Politics

Two Isolated Americas

[This makes a lot of what’s happening today make sense](https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/two-isolated-americas-fae2720fb48).

Absentee futures

> We congratulate ourselves on the accomplishment of democracy…But regardless of who votes, what is the real meaning of any such choices if the alternatives among which we are selecting are underimagined, or clichéd – or simply absent? – Stuart Candy

My most influential role these days is less “tastemaker” and “decider” than simply “option generator”.

Fear and loathing in U.S. politics

[Fascinating in-depth look at the most interesting part of the Trump phenomenon](http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism)–not the man, but the supporters.

> What these policies share in common is an outsize fear of threats, physical and social, and, more than that, a desire to meet those threats with severe government action — with policies that are authoritarian not just in style but in actuality.

Essentially, fear of change (especially related to physical threats) leads to desire for authoritarian leadership.

Tribal techniques for global issues

I love this–traditional South African negotiating techniques were used to get a climate deal in Paris (and Durban in 2011):

An indaba is designed to allow every party to voice its opinion, but still arrive at a consensus quickly. It works because opinions and arguments can only be aired in a particular way:

Instead of repeating stated positions, each party is encouraged to speak personally and state their “red lines,” which are thresholds that they don’t want to cross. But while telling others their hard limits, they are also asked to provide solutions to find a common ground…

[In Durban in 2011] the South African presidency asked representatives from the main countries to form a standing circle and speak directly to each other.

A South African analyst explains the indaba process in more detail:

The draft text of the agreement is produced (by the chieftaincy, presidency, secretariat, etc. following extensive stakeholder engagement) and circulated. Those in support give automatic approval of the agreement and discussion ensues; those who agree during the discussion are incorporated in the agreement.

Those most affected or with immovable positions (simplified to key disagreement areas) discuss among themselves, arrive at a solution (this is a more facilitated session) and the solution is then incorporated into the wider agreement with changes acceptable to the whole collective – which is easier as everyone was part of the process and changes tend to be superficial, if any.

Interesting that some of its success comes from making the process more intimate and personal–while still keeping guidelines on the format. Hopefully the way we move decision-making forward includes learning from the history of different cultures like this.

Forecasting our memories

> When the Long Now audience of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials. – [Philip Tetlock](http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/nov/23/superforecasting/)

It will be interesting to see–and invent–the ways we do improve political debate.

Carbs, fat, and politics

After years of pushing low-fat and high-carbohydrate diets, [the federal health agencies have finally flipped their recommendations](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/opinion/why-is-the-federal-government-afraid-of-fat.html):

> Following an Institute of Medicine report, the 2005 Dietary Guidelines quietly began to reverse the government’s campaign against dietary fat, increasing the upper limit to 35 percent — and also, for the first time, recommending a lower limit of 20 percent…the scientists on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, for the first time in 35 years have sent recommendations to the government without any upper limit on total fat.

[The guidelines themselves take a strong stance on sugars](http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/PDFs/Scientific-Report-of-the-2015-Dietary-Guidelines-Advisory-Committee.pdf) and refined carbohydrates as well:

> Higher consumption of sugar-sweetened foods and beverages as well as refined grains was identified as detrimental in almost all conclusion statements with moderate to strong evidence.

And it looks like [those egg council creeps](http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Egg_Council_Guy) finally got to the scientists too:

> Available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary
cholesterol and serum cholesterol.

I switched to a vegetarian protein- and fat-heavy diet with lots of raw vegetables, oils, eggs, yogurt and nuts this year and I’ve lost significant weight and felt amazing. It’s fascinating to see the tides change as scientists finally have the tools and data to run big studies on nutrition:

> Confirming many other observations, large randomized trials in 2006 and 2013 showed that a low-fat diet had no significant benefits for heart disease, stroke, diabetes or cancer risks, while a high-fat, Mediterranean-style diet rich in nuts or extra-virgin olive oil — exceeding 40 percent of calories in total fat — significantly reduced cardiovascular disease, diabetes and long-term weight gain.

But all of this threatens a huge packaged-food industry that thrives on shelf-stable grain products, and the political deck is stacked against change. Hopefully the evolving scientific consensus will bolster efforts like the ones led by [Alice Waters](http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/delicious-revolution) and [Michael Pollan](http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view/) to move our eating back toward freshness, sustainability, and health.

Russia’s sci-fi strategist

On the heels of thinking about [design as politics](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5262) comes an interesting [mention of Vladimir Putin’s close advisor Vladislav Surkov, who also happens to be a novelist](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/05/how_putin_is_reinventing_warfare):

> The Kremlin’s approach might be called “non-linear war,” a term used in a short story written by one of Putin’s closest political advisors, Vladislav Surkov, which was published under his pseudonym, Nathan Dubovitsky, just a few days before the annexation of Crimea. Surkov is credited with inventing the system of “managed democracy” that has dominated Russia in the 21st century, and his new portfolio focuses on foreign policy. This time, he sets his new story in a dystopian future, after the “fifth world war.”

Surkov [studied theater direction at the Moscow Institute of Culture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov) before moving into advertising, PR, and finally politics. One of his [stated goals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov) is to establish a national ideology for modern Russia:

> If we in Russia do not create our own discourse, our own public philosophy, our national ideology that would be acceptable for the majority of our citizens (at least for the majority, and preferably for all), then they are simply not going to talk to us and reckon with us.

