Digital Disengagement | RIP George H.W. Bush & The Greatest Generation | Trade War Detente

The Y2K bug was supposed to cause computers to crash and reset our incipient computer era. It didn’t. Technology has made everything faster, crazier, manic, and made modern life incomprehensible for many. Only in the past few months have pundits begun to realize that we can’t keep speeding up. If anything we all need to slow down. Cal Newport hit on this vein with his book “Deep Work (and available for free at your public library).” Many others are now commenting that the only way to be thoughtful, productive, engaged, and centered is to disengage digitally:  “How to Survive the Next Era of Tech (Slow Down and Be Mindful)” We believe it was Plato who said, “Spend less time on Facebook.” This is a reminder from us to you to slow down on the internet usage. (NYT & Vox)

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

“To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”

― Cal Newport

Everybody Loves Amlo: Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was sworn into office Saturday. Affectionately known as Amlo, the 65-year-old left-wing politician pledged honest, corruption-free stewardship and an overhaul of Latin America’s second-largest economy. Inauguration day was celebratory for the hundreds of thousands who attended. During the festivities Amlo received a spiritual cleansing from indigenous leaders, who invoked the spirits of their ancestors and the land to guard him against any bad influences. “What we want…is to purify public life in Mexico,” Amlo said during the ceremony. “I repeat my commitment: I will not lie, I will not steal or betray the people of Mexico.” In his 90-minute inauguration address Amlo promised to work 16-hour days to restore the country’s energy sector to prominence, including increasing oil production, and to confront violence, even personally overseeing daily 6 am security briefings.

Amlo’s political career always focused on helping the poor and he reiterated that purpose Saturday, pledging to govern for all but to “give preference to the most impoverished and vulnerable.” His promise will be immediately tested by how he deals with the caravan of thousands of Central American migrants who are camped out at the US border hoping to apply for asylum. The new president’s first official act in office was to sign an agreement with counterparts in three Central American countries to create a development plan for the region. The plan would include a fund to generate jobs as a way to lessen the poverty that drives people to leave El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Mexico itself is a nation where almost half the population lives in poverty. But as Amlo told the crowd on Saturday, “Be patient and have confidence in me.”

We wish Amlo well with his anti-corruption campaign. History has shown that the most corrupt politicians seem to run on anti-corruption campaigns. Or perhaps this is only what appears to be the case given the significant dissonance between rhetoric and reality.

Salem, Israel: For the third time this year Israeli police have recommended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be held to account in three corruption cases involving bribery, fraud and other criminal charges. The prime minister, who has dominated Israeli politics for a decade and still leads in polls, must now await the decision of the attorney general he appointed as to whether he will face indictment in the cases. Netanyahu, a close ally of President Trump, told a gathering of supporters from his Likud party: “The witch hunt against us continues.” (NYT)

The Trade War Goes Cold: President Trump had an after-dinner meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires last weekend. Trump promised to wait another 90 days to allow for continued negotiations before raising tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent next year on $200 billion of Chinese imports. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders issued a statement that said, in part, Xi agreed to stop Chinese imports to the US of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, to make the death penalty available for convicted drug traffickers, and to reinstate purchases of US agricultural products which had been restricted in retaliation against American tariffs on Chinese goods. (Guardian)

From Peace Talks To Peace Talks: French President Emmanuel Macron flew back from the G20 summit Sunday and immediately went to inspect the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, damaged during country’s worst riots in a decade. What began on Saturday as simple street demonstrations turned violent when “professional” anti-government rioters began infiltrating, setting buildings and cars on fire and injuring more than 100 people. Macron, who said he would “never accept violence”, instructed his prime minister to hold talks this week with “legitimate” protest groups and opposition politicians. (Guardian)

The Unsung Song Of The War Widow: The long war in Afghanistan is creating a generation of widows, left to comfort small children, with little or no opportunity for their own mourning. Since 2001, tens of thousands of young women have lost husbands. If they did not know it before, they soon learn society sees them as mere possessions. Little economic opportunity exists for single mothers; most by far must rely on in-laws for support. And increasingly, in-laws are demanding the widows marry the next available brother or cousin. (NYT)

