Please Kill This Fad Before It Catches On

I've seen this suggestion before, but not at the length of this long article in the New York Times online: suggesting the year of 1968 and this year of 2018 are similar.

I recognize the temptation.  It's a nice even, symmetrical 50 years.  It's a provocative premise.  It's a nice article assignment.  It's clickbait.

And it's bullshit.  Please resist the temptation.  Though this particular article has its merits, its premise is fundamentally unsound.

There is no useful comparison between 1968 and 2018.  They are different in all but the most superficial ways.  The "division" in this country is almost completely different.  If you stick to what the two years have in common, you lose what was most important in each year, especially 1968.

I don't suppose we can avoid a flood of 1968 stories, at least for a month or so.  But let's honor the integrity of that year and extract its true significance rather than trivialize both this year and that year with invidious comparisons.

Or not.  It won't last long anyway.

Calling Bullshit

Bullshit abounds, but sometimes there's just enough new about it to merit a rejoinder.  Two recent instances:

1. The Atlantic's article/review entitled What Godless Says About America by Sophie Gilbert.  (I hope this is no relation to the several Gilberts I used to know, cause I'm not going to say nice things about this.)

It's about a Netflik original western (called "Godless") that I have not seen and have no plans to ever see.  Hype usually inflates newness or difference but this is supposed to be journalism.  To be fair however, what Gilbert says about westerns has become cliche.  Problem is, it's not true.

Here's the paragraph:

"Westerns celebrate the heroic individual rather than the well-ordered—but inevitably vulnerable—community. They glorify domination, whether over Native Americans or the treacherous terrain of the frontier. And they fetishize guns, which unfailingly allow heroes to safeguard democracy—never mind the collateral damage of bodies littered in the streets after each epic confrontation."

 Given the reality of settlers subduing the land as any farming, grazing or urban civilization does, I don't recognize any memorable western movie or television series in this description--certainly not from the years when the western was a major genre (which it hasn't been for more than fifty years.)

The classic western plot did involve a threat to the community, but it was posed by outlaws (who might be otherwise respectable businessmen as well as masked bank robbers) and the hero was the hero precisely because he (and occasionally she) defended the community against the outlaws--often enough by identifying and arresting them.  From Gary Cooper and John Wayne to Marshall Dillon.

The first conflict in High Noon in fact was between the man who felt his duty was to stay and defend the community and the woman who wanted him to abandon it.

As for guns, of course western movies often centered on gun fights, as did Eastern urban crime stories, and just as war movies had something to do with guns and bombs, space operas with phasers and light swords, etc. And yes, the spectacle of those battles sometimes mocks any sense of proportion.  But in most, the test of quality was the surrounding story.

I might also mention that the first and really only dramatized examples of gun control I recall seeing were in westerns, where the law banned guns in town.  It was deemed a sign of civilization.

Dominating Native Americans--the cowboys and Indians westerns--was certainly a theme (as it was a reality), but so was protecting Native Americans from greedy whites (a bit more fictional).

All of this was most obvious in television, especially in the 1950s. The very first television western hero, Hopalong Cassidy, often found greedy white men threatening the community, or threatening Indian tribes.  The theme of the first Lone Ranger feature film was uncovering a plot by white men to drive Indians off their land and steal their gold.  Essentially it was also the plot of the second Lone Ranger feature film.

Hopalong, the Lone Ranger and other early western TV heroes fired their guns a lot but they seldom shot anyone dead.  There were more fistfights that fire fights in TV westerns, even in the era of the "adult westerns" of the late 50s and early 60s.

So: bullshit.

2. The NYTimes Nazi story controversy.  Both the story and the controversy have the same problem: reporters and commentators who apparently have never lived in middle America, or more to the point, aren't old enough to remember when overt white racism was normal there.  It helps to have black journalists, and it also helps to have a knowledge of history.  More generally it might help to have those older experienced journalists they sent packing when the staffs shrunk.  No institutional memory, no memory at all.  All bullshit.

What "Universal Access" Means

Does the Republican plan for healthcare guarantee universal coverage?  Nope--something better: Universal Access!

Universal Access means everybody can get health insurance!  After all, it's the American way.

Americans have Universal Access to lots more than healthcare, too!  For instance, Americans have universal access to flights in private jets whenever they want one---provided they pay for the private jet.  But other than that, there are no restrictions.  This is America!  (Well, depending on other factors, you might not actually be allowed to fly in it--but you could still own it.)

