The Unbearable Fakeness of Politics: A Foreign Perspective on the 2024 US Election
Why Even a “Hobson’s Choice” Between Trump and Harris May Not Be as Simple as It Seems .
Please subscribe; please share. There is no downside because your email will not be used for other purposes. You will receive no advertisements.
Copy and share the link, post it on another platform. It is not that I get money with more subscribers, but it makes me happy when more people read it.
-+-+-+-+
Every four years, the US presidential elections offer a spectacle for the entire world to watch. This year, things seem crazier than ever. Both choices appear equally implausible and almost surreal to my non-American eyes. Trump is a fake, and what’s amazing is that he’s comfortable with it—he almost makes a virtue of it. Kamala Harris insists she’s open and honest, but I’m not sure she’s any more straight and truthful than he is.
That said, I don’t quite agree with Caitlin Johnstone (a fellow Substacker from Adelaide) that this is a “Hobson’s choice.” In her usual uncompromising style, she labels both candidates as servants of what she calls “The Empire,” and argues it doesn’t matter who becomes president.
I think there is a difference. Even if both candidates had the same views on important issues (which they don’t), they would still represent entirely different sections of the US population. Even the most conniving politician can’t help but be influenced by their electorate’s views.
Oddly enough, I find myself feeling a tad closer to the Trump camp. At least everyone knows Trump is a fake, including most of his supporters. It’s like professional wrestling—no one thinks it’s a real competition, but people love it because it’s not pretending to be something it’s not.
What I can’t stand is pretending to be honest while lying with impunity. That’s why I canceled my long-standing New York Times subscription: not enough real news, too much “newsspeak” wrapped in sanctimonious prejudice and sly propaganda.
Back to the Trump vs. Harris contest, one of the most telling episodes last month was the endorsement of Harris by Cheney and Gonzalez. I’m quoting from Matt Taibbi’s Substack:
Along with 200 other Republicans, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez just endorsed Kamala Harris. Gonzalez, who as George W. Bush’s counsel received and signed the infamous torture memos and dismissed the Geneva conventions as “quaint,” said in a Politico essay his reason was that Donald Trump represented a “threat to the rule of law.”
Cheney said Trump tried to use “lies and violence” to stay in power. Beyond pushing “enhanced interrogation” and conducting affairs of state through extralegal mechanisms like the Office of Special Plans, Cheney perfected the institutional whopper. His lies weren’t crazy and off-the-cuff, but monstrous and effective, like saying Saddam Hussein “is actively pursuing nuclear weapons” or had “high-level contacts with Al Qaeda going back a decade.” Putting a Trump lie in a class with one of Cheney’s is like comparing a flatus and a methane planet
Mention of Cheney brings to mind a conversation journalist Ron Suskind had with a senior White House aide in 2002, which he wrote about in The New York Times:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." (New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004)
Back then, The New York Times was still a real newspaper, and his report was published. At the time, George W. Bush was president, but the Obama administration later adopted the same sentiments, and that imperial hubris became bipartisan. Those were the days after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the US was the undisputed global hegemon. The analogy to being an empire was apt. However, history teaches us that the apex of any empire is often the start of its decline. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire began right after their “Magnificent Century” in the 16th century. It took five centuries to fully unravel, but the process was irreversible.
Apparently, the US “empire” seems no different. It’s been only twenty-two years since that imperial aide’s remarks, and no one’s talking about an uncontestable US hegemony anymore, despite the fact that US military spending is still more than all others combined:
US Military Spending exceed the sum of all others
In fact, the US now spends more on its military than it did during the Cold War. Back then, the US only had to contain the Soviet Union, but now it feels the need to manage the entire world. Mind you, the Cold War only lasted about thirty years, and the US was wealthier when it began. There’s no foreseeable end to the current level of spending.
This is taking a toll on the US economy and creates a malaise, which Chris Hedges describes powerfully in his book that I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. Trump is a product of this malaise. His supporters feel the pain; they see things falling apart, the center not holding. They don’t fully understand the causes, but they blame the establishment. They back Trump, despite his flaws, because he’s not part of that establishment.