My Not So Big Fat Greek Birth Rate: Greece has had a troubling financial history. Fiscal mismanagement has led to one debt crisis after another, but there is even a longer-lasting crisis facing the country today. Greece’s birth rate has sunk way too low. In 2009 there were 118,000 births; in 2017, for a country of almost 11 million people, there were just 88,500 births. Greece’s smallest generation is just now reaching elementary school age. And in the newest class of students attending Kalpaki Elementary, there were just 13 first-graders. (WaPo)

Updates on the Russian/Ukraine Conflict:

– “Putin refuses to release Ukrainian sailors and ships: Russian president says it is ‘too early’ in investigation to consider a prisoner swap and accuses Ukraine government of provocation” (Guardian) “Ukraine urges German naval presence in Black Sea” (WaPo)

George Herbert Walker Bush 1924-2018: Presidential historian Jon Meacham offers an incisive analysis of the 42nd president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, who passed away Friday night at the age of 94. Meacham describes the last president of the Greatest Generation as a dichotomic individual — a formidable combination of ferocious and gracious — a gentleman who came of age in an ever-uglier arena. Meacham says “Poppy” Bush deserves our praise, but also our “closer historical consideration, for his life offers an object lesson in the best that politics, which is inherently imperfect, can be.” While the modus operandi of the first president Bush could perhaps be described as “the end justifies the means,” Meacham put it this way: “To serve he had to succeed; to preside he had to prevail… For every compromise he made to political expedience on the campaign trail, in office he ultimately did the right thing.” (NYT)

Today there is no legacy of any politician (left-right-center) that remains intact within 24hrs of the media cycle. As Meacham notes Bush had a complicated legacy but he was pragmatic and an “Overlooked President: We should thank George H.W. Bush for many of the successes attributed to Reagan and Clinton.” To quote T.S. Eliot immediately after one’s death, there is now time for a “hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea.” Bush’s death marks in our eyes the complete passing of the torch and perhaps the torch’s last embers from The Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers. He was the last President who served in World War II and the world order built from that war is unfortunately quickly being diminished and destroyed. We are still disentangling the Vietnam era generation of Americans, and fighting and parsing out that era’s divisions: Trump vs. Mueller; why and how we haven’t learned the lessons of protracted land wars in Asia—Afghanistan and Iraq; why and how Bush II or Clinton did not serve in that war but were elected president but Kerry and McCain were not.

Additional reads: “Politicians and Family React to George Bush’s Death.” (NYT) and “The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice.” (Intercept)

California’s Confirmation Bias: California’s Republicans who lost their 2018 midterm elections suffered from the same delusion Democrats did in the 2016 presidential election—they believed their own internal polling. “We never had any indication, any poll, that we’d see anything close to the margin we got,” said a Republican consultant who worked on Rep. Steve Knight’s campaign. It was just one of several nasty midterm shocks for California Republicans that they didn’t see coming. (Politico)

– “Trump Is Expected To Extend U.S. Troops’ Deployment To Mexico Border Into January” (NPR)

– “Three Books Trace a History of Race Relations in America, Through Art” (NYT)

– “Durian: the foul-smelling fruit that could make Malaysia millions: Often reviled for its pungent odour, the crop has become a delicacy in China – and export demand is rocketing” (Guardian)

– “I Don’t Want To Shoot You Brother: A shocking story of police and lethal force. Just not the one you might expect.” (Propublica)

– “Material intelligence: The chasm between producers and consumers leaves many of us estranged from beauty and a vital part of an ethical life.” (Aeon)

– ““They Say We’re White Supremacists”: Inside the Strange World of Conservative College Women: Young Republican women are aggrieved, outnumbered, defiant. And they aren’t going to apologize for loving the guy in the White House.” (Vanity Fair)

– “Why Aren’t Millennials Spending? They’re Poorer Than Previous Generations, Fed Says” (NPR)

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