Universal Access to health insurance also means that you can buy a really cheap policy, way cheaper than under Obamacare.  Of course it won't cover anything much, but it will be way cheap!

But if you want health insurance that covers lots of stuff, even everything, you have Universal Access to those plans, too!  Provided you can pay the very steep prices, which get steeper the older you are.

Listen, you can even have Universal Access to the Universe if you want, if you can pay, if you can wait for faster than light spaceships.  After all, facts are just limitations, and they don't matter anymore.  Universal Access is what they used to call bullshit, when that was still a word and not White House policy.

So don't worry that the Republican plan won't cover everybody, or even everyone now covered under the suddenly popular Obamacare. (CBO Update: 24 million people fewer than Obamacare, which is even fewer insured people than before Obamacare.)  Universal Access is what will make America great again.

(Well, yes, anybody can get health insurance now under Obamacare, but that isn't Universal Access.  Because...well, because they don't call it that.  What is this anyway--fake news?)

Dogma Versus the Future

It's become the holy word of Republican orthodoxy, as well as a well-worn mantra of the business class: government doesn't innovate, create jobs or do anything well except spend the money they steal from citizens through taxes.  The way to promote innovation and economic growth is shrink the government, cut taxes on businesses and rich people, then sit back and watch the economy take off.

Despite certain cautionary tales like the Great Depression, this has become a dogma, even though some thinking Republicans recognize it lacks so much nuance as to be self-destructive.  Still it remains the only theology the short shelf of Republican factions can all embrace, and still hope to draw in non-believers.

That it's not true is more than a minor inconvenience.  It's a prescription for failure, and specifically for American failure in the near future.  That's one major conclusion of a couple of new books that Jeffrey Madrick reviews in the April 24 New York Review of Books.

These books in different ways affirm that major innovations--including  recent ones in the tech sector that the Enteprenerurial Liberation Front likes to cite, such as the iphone--were made possible by government funded research.

The two books are The Entrepreneurial State by economist Mariana Mazzucato and Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy by William H. Janeway.  Reviewer Madrick quotes:

"For example, she [Mazzucato] shows in detail that, while Steve Jobs brilliantly imagined and designed attractive new commercial products, almost all the scientific research on which the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were based was done by government-backed scientists and engineers in Europe and America. The touch-screen technology, specifically, now so common to Apple products, was based on research done at government-funded labs in Europe and the US in the 1960s and 1970s.

Further: Two researchers cited by Mazzucato found that in 2006, the last year sampled, only twenty-seven of the hundred top inventions annually listed by R&D Magazine in the 2000s were created by a single firm as opposed to government alone or a collaboration with government-funded entities."

Much was made in the 2012 election campaign of the bankruptcy of the solar energy company Solyndra, which received $500 million in government loans.  Apart from the fact that most of the investment money came from private hedge funds, there's this: "But including Solyndra, only roughly 2 percent of the projects partly financed by the federal government have gone bankrupt."

Still, the media loudspeaker made Solyndra a brand name, while nobody much has heard of First Solar--a solar energy company that is both a success and would not exist without government funding.

Mazzucato moves on to show in detail how the technologies for those visionary tech products the Ipad and Iphone "were almost completely dependent on government-sponsored research." One of the crucial ingredients in almost all new tech devices was the government created Global Positioning Satellites, or GPS.  Earlier it was the government-formed and supported research partnership of semiconductor firms (Sematec) that both insured US supremacy in microprocessors when Japan threatened to take over, and continued to innovate to make them smaller and better, making all mobile devices possible.

And of course even earlier, it was government research that created the Internet, and (beginning in the 1940s) to computers.  "Federal funding accounted for more than 50 percent of all US R&D from the early 1950s through 1978"--which includes the last decades when big corporations like Bell, GE, Dupont and Alcoa were spending a lot on research.  They haven't done so since.

But even though President Obama talks about supporting research, Republicans often vote against it.  Meanwhile, the review notes, China is investing heavily, with the threat of dominating future innovations.

It's true that a lot of funding for tech innovation came from or through Defense.  Not so much however in health.  Though the ELF makes Big Pharma into the innovative heroes, sources quoted in these books show that government research was responsible for 75% of the "major original breakthroughs known as new molecular entities between 1993 and 2004" and that of seven high priority drugs created in 2002, only three were from Big Pharma, four from government labs--and arguably they were the more significant.

