), etc.  

Beginning in the 1970s or before it seems the tide has changed; instead of churches flowing together from tributaries into one big body of common belief, the water is rising and flowing back into the various tributaries.  

The recent split of the Methodists  is just the latest instance of secession movements. 

There seems to be a broader phenomenon of institutions growing larger, then splitting.  Back  around 1970 we had a lot of "conglomerates"--companies buying up other companies into one big outfit.  Even GE under Jack Welch was adding different lines of business. But there too the tide has turned, and selling off branches now seems the trend, at least in older parts of the economy.  The new tech outfits like Amazon and Google have expanded.  When and whether the acquisition process will reverse remains to be seen.

Complexity of Modern Life

 Had to go to my bank branch today and talk to a real person, who was very helpful BTW.  It was the first time in years.  I had told a bank rep on the phone earlier that I was confident I could follow the instructions in their online tutorial and manage the matter online.  

I was wrong.  Whether it's bad memory or fact, I got very confused, partly because of what I perceived as changes in the way the website operated, partly because the software I was running didn't work according to my expectations.  I thought, if you can fill out some fields in a form on line, you ought to be able to fill out all of them online.  As it turned out, filling out the remaining fields with ink was fine.  

I think part of what's happening these days is the addition problem--we add new programs or new features to old programs and we change the organizations.   But the new or changed is not tested to be consistent and compatible with the old.  The builders of the new have a different take, a different approach,, to their construction, so users/clients/customers find their expectations are faulty.  

My wife and I experienced that today, but when I read posts on the FSA employee group on Facebook I see county office employees (and presumably their farmers) having similar problems with what Congress and the administration do. 

My Inner Puritan

 Why did we need to double the size of our houses in the last 50 years?

Why did we need to increase the proportion of SUV's and pickups we buy to 80 percent of new vehicles?

Why does the average American family spend $1700 on clothing in a year?

Road Rage, Then and Now

My cousin remembers the experience in the 1930s of riding with her father driving.  He was a reckless driver; she says he had "road rage" before the name.

For those who don't remember the days before the interstate, and who no longer regularly drive in rural areas, two-lane roads were standard.  In hilly areas, such as upstate New York, that meant a lot of blind curves, and no-passing zones.  On long drives, like that from Maryland to Minneapolis, or even North Fenton to Ithaca, those zones were frustrating to those of us who are impatient.  Find yourself behind a car whose driver was old, or cautious, or law-abiding (those were more common in those days than now), on a road with lots of traffic coming towards you, with a number of curves or hills, you'd get more and more frustrated, each time you swerved over the middle line and saw a car coming, or ran out of the dashed passing line and into the double white line.

Eventually either the slowboat in front of you would turn off, or you'd take the chance of passing when you really shouldn't.

Afghanistan and US

 Just finished Elliot Ackerman's "Act Five, America's End in Afghanistan". I liked it very much. While the title might imply it's all about the exit from Afghanistan, it's not, not entirely. The construction is different: the thread which drives the narrative is a series of attempts at coordinating through calls with friends and strangers the permissions and logistics of getting Afghans who worked for America and their families onto the planes after the fall of Kabul.  The desperation of the efforts contrasts with his description of the vacation trip with wife and children. 

Another thread is composed of episodes from his tours in Afghanistan (serving first as a Marine officer with the 1-8 (regiment), then as an officer working with paramilitaries (Afghan troop and US special forces), and finally as a CIA paralmilitary officer doing the same. A third thread covers episodes from his life outside of Afghanistan. These threads provide context for his calls.  He weaves his threads together into a nice tapestry, colored with thoughts on America's two wars (he served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan).

He's critical of all the administrations--Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden for their decision, but most of all critical of Americans for the growing separation between society and the military, and the growing inolvement of the military in partisan politics.  It was published in this summer, when we still feared the outcome of the 2022 elections, which went better, more quietly, than we thought then.  

Loss of Authority

 Was thinking about the question of authority--who has it, what does it mean, etc.

Seems to me "authority" has drained away from the people and organizations which had it in my youth. It's perhaps particularly so in the family--as the patriarchy has decline, so has the authority of the father (maybe it's the same thing).

Surveys of the public on their respect for various institutions, police, schools, churches, etc. show a decline over the past decades.  As further confirmation, here's an ngram of American sources (the graph is a smoother decline if you leave the setting at "English").