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Sunday, July 26, 2015

I got an early start this week, writing some of this on Friday, then deciding that was close enough to save up for Sunday. This week's choice links:

• David Atkins: The GOP Isn't Choosing a President. They're Choosing a Rebel Leader. Donald Trump dominated the news cycle last week, not only by dominating polls among Republican presidential contenders but by staying there after kneecapping John McCain, a veritable saint among the Beltway punditocracy. I've looked at a lot of pieces on why this is (or, mostly, why it's awful), but few of them are convincing (or even sensible). For one thing, the widespread assumption that Trump is a fringe candidate is probably untrue. There's very little difference ideological between the declared or likely Republican candidates, and only a handful of issues where there is any practical disagreement. Where exactly Trump stands on issues isn't something I know or care much about, but I doubt he's going to campaign on "phasing out Medicare" like supposedly moderate Jeb Bush, and while he's argued that he could negotiate a better deal with Iran than Obama did, I doubt he sides with the clique that rejects diplomacy in toto, or that thinks bombing first would help (e.g., Rand Paul). True, he has taken a rather brusque nativist stance on immigration reform, but that's not unique in the field, nor far removed from the preferences of the base. The fact is that with so little in the way of practical differences, the primaries will turn on style, projected character, and money. The main doubt about Trump is how quickly he folded (after briefly topping the polls) four years ago. But so far he seems prepared and organized, like he's studied this contest and knows how to play it. He clearly knows how to dominate the media cycle, and it's not just a matter of saying crazy shit. He's campaigning as the guy who won't back down, and what better way to show that than to say crazy shit and stand by it? And it turns out that lots of regular Republicans see McCain as a loser, so maybe Trump's not so crazy after all. Atkins' take on this:

  As Donald Trump has surged to the top of the field, his competitors are resorting to saying ever more outlandish and reprehensible things just to get noticed.

  Witness the spectacle of Mike Huckabee this morning claiming that the negotiated deal with Iran would constitute President Obama marching "Israelis to the door of the oven." Even by modern Republican standards that sort of rhetoric is a bridge too far. But it's the sort of thing a Republican presidential aspirant has to say these days to get attention and support from the Republican base.

  Or consider Rick Perry today, whose brilliant solution to mass shootings is for us to all "take our guns to the movie theaters." As if the proper response to suicidal mass murderers using guns as the easiest, deadliest and most readily available tool to inflict mayhem is to arm every man, woman and child in the hope that the shooter dies slightly more quickly in the crossfire of a dark auditorium. Even as other moviegoers settle their disputes over cell phone texting with deadly gun violence.

  Under normal circumstances these sorts of statements would be a death knell for presidential candidates. But these are not normal times. The Republican Party is locked into an autocatalytic cycle of increasing and self-reinforcing extremism. [ . . . ]

  Unwilling and unable to moderate their positions, the Republican base has assumed a pose of irredentist defiance, an insurgent war against perceived liberal orthodoxy in which the loudest, most aggressive warrior becomes their favorite son. It is this insurgent stance that informs their hardline views on guns: many of them see a day coming when their nativist, secessionist political insurgency may become an active military insurgency, and they intend to be armed to the teeth in the event that they deem it necessary. The GOP electorate isn't choosing a potential president: they're choosing a rebel leader. The Republican base doesn't intend to go down compromising. They intend to go down fighting.

  Well, they intend to win, and hitching themselves to a guy they perceive as a winner is strategic. I'll also add that Trump has one more big advantage in this field: where everyone else is pimping for some billionaire, he's his own billionaire. Maybe he'll adopt Billie Holiday's song as his campaign theme: "God Bless the Child (Who's Got His Own)."

• Zoë Carpenter: Bobby Jindal, Does Louisiana 'Love Us Some Guns' Now?: Last week's gun massacre headliner was in Chattanooga, where a guy with a history of mental problems and a recent DUI arrest killed five soldiers. He happened to have been a Muslim, and former Gen. Wesley Clark went on TV and called for WWII-style internment camps for Muslim Americans who get depressed and radicalized. This week it was Lafayette, LA, where a guy with a history of mental problems and spousal abuse killed two and wounded nine before killing himself. He wasn't a Muslim; just a white guy with a history of praising Hitler on the Internet (see So Why Don't We Stop and Frisk Guys Like This Every Time They Leave the House?). Wesley Clark has yet to comment. (I wrote about Clark's proposal a few days back. Needless to say, it wouldn't have saved the people in Louisiana.) One common denominator is that both shooters had non-pacifist beliefs. Another is that they were nuts. But a third is that they had guns, not least because both lived in states that seem determined to arm as many bigoted nut-cases as possible. For example, the Governor of Louisiana:

  "We love us some guns," Bobby Jindal once said of his fellow Louisianans. Two of them were killed, and nine others wounded, on Thursday night when a man walked into a movie theater in Lafayette, sat for a while, and then fired more than a dozen rounds from a .40 caliber handgun.