Because Trump is so blatantly fake and unreliable, he’s the wild card, unpredictable. On the other hand, we all know what to expect from a Harris presidency—just more of the same, served up like it was during the Bush, Obama, and Biden years.
-+-+-+-+
Short Takes
Elon Musk: King of the Satellites
Half of all active satellites in the space belong to Elon Musk. Of the nearly 7,300 active satellites, his company, Starlink, has 3,660. The following shows the Starlink satellites on 16 September 2024 from satellitemap.space. This site is a satellite tracker.
Nuclear Energy Back to the Future
Washington Post, 20 Sep 2024
Most of the “new” ideas currently being explored for nuclear energy were actually invented in the 1970s. For instance, the concept of heating steam using a liquid sodium loop, like in the Natrium project funded by Bill Gates, was being developed back then. My own PhD thesis, which I began in 1979, focused on the simulation and control of heat transfer and flow instabilities in such nuclear power plants. However, all that progress came to a halt after the Three Mile Island incident.
While the incident was quickly controlled—there were no fatalities, and the plant returned to operation, generating electricity until its final shutdown in 2019—the mere contemplation of what could have happened in 1979 was enough to dampen enthusiasm for new nuclear power projects.
Interestingly, Three Mile Island is now set to come back online to provide electricity for Microsoft’s AI servers. Pending regulatory approval, it’s slated to reopen by 2028 and generate 835 megawatts of power for the company. This would make Three Mile Island the first U.S. nuclear plant to resume operations after being decommissioned. The cost to the owner-operator, Constellation, is expected to be $1.6 billion, but that’s still not enough—the project depends on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
What stands out about this news is how power-hungry AI servers have become. The entire output of a nuclear power plant will be dedicated to powering AI operations for just one company, Microsoft. Similarly, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed that their large-scale data centers, which use more than 1 GW of power, may eventually rely on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) for their energy needs.
My final observation is just how expensive nuclear energy remains. Even with a guaranteed customer for the plant’s entire output, a cost of $1,916 per kilowatt isn’t enough to re-commission an existing nuclear facility, and the project still requires an undisclosed amount of government subsidies.
More on Simulation Hypothesis
After last post, I was asked to offer material for further reading.
One can directy read the original Nick Bostrom argument: Bostrom, N. (2003). Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? The Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211), 243–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.00309
For a more philosophical treatment though I suggest David Chalmers’ book: David J. Chalmers (2022). Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. Penguin.
Here is a recent critical article on Chalmers’ book: Crane, T. (2022). " Taking Simulation Seriously": Tim Crane reviews Reality+ by David Chalmers. The Philosopher, 110(2).
Diary
Breakfast Evolution
For many years, I suffered from hemorrhoids, which I blamed on frequent travel. Even domestic trips, with early morning flights and late-night returns, would throw off my routine. Some domestic travel also involved time zone changes. For example, there’s a two-hour difference between Brisbane and Perth, which I used to visit regularly while working in the mining industry. International trips to the US or Europe, of course, involved even more extreme time zone differences that played havoc with my system.
About fifteen years ago, I was in the US with a colleague. At breakfast in the hotel, I noticed him sprinkling some white, flaky stuff from a freezer bag onto his cereal. He told me it was psyllium husk, and it helped him stay regular. When I returned to Australia, I found I could buy it at my local supermarket. After a few tries to find the right dosage, I’ve never been without it since. I even take a bag with me when I travel, whether to Istanbul or anywhere else.
Don’t underestimate the importance of regularity. Psyllium husk has helped me maintain it all these years, and as a result, my hemorrhoids disappeared too.
I used to add psyllium husk to my breakfast muesli. Back then, I ate a lot more in the mornings. Here are the typical ingredients from my breakfast muesli, which I once wrote about on the Cumabric blog (though I can’t seem to find it online anymore, I still have the text and photos on my computer).
This is how I used them to get my breakfast muesli:
Mix some buckwheat, millet, oats, and black cumin, and dried fruit in a bowl and add milk the night before. Let it rest in the fridge for a night.