The review also cites some interesting history, some economics concerning investment in innovation and some ideas on how to better finance innovation through public and private means.  But politically the nub of it all is this:“Many of the problems being faced today by the Obama administration,” she writes, “are due to the fact that US taxpayers…do not realize that corporations are making money from innovation that has been supported by their taxes.” That they are not aware of the benefits to competition seems to be a triumph of free-market ideology over good sense. How many Americans are aware that Google’s basic algorithm was developed with a National Science Foundation grant?"

The review concludes:

"But Mazzucato’s criticism of US innovation strategies goes deeper than the lack of adequate funding. She makes one of the most convincing cases I have seen for the value and competence of government itself, and for its ability to do what the private sector simply cannot. It is not only, as economists argue, a matter of reducing the risk of research and innovation for private enterprise. She argues that government efforts are the source of new technological visions for the future, and—very persuasively—she cites the innovations of the past sixty years to make her case."

B.S. Detector Hits the Shelves

The beauty of Bullshit Studies is that it applies not only to the hugely pretentious.  For one thing, the Bullshit Detector would go into overload at something like the GOPer candidates debate.  No, to be a comprehensive field of learning, Bullshit Studies must also go home.

Where I am calling bullshit on three products I've used for years, which have suddenly decided, without provocation or warning, to make themselves worse.

I've been pouring a small envelope of Emergen-C Super Orange into a glass of water every morning for decades.  (In fact, if you go back even further, I virtually invented the name "Emergen-C" in a short story published in 1970 or so.  Only it was the name of a spaceship. Actually it was Emergent-C, but that's even better!)

So here's the box--with its blue border and orange center, it was a delight to look for on my shelf--it was part of the experience.  But now the bs Alacer company has gone and changed it to a bright ugly uniform sickish yellow orange box, and matching envelopes.  Plus they've changed Super Orange itself!  It's not even orange anymore.  It's yellow.  That's bullshit!  Three hems worth on the BS Detector.

I've been drinking Stash tea since I got a sample of its organic brand sometime in the 90s.  I added it to my regular breakfast (it's the next drink after Super Orange) at least a decade ago.  I alternate the selections: one day English Breakfast, the next Earl Grey, then when they run out, maybe Irish Breakfast alternating with Chai Spice.  They all came in these nice sized attractive boxes that lined up together, with the teabags accessible from a slot near the bottom.  Perfect!

But why stop at perfection when you can fuck it up?  That's just what Stash is apparently doing.  The only boxes of English Breakfast I found recently were bigger, uglier and without that slot.  The whole system is ruined.  It's bullshit!

But just to make sure that breakfast is not my only meal of the day to be ruined, there's Ovaltine.  I lost track of Ovaltine when Captain Midnight left the air, and Nestles Quick replaced it on the shelf (let's face it, Quick tasted better.)  But several years ago, when I was pondering a selection of very expensive protein health drink mixes, I remembered Ovaltine.  Okay, it may not have all those healthy ingredients, but it does have a lot--and malt alone is a significant boost.  So I started up with Ovaltine again, first as an energy drink (with milk and some protein powder, banana for body, a few seconds in the blender.)  I went as far as mixing and matching: the old basic Malt flavor, the Chocolate Malt ("chocolate-flavored Ovaltine" of my youth) and the new Rich Chocolate, which is maltless, but can be mixed with the malt flavor to taste.  Eventually it became a nighttime hot chocolate as well.

I was pleased that the label and packaging hadn't changed much since Captain Midnight days.  Then a few years ago, the brown glass container was replaced by brown plastic.  Not great, but I got used to it.  But now they're changing everything: the color (another bright yellowish monstrosity--the same color consultant as Emergen-C, apparently), the shape and the size.  And to add injury to insult, they've got an "all new formula!" for the chocolate malt--and it's terrible.  Ovaltine was never that great tasting to begin with, so the margin for error was never very great.  So now they've done this New Coke thing.  Awful!
And bullshit!  But it doesn't stop there.  In the new Ovaltine jar, there's no inner seal!  Imagine!  No inner seal to carefully tear out so you can enclose it with your quarter--I mean, how else are kids going to get their Captain Midnight Decoder Ring?  Or their Captain Future Bullshit Detector?

I'm not giving in.  I've kept a few blue Emergen-C boxes, and I empty the new envelopes into them so I don't have to look at that bullshit new package.  I am bypassing the chocolate malt Ovaltine and mixing my own using classic Malt and Rich Chocolate. I don't have a fix for the Stash packages, except to try to reuse the old ones but that probably won't work for long.  That's what makes it more than stupid, more than an inconvenience.  It's bullshit.