  "We never imagined it would happen in Louisiana," Jindal said afterward, though the state has the second-highest rate of gun deaths in the country, more than twice the national average. Louisiana also has some of the laxest firearm regulations, for which Jindal bears much responsibility. During his eight years as governor he's signed at least a dozen gun-related bills, most intended to weaken gun-safety regulation or expand access to firearms. One allowed people to take their guns to church; another, into restaurants that serve alcohol. He broadened Louisiana's Stand Your Ground law, and made it a crime to publish the names of people with concealed carry permits. At the same time Jindal has pushed for cuts to mental health services.

  Jindal treats guns not as weapons but political props. On the presidential campaign trail he's posed repeatedly for photos cradling a firearm in his arms. "My kind of campaign stop," he tweeted earlier this month from an armory in Iowa. After the Charleston massacre, he called President Obama's mild comments about gun violence "completely shameful." The correct response then, according to Jindal, was "hugging these families," and "praying for these families."

  For another reaction to Jindal's call to prayer, see David Atkins: For Gun Victims, the Prayers of Conservative Politicians Are Not Enough:

  Frankly, that reaction is getting more than a little tiresome no matter what one's religious beliefs might be. When terrorists used airplanes as missiles against the United States in 2001, we didn't just pray for the victims: we changed our entire airline security system, spent billions on a new homeland security bureaucracy, and invaded not one but two countries at gigantic cost to life and treasure. When the ebola virus threatened to break out in the United States we didn't pray for deliverance from the plague; we went into a collective public policy and media frenzy to stop it from spreading further. When earthquakes prove our building standards are inadequate to save lives, we don't beg the gods to avert catastrophe and pray for the victims; we spend inordinate amounts of money to retrofit so it doesn't happen again.

  On every major piece of public policy in which lives are taken needlessly, we don't limit ourselves to empty prayers for the victims. We actually do something to stop it from happening again.

  But not when it comes to gun proliferation. On that issue we are told that nothing can be done, and that all we can do is mourn and pray for the murdered and wounded, even as we watch the news every day for our next opportunity to grieve and mourn and pray again -- all while sitting back and watching helplessly.

• Jason Diltz: Sen. Paul Bashes Iran Deal, Says US Must Prepare Military Force: Whoever the Republican presidential nominee in 2016 turns out to be, they should have to wear their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal like one of those gasoline-soaked tires cheerfully referred to as "necklaces." What they are saying is that the US should unilaterally renege on an agreement peaceably, voluntarily agreed to by Iran and all of the world's major powers that guarantees that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons (unlike said major powers); that they prefer the old system where sanctions, sabotage, and threats of war had, by their own fevered assertions, failed to deter Iran, and should escalate from that point and actually start bombing Iran, risking all-out war. Opponents of the deal would be rank fantasists if we had not already put their preferred solution to the test in an almost identical crisis: the fear the Bush Administration ginned up over Iraq's "WMD programs." As you all know, that didn't work out so well, and very clearly a deal like the Iran deal would have been much preferable (and very likely could have been negotiated -- indeed, Saddam Hussein had already given UN inspectors full access even while crippling sanctions were in place). Virtually every Republican presidential candidate now has retreated from the view that invading Iraq in 2003 was a good idea, yet they are all adamant about taking the same attitude against Iran now that Bush and Cheney insisted on viz. Iraq.

  One might have expected Sen. Rand Paul to be an exception -- indeed, his father, former Rep. and presidential candidate Ron Paul, has come out in favor of it -- but the only distance the son has put between himself and the worst hawks is to come off even more befuddled. Diltz writes:

  While Sen. Paul insisted in the comments to Kerry that he supports a nuclear deal in theory, he also declared that "diplomacy doesn't work without military force," and insisted he was ready to endorse a US military attack on Iran to "delay" them from getting nuclear arms.