But he has still found the time to [write essays, rock lyrics, and even novels](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin):

> In his spare time Surkov writes essays on conceptual art and lyrics for rock groups. He’s an aficionado of gangsta rap: there’s a picture of Tupac on his desk, next to the picture of Putin. And he is the alleged author of a bestselling novel, Almost Zero.

And like any true artist, he also has a rival and sworn enemy, [the poet and novelist Eduard Limonov](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/adamcurtis/2012/01/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th.html), who takes a different approach:

> Eduard Limonov and Vladislav Surkov hate each other. But in many ways they are very similar because both are convinced that western democracy is a complete sham – and both are trying to create political alternatives to what they see as the second wave of stagnation that took over Russia in the 1990s.

The most interesting thing about this to me is how Surkov’s “art” seems to influence his work and vice versa. [His writing has been scoured](http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/can-kremlins-bizarre-sci-fi-stories-tell-us-russia-really-wants-78908/) for clues about Russia’s plans with mixed success–but the fact that any such writing exists is statement enough. Can you imagine Valerie Jarrett or Karl Rove publishing political fiction while advising the president? The writing shapes cultural acceptance of the policies to come, and is simultaneously a way to prototype and imagine more future ideas. Another example of design–through fiction–changing culture.

Design as politics in a changing world

A well-written argument that [“politics”–built from mindfulness, personal commitment, and creative design–is as important to the climate crisis as science and technology](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/06/climate-change-needs-the-politics-of-the-impossible.html):

> [We have], basically, two ways out. One is extraordinary technology…[the other] is extraordinary politics: politics that goes beyond the usual interest-swapping and sets new commitments for the country and the world…

Does our culture still have the courage–and the harmony–to commit to real change based on moral beliefs?

> Consider the end of slavery—not in the US, but in the British Empire, which abolished the practice thirty years before the Emancipation Proclamation, by an act of Parliament, with compensation to slaveholders…the historians’ view these days is that British emancipation was, in fact, a wildly expensive and disruptive moral commitment, executed through extraordinary politics…

> [We need], in incremental and experimental ways, to keep building up a real politics of climate change. That politics will be both environmentalist and human-oriented, because there’s no separating the two in the age of climate change. It will have to ask how the peoples of the world are going to live together and share its benefits and dangers, and also how we are going to use, preserve, and transform the world itself.

That sounds like real design to me. See also Dan Hill’s [Dark Matter & Trojan Horses](http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2012/08/dark-matter-trojan-horses-strategic-design-vocabulary.html).

Some hair on it

[Obama, in David Remnick’s New Yorker article](http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=8):

> I have yet to see something that we’ve done, or any President has done, that was really important and good, that did not involve some mess and some strong-arming and some shading of how it was initially talked about to a particular member of the legislature who you needed a vote from.

> Because, if you’re doing big, hard things, then there is going to be some hair on it—there’s going to be some aspects of it that aren’t clean and neat and immediately elicit applause from everybody. And so the nature of not only politics but, I think, social change of any sort is that it doesn’t move in a straight line, and that those who are most successful typically are tacking like a sailor toward a particular direction but have to take into account winds and currents and occasionally the lack of any wind, so that you’re just sitting there for a while, and sometimes you’re being blown all over the place.”

Everyone gets what they vote for

An interesting idea:

> Thanks to the competitive nature of electoral democracies, many – often most – citizens end up being governed by a party they didn’t vote for. But there is a way to ensure that every single voter is satisfied by the results of an election: simply have each voter governed by the political party he or she picked at the polls. – [Starting over: Ultimate democracy](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20297-starting-over-ultimate-democracy.html)

Perhaps not surprisingly, this is proposed by a [Swiss economist](https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:QKCGWsFOpSQJ:www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp038.pdf+&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi9uuk1qba0bydxKLJw1dq6bmCL3qeIMQYzu6YpzswswgyXs0mkIfOo2bgmwHruPIkwTmGZsrQg4l99popqrREOPsMpvfAi8HS10gthu9LYo1elnpCdvwTj_VySI5xTTIwBx-uB&sig=AHIEtbTSPapnmGL6CJuj4W75bT8hik9tmA). Here in Switzerland, people often choose in which [canton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland) to live based on the policies–welfare, health care, law, education and taxation–of that cantonal government. As the federal system is relatively weak, these policies make up the bulk of your government, so choosing where to live is also a political decision. The [Free State Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project) in the United States has similar ambitions, centered around making New Hampshire independent and libertarian. And other “global nomads” we’ve met in our travels mention the policies of their current country as a big reason they’ve moved there. What if, instead, you could live where you like but still choose your policies?

I can’t see how this would accomodate shifting political views, common resources like roads and water supply, and long-term investments (what if you voted against Social Security when you were young but later decided it wasn’t such a bad idea), and it would require a massive amount of oversight and administration (so libertarians wouldn’t really be happy no matter how they voted), but it’s an intriguing concept nonetheless. Perhaps piloting in a single area with mostly individual effects–like health care?–would be a way to start.