A Dramatic Announcement

As yet another academic year begins, I am making this dramatic announcement of an entirely new discipline: Bullshit Studies.  This will not only join the many Studies now extant but also critique them, yet in a more robust manner than the former reigning champions, deconstruction and postmodern semiotics, which incidentally were bullshit.

Bullshit Studies has vast potential.  Bullshit fertilizes every field, in and beyond academia.  Some fields, such as politics and television, produce very little other than bullshit.  Calling bullshit is our chief mode of analysis.  But we are developing tools to measure it.  We will start with the Bullshit Detector, and a scale of from 1 to 5 units of bullshit.  These units are called Hemingways, or "hems."

For example, calling this a "dramatic announcement" gets 1 hem, as it is simple p.r. bullshit.  Referring to "we" gets 2 hems, as it is actual quantifiable deception.

Some people more or less embody bullshit, which will require a different tool to measure.  We're working on that.  We must develop a way to distinguish bullshit by membership ( Republicans are basically bullshit) and then bullshit beyond that (Cowboy Rick, Newt Romney, etc.)  Of course, individuals can belong to a not entirely bullshit political party or view, and still be bullshit.  Ariana Huffington, for example, is bullshit.

As an academic discipline, we look forward to taking over as many academic departments as possible.  It's a long road.  We'll probably start small, perhaps at the Fringe Festival of the Modern Language Association convention.  But it can be done, as deconstruction proved.  When we are able to deny tenure to anybody not swearing fealty to Bullshit Studies, then we know we have conquered.

But professing Bullshit Studies does not require advanced degrees.  We uphold the highest standards of scholarship and analysis, but as everyone knows, advanced degrees are bullshit.

Today we start by calling bullshit on those big mouths-- Republican, Democrat, and Mr. & Ms. InBetween--who are complaining that Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene was overhyped.  Defining "overhyped" in non-tautological terms in reference to cable television will require years of systematic analysis (and perhaps a particle collider), so absent that, let's look at the substance of the charge in terms of impact and of actions--evacuations, precautions, money spent.

The impact of Irene is still being felt, long after the cable TV reporters have put away their rubber boots.  It's true that the media capitals of Manhattan and Washington did not suffer the impacts forecast in television animations.  The cameras, starved for shots of the Washington Monument toppled by the wind, or the Statue of Liberty swamped by the seas, had to be content to focus on reporters too dumb to get in out of the rain.  But since the cameras were switched off, the death toll has more than doubled.  Entire towns are flooded, in Vermont, New York state and New Jersey.  Roads are split and useless in North Carolina.  A million or more people are still without power.  Damages are likely to amount to from $6 billion to $12 billion--which ranks Irene in the top twenty most expensive hurricanes, and possibly the most expensive category one storm ever.

As for the precautions, pointing to the very statistic that suggests their success as evidence of their failure--the relatively low casuality figures--is bullshit.  It's 3 hem bullshit, which is characterized by repetition and is shared by a number of people who should know better, but that group of people is not totally bullshit--there are a fair number of idiots (including hopeless and temporary idiots) there as well.  Here's some suggested reading on the subject.

It's worth noting that an additional problem with forecasting storms these days is that we're in terra incognita thanks to the Climate Crisis, and its multiple effects over time.  That Irene may turn out to wreak most of its devastation with inland flooding is a prime example.

It's not clear at this point whether House maj leader Eric Cant is going to force FEMA to shut down without a deal on cuts to offset its budget appropriations, or whether he's just making those noises.  Cant is a challenge to Bullshit Studies.  He is himself bullshit.  But then there are his various actions, which require careful and nuanced application of Bullshit Detector categorization.  Fortunately, unlike FEMA and weather forecasting, this does not require GOPer-approved government funding. Which by the way has been cut for improving the very forecasting that bullshitters are complaining was inadequate.  That's a lot of bullshit.

Meanwhile there are huge ongoing wildfires in the heat of Texas and Oklahoma, and another tropical storm (Katia) in the Atlantic.  Storms, by the way, are not bullshit.

Footnote: (see, it is an academic thing.)  Our unit of measurement, the hem, is named after Ernest Hemingway because of his famous quotation (which is not so famous perhaps since I'm about to explain it): "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."  Unlike many famous quotations attributed to people who never said or wrote them, this one is not bullshit--that is, Hemingway actually "said" it: in his Paris Review interview (republished in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series, p.239.)