  Sen. Paul acknowledged that attacking Iran would likely force them to try to get nuclear arms, and would also lead to the expulsion of UN inspectors from the country, but insisted he was still supportive of the idea of an attack even if it ended up with Iran getting a bomb faster because of it.

  I suppose the people who reject the deal, including the ones in Israel, do have one out: they may actually believe that Iran has never been aiming at building an arsenal of nuclear weapons -- as Ayatollah Khamenei has insisted in a fatwa (religious ruling) -- so they figure they've never been running any risk in stirring up this "manufactured crisis" (Gareth Porter's term, and title of his book). They just like touting Iran as an enemy. For Israel, enemies are necessary to justify the extent of their militarism, and Iran is particularly useful because the US never forgave Iran for the 1980 hostage crisis. (Americans, being categorically incapable of admitting past mistakes, have no shame when it comes to foreign policy.)

  I've always been rather sympathetic to libertarianism, mostly because most honest libertarians are opposed to war, the military, and every aspect of police states. On the other hand, they tend to hold extreme laissez-faire economic views that cannot possibly work, and they often reject the notion that collective democratic effort can do anything worthwhile. The latter views make someone like Ron Paul an unattractive presidential candidate, even though he's much more likely to make a much needed break with the foreign policy establishment than mere liberals like Obama or Kerry (let alone Clinton). On the other hand, Rand Paul has made it impossible to find any redeeming merit in his candidacy -- unless you consider occasionally wavering from the usual party talking points to show you don't really understand them some kind of plus.

  Also see No More Mister Nice Blog's review of Wednesday's "Stop Iran Rally Coalition" demo in New York (Let's Meet the Wackos Who Gathered in Times Square Yesterday to Protect the Iran Deal). Only one GOP presidential candidate made it to the rostrum (George Pataki), only one current member of Congress (Trent Franks, R-AZ), but there were several former Reps (like Pete Hoekstra and Allen West) -- in fact, about half the speakers list was identified as "former" (like James Woolsey, Robert Morgenthau, and a bunch of ex-military brass), with most of the rest being Israel flacks (Alan Dershowitz, Caroline Glick). Their message: Give War a Chance.

• Jason Diltz: Defense Secretary: Kurdish Peshmerga a 'Model' for ISIS War Across Region: More of what passes for deep thinking at the Pentagon:

  Visiting Arbil today on his second day in Iraq, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter praised the Peshmerga, the paramilitary forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as a model for the entire nation and indeed entire region in the war against ISIS.

  "We are trying to build a force throughout the territory of Iraq, and someday in Syria, that can do what the peshmerga does," Carter said following his meeting with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani. [ . . . ]

  How the US could even theoretically copy this model elsewhere isn't clear either. The Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan dates back generations, and doesn't have analogous factions across the rest of Iraq and Syria. Creating myriad new military forces in the model of them across different cultures in multiple countries is no small ambition, and with the US efforts to create a new faction in Syria yielding no more than a few dozen fighters, it's unclear how they could manage it.

  Actually, there are other sectarian militias in Iraq and Syria -- they're just not fighting for the US. To describe the Kurds as a model for bringing order to two nations where they are small minorities (about 20% in Iraq, less than 10% in Syria) is evidence of how clueless the US military efforts against ISIS (and/or Syria) are.

  Also note that Turkey launches massive attack against ISIS's most effective opponent, the PPK, which is to say the Kurds, Carter's model ally against ISIS. Turkey has also allowed the US to use Turkish air bases for bombing strikes against ISIS, so "the US responds by confirming Turkey's right to defend itself while affirming the PKK's status as a terrorist organization." So Turkey appears to be almost as confused about who its allies and enemies and enemies-of-enemies are as the US is.

• Tierney Sneed: Jeb Bush Wants to 'Figure Out a Way to Phase Out' Medicare: Here's another example of a Republican politician making his own campaign more difficult by insisting on a position that can't be sold to the voters and can't possibly work even if they bought it. The fact is you can't get rid of medicare without getting rid of health care for people over 65 -- which would mostly work by getting rid of people over 65, but then who would be left to vote for the Republicans?

  As MSNBC reported, the GOP 2016er was speaking at an Americans for Prosperity event in New Hampshire, where he brought up a TV ad in which a Paul Ryan-look-a-like "was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair." The ad was knocking Ryan's Medicare-related budget proposals.

  "I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits," Bush said. "But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something -- because they're not going to have anything."