In the morning, roast some linseed in the pan and sprinkle it onto the bowl
Add various seeds and nuts, e.g. walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and poppy seeds
Add fresh fruit, typically an apple (or a pear), a kiwi fruit, one passion fruit, pawpaw and a banana
A generous dollop of natural yoghurt
Another generous serving of honey on top of the yoghurt
Some cinnamon and dried sultanas
This is the final product:
I later started adding a spoon of psyllium husk.
As I get older, I reduce my calorie intake. Most of the above is left out today. Instead of regular muesli cereals, I have a mixture of psyllium husk and a mixture of seeds. This is the current mix:
If you want to see how they look like:
and placed in my cereal box:
and after mixing:
I put one table spoon of this mixture into a bowl, then slice one cucumber, dice an apple, and a banana; add yoghurt and pour some low-fat milk on top. The last touch is a sprinkle of turmeric. I wash it down with four tall glasses of black tea (Dilmah Ceylon Tea brewed Turkish style).
Brisbane Public Transport almost free now
A couple of months ago, the Queensland State Government had a trial period during which all public transport (buses, ferries, and trains) were 50 cents. Now, this became permanent. From our place to the City it used to be 4 dollars, now it is 50 cents. There is an election at the end of the month but the Opposition promised that they would not change the policy. Fifty-cent fares seem to be here to stay.
Above are the buses at the university main bus terminal. Whichever bus you take, it costs 50 cents.
You Tube
Sabine Hossenfelder released a video last week offering her take on certain “experts” predicting an imminent AI takeover of global institutions—governments, banks, universities, and more. Yuval Noah Harari, one of these experts, recently published Nexus, a book aimed at educating the public about the dangers of AI. However, Dr. Hossenfelder didn’t seem particularly impressed.:
I was very impressed with Harari’s first book, Sapiens. However, I found his second book to be shallower, more like a collection of aphorisms. Some were cleverly crafted, but after a while, they felt tiresome. I haven’t read his new book on AI, though I did listen to him speak about it on YouTube. Despite his brilliance, I felt he was speaking from a position of ignorance, though he masked it well. It wasn’t enough to motivate me to buy or read the book.
Pascal Hagi
Pascal is trying to decide whether to come out of their room (which I share with them as my office). At the end he decides to stay in.
And this is what they are busy with inside, shredding egg cartons. If I do not put egg cartons in the bottom shelf of my bookcase, they try to dig into my books. I put the egg carton into an envelope. This convinces them that they are doing something naughty and they bite into it with extra zeal.
What I Read
-+-+-+-+
Fatal Grace, Louise Penny
Last month I read Still Life by Louise Penny. This is the second novel in the same series, also set in the fictional village of Three Pines, Quebec.
Penny likes to pick unusual murder methods for her books. In Still Life, the victim was shot by an old-style recurrent bow. In Fatal Grace, the killer electrocutes the victim during the Three Pines Christmas Day curling match.
The investigation is led by the Surete Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. As I noted last month while writing about the first novel, Gamache is an unusual fictional investigator in the sense that he is not a broken character unlike in most other detective novels. He is is a family man with compassion and great wisdom. In this second book, we gain more insights into his past while he is unravelling the case.
The murder victim, Mrs CC Poitiers is portrayed as an extremely unlikeable person. Depicted as a bad mother, bad wife, unscrupulous business woman, and a cruel person she has no redeeming qualities. In fact, I think this unevenness in characterisation is a general flaw of both books. While some characters are well-developed with deep nuances, others are presented as flat two-dimensional caricatures with annoyingly repetitive speech and behavioural patterns. I am hoping they are given more development space in later novels.
AT Index
Based on my basket of goods, Australia is only 50% more expensive this week compared to Istanbul. Below are the prices in Turkish liras for the items in the basket on 28 Sep 2024. The conversion rate is 1AUD=23.59TRY.
The following is the plot of AT index. The height of the bar represents how more expensive Australia is compared to Turkey. If the prices were equal, then the bar height would have been 1.00.
The code to create the above tables and the plot is in my github repository and can be downloaded if you are interested.