  The key in all this is "Americans for Prosperity" -- nothing like telling the Kochs what they want to hear. Still, Bush obviously realizes that taking Medicare away from the elderly would be painful, so he's not doing that. On the other hand, why does he think the system cannot last? And what does he want to replace it with? The Republicans have thus far only come up with two ideas: one is tax-exempt savings accounts, so everyone can plan for their future health care expenses, except that hardly anyone can afford that, and fewer still can be sure that they've saved enough; the other is to buy insurance from the private sector -- something they've already tried as Medicare Advantage and which has proven to be more expensive and less beneficial than regular Medicare. They've also pushed ideas like raising the eligibility age, which would dump more high-risk people into less efficient private markets. Of course, some such scheme could be means-tested and subsidized, but then you're just replacing Medicare (which everyone likes) with Obamacare (which Republicans despise), so how does that solve anything?

  As with Social Security, there is no way to transition from a pay-as-you-go (where present workers pay for present retirees) to a save-and-hope-for-the-best system without effectively doubling the tax burden on the people you're screwing. So even if the demographics trend unfavorably -- fewer present workers having to support more present retirees -- you're stuck with that. At most you can trim back the benefit levels, but productivity gains also help (sure, they're presently all being captured by the rich, but only the Republicans think that makes them untaxable). So why do Republicans (at least when they're talking to the Kochs) keep insisting on doing something impossible to achieve something undesirable? The options seem to be malice and stupidity, not that those are mutually exclusive.

  Part of the problem here is the ever-growing fundamentalism (a specific form of extremism) of the Republican Party. Going way back, Republicans have generally believed that business pursuing private interests with relatively light government regulation build up the national wealth to the benefit of all, but lately this belief has become much more rigid. In the past, Republicans supported tariffs to limit free markets; they supported public investments; they enacted antitrust laws to limit excessive concentration and increase competition; and they've generally drawn a line against fraud and unscrupulous profiteering. But that's nearly all gone by the wayside now. Republicans (like the Kochs) now tend to believe that any and every pursuit of private advantage should be supported by public policy, and that whoever gets rich as a result should be able to keep the maximum possible portion of their gains. In the case of health care, they believe that hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical and equipment companies, labs, and insurance companies should be able to extract as much profit as the market will bear -- which given that all economists agree markets don't function at all efficiently for health care has resulted in an immense increase in the cost of living for everyone. (Their pricing strategy boils down to "your money or your life," and few if any of us are in a position to argue.)

  The great irony of their attitude is that by defending the unlimited ability of the health care industry to pillage, they are objectively undermining every other business they purport to support, and nearly every person they expect to get a vote from. Conservative parties in nearly every other country in the world realize that health care is different from most business: that it is a necessary service that has to be financed and regulated by the government, and that the more it is organized along non-profit lines, the more efficient it runs. There's no debate about this, except in the US where private interests buy politicians and fill the media with FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to maintain a system which takes two to three times the slice of GDP health care costs elsewhere. Of course, both parties are on the industry's payroll -- that is, after all, where Obamacare came from -- but only the Republicans have raised their greed-is-good mantra to the level of a religious totem. And that's what Bush is bowing to, even though he has no idea how to deliver on his promises.

  If the Republicans were smart, they'd be the ones pushing for a universal non-profit health care system, something that would go beyond the Democrats' dream of "Medicare for all." But they're not.

  Another comment on Bush's talk is Paul Krugman: Fire Phasers. I was thinking of something much better than present Medicare, but there should be no doubt that lesser reforms are possible and worthwhile -- and indeed have happened under the ACA. Krugman writes:

  What's interesting, in a way, is the persistence of conservative belief that one must destroy Medicare in order to save it. The original idea behind voucherization was that Medicare as we know it, a single-payer system of government insurance, simply could not act to control costs -- that giving people vouchers to buy private insurance was the only way to limit spending. There was much sneering and scoffing at the approach embodied in the Affordable Care Act, which sought to pursue cost-saving measures within a Medicare program that retained its guarantee of essential care.

  But we're now five years into the attempt to control costs that way -- and what we've seen is a spectacular slowdown in the growth of health costs, with the historical upward trend in Medicare costs, in particular, brought to a complete standstill. How much credit should go to the ACA? Nobody really knows. But the whole premise behind voucherization has never looked worse, and the case that universal health insurance is affordable has never looked better.

  It's amazing, isn't it? Who could have imagined that conservatives would keep proposing the exact same policy despite strong evidence that they were wrong about the facts? Oh, wait.

  Krugman has a chart which shows how Medicare spending plateaued since 2009 under ACA and how it had grown under the system that the Republicans wanted so much to continue. The spurt in 2005 is probably due to Medicare D, Bush's giant gift to Big Pharma:

  

  Also see Krugman's A Note on Medicare Costs, which shows (chart below) that costs for private insurance have consistently exceeded Medicare: hence, shifting people from Medicare to private insurance (as happened with Medicare Advantage, or would happen with raising the eligibility age) increases costs. (Conversely, moving people from private insurance to Medicare should manage costs better. The only exception to this data was 1993-97, when there was a big push for HMOs, and the insurance industry was on its best behavior, at least until Clinton's proposals were defeated).

  

• Israel links:

  • Raphael Ahren: World Jewry ever more uneasy with Israel, major study finds:

    Diaspora Jews are not convinced that Israel is doing enough to prevent military conflicts and are troubled by the number of civilian casualties they often produce, though they generally blame Israel's enemies for the bloodshed. The accusation of the use of "disproportionate force" makes it difficult for these Jews to defend Israeli actions. Somewhat paradoxically, however, Jews in the Diaspora are disappointed that Israel doesn't manage to end its wars with decisive victories.

    "Many Jews doubt that Israel truly wishes to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians, and few believe it is making the necessary effort to achieve one," according to the study's author, Shmuel Rosner.

  • Daniella Cheslow: Israeli think tank with GOP ties at center of Iran deal opposition: The "think tank" is Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Its sugar daddy is Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire whose money comes from casinos -- a business that before he came around with his political connections was traditionally run by gangsters, making him a fine example of how business morals have eroded, and how they've bought a prime place in the Republican Party (he spent $465,000 on Republicans in the 2014 election cycle).

    One annoying thing about this piece is how a quote from "senior analyst" Michael Segall is featured: "This nuclear deal, which preserves all Iranian nuclear capability, will make them more resolute to export their revolution to the Middle East." That's pure opinion with neither fact nor logic behind it. Revolutions face competing desires to extend themselves and to establish a new stability, and those elements were present at the beginning in Iran. One of the first things Khomeini did was to challenge Saudi Arabia for leadership among Islamic nations. However, it soon became clear that Iran wouldn't overcome the Sunni/Shiite divide, so they wound up settling for building minor alliances among Shiite groups, primarily in Lebanon. The only significant inroads they eventually made was in Iraq, but that was almost entirely engineered by the Americans. Meanwhile, Iran became very isolated and defensive. (Indeed, a nuclear capability only makes sense as a defensive posture: an attempt to deter attacks from Iran's numerous enemies. Only the US has ever used nuclear weapons offensively, and then only against a foe that had no ability to counterattack.) What the deal shows is that Iran is now willing to exchange one defensive posture (the threat that it could develop nuclear weapons) for another (threat reduction that comes from ending sanctions and forced isolation). So why would Iran risk its hard-earned stability by trying to recreate the early zeal of a revolution now 35 years old? That doesn't make sense, and even if they did would only result in renewed sanctions and isolation -- exactly what they are attempting to avoid.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Hugh Roberts: The Hijackers: Review of several books about Syria and ISIS, including Patrick Cockburn's The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. Provides a great deal of background about Syria, especially from Sykes-Picot to the Arab Spring, continuing with the various groups and factions fighting in Syria and how they fit in with various foreign interests. Much to learn here, and much I could quote. For instance, about Geneva II, where Lakhdar Brahimi was unable to bring about any agreement:

  The point here is not that one side was slightly more or slightly less intransigent, but that by making the future of Assad the central question, and insisting on his departure, the Western powers, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan -- not one of which is a democracy -- as well as Turkey, which under Erdogan has slid a long way towards authoritarian rule, made it impossible for a political solution to be found that would at least end the violence. It is in ways like this that the Arab uprisings were really hijacked.

  The Tunisian revolution was a real revolution not because it toppled Ben Ali, but because it went on to establish a new form of government with real political representation and the rule of law. The hijacking of the Arab uprisings by the Western powers has been effected by their success in substituting for profound change a purely superficial "regime change" that merely means the ejection of a ruler they have never liked (Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad) or have no further use for (Mubarak), and his replacement by someone they approve of. In seeking this change in their own interests, they have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for the consequences of their policies, from Iraq to Egypt to Libya to Syria.

  Also:

  Brahimi told Der Spiegel that he feared Syria would become "another Somalia" . . . a failed state with warlords all over the place." What is taking at least partial shape in Syria -- unless the country is partitioned, which is also on the cards -- is another Afghanistan.

  When the Afghan jihadis -- backed, like their Syrian successors today, by the Gulf states and Anglo-America -- finally overthrew the secular-modernist Najibullah regime, they immediately fell out among themselves and Afghanistan collapsed into violent warlordism. But, unlike Somalia, Afghanistan was rescued by a dynamic movement that suddenly appeared on its southern marches and swept all before it, crushing the warlords and finally establishing a new state. In the aftermath of the jihad our governments had sponsored and our media had enthusiastically reported, secular modernism was no longer on offer: militantly retrograde Islamism was the only political discourse around and it was inevitably the most fundamentalist brand that won.

  And:

  I don't pretend to know what the truth is. But there is no need to prove malign intent on the part of the Western powers. The most charitable theory available, "the eternally recurring colossal cock-up" theory of history, will do well enough. If a more sophisticated theory is required, I suggest we recall the assessment of C. Wright Mills when he spoke of US policy being made by "crackpot realists," people who were entirely realistic about how to promote their careers inside the Beltway, and incorrigible crackpots when it came to formulating foreign policy. [ . . . ]

  Western policy has been a disgrace and Britain's contribution to it should be a matter of national shame. Whatever has motivated it, it has been a disaster for Iraq, Libya and now Syria, and the fallout is killing Americans, French people and now British tourists, in addition to its uncounted victims in the Middle East. The case for changing this policy, at least where Syria is concerned, is overwhelming. Can Washington, London and Paris be persuaded of this? Cockburn quotes a former Syrian minister's pessimistic assessment that "they climbed too far up the tree claiming Assad has to be replaced to reverse their policy now."

• Kathryn Schulz: The Really Big One: Despite the presence of a string of volcanos along the spine of the Cascades, from Mt. Baker down to Mt. Lassen, there has been little seismic activity in Oregon and Washington since Lewis & Clark explored the area two centuries ago. We now know that the volcanoes occur where the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate bends down under the North American plate far enough to melt and send magma upwards. We also know that the seismic quiescence is temporary and misleading: that a massive earthquake occurred along the whole plate front -- from northern California to Victoria Island in Canada -- in 1700, and we can date it precisely because it lines up with a tsunami that hit Japan a few hours later. We also know that there is evidence of such earthquakes occurring every 250 years for the last 10,000, so . . . if anything, we're overdue for a very big one. Schulz details the likely consequences here, and they will be more devastating than any disaster in American history. Interesting science, and one more reason to keep the Bushes away from FEMA.

  This problem is bidirectional. The Cascadia subduction zone remained hidden from us for so long because we could not see deep enough into the past. It poses a danger to us today because we have not thought deeply enough about the future. That is no longer a problem of information; we now understand very well what the Cascadia fault line will someday do. Nor is it a problem of imagination. If you are so inclined, you can watch an earthquake destroy much of the West Coast this summer in Brad Peyton's San Andreas, while, in neighboring theatres, the world threatens to succumb to Armageddon by other means: viruses, robots, resource scarcity, zombies, aliens, plague. As those movies attest, we excel at imagining future scenarios, including awful ones. But such apocalyptic visions are a form of escapism, not a moral summons, and still less a plan of action. Where we stumble is in conjuring up grim futures in a way that helps to avert them.

  That problem is not specific to earthquakes, of course. The Cascadia situation, a calamity in its own right, is also a parable for this age of ecological reckoning, and the questions it raises are ones that we all now face. How should a society respond to a looming crisis of uncertain timing but of catastrophic proportions? How can it begin to right itself when its entire infrastructure and culture developed in a way that leaves it profoundly vulnerable to natural disaster?

  That comment is equally applicable to climate change. (I was going to make some disclaimer that earthquakes at least are not anthropogenic, but the recent dramatic increase of them in Oklahoma and Kansas are quite clearly the results of human activity, specifically the oil and gas industry.) Worth noting this latest confirmation of the threat -- not the sudden sea rise of a tsunami but the slightly more gradual one of sea level rising due to melting ice sheets: Elizabeth Kolbert: A New Climate-Change Danger Zone? Again, if political solutions are inconceivable due to the ideological chokehold of vested interests (see "guns" above) and because we don't seem to be able to distinguish between those private interests and public ones (see "health care" above), the critical battleground will be over the remedial efforts of disaster control (e.g., FEMA).

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