Truman Defeats McCain

Wow! Wasn't that election a surprise? Who could have guessed Truman would win?

OK, so it's 6 AM the Monday before as I write this and I think I know who will win the presidency, but don't know for a fact. So what do I do, send this column out as a letter to Future World?

I did that once. Back in 1971, as I was about to head off to grad school, I wrote a letter to my self of ten years later, and stuck it in a "time capsule," with a note to myself to open it in 1981. I did that, and found all this crap about the Viet Nam War and Nixon that made absolutely no sense. The 1971-me seemed to think the 1981-me would be either dead in a rice paddy or living in a colony on Mars.

Sometimes I prognosticate well. In the Spring of 1978 I starting telling people there would be a revolution in Iran soon. I guessed that much sitting in the UW Husky Cafeteria, overhearing visiting Iranian students try to explain their country's politics to other foreign students. Events six months and after would indicate I outdid the CIA and the National Security Agency on that one.

On the other hand I was sure Hubert Humphrey would beat Nixon in '68. It was the last significant cash bet I ever made in my life. I still owe some guy $20. I figure he'll never collect, since he probably died in a rice paddy, possibly the same year.

[Right: I'm convinced that Humphrey would have won in '68 if he hadn't been tickled pink all the time.]

Just 8 years ago I half-believed Nader supporters' claims that if Bush won the 2000 election and people saw how he governed 2000 to 2004, the Republicans would lose in 2004 for sure. He won; they saw; they voted him back in anyway. All his mistakes made them want him more. He screws up so much we suffer the worst single terrorist act in the world on his watch, and people wanted him back "to protect us from terrorism." How do you predict that kind of cosmically-proportioned mass stupidity? It's like trying to guess which way a football will bounce. America isn't round.

Speaking of things not round, one of my heroes, Benoit Mandelbrot, touched upon this very subject a week ago on PBS, the same day the Fed cut the overnight interest rate to 1%. He basically said we're living in a chaotic economy. In other words, the world economy is not round, so you don't know which way it will bounce. (Mandelbrot is the expert on things such as are highly not round.)

In fact the Federal reserve cut that interest rate without knowing what effect it could have. It seemed like a good idea, because it's helped ease us out of recessions in the past. But we're in a credit crunch. How do you encourage credit by making it worth less to the creditor? I don't know! And neither does your government! They're flying blind!

I'm going to make one small effort to predict something, in spite of my own and Mandelbrot's warnings.

Right now the 10-year interest rates for US government notes, adjusted for current inflation, is negative 1%. I'm going to predict that if that doesn't turn around by next fall, we will then be looking back at our current economic condition and calling it good.

I may not know which way a football will bounce, but I know what happens if you toss it down a well.

For Extra Negative Credit

1. Try to predict something really important, like global warming. Now, before doing anything else, try to predict the opposite of what you predicted the first time. Next, try to predict which of your predictions is better. Show your work, in detail, with footnotes and bibliography. Nothing got better, did it? Welcome to Science!

2. Where's my jet-car? Where's my anti-gravity suit? Where's my 3D tele-smell-a-vision?

3. Can you understand stupidity without having personally experienced it? Think carefully before you answer.

Necessity is the Mother of Camo

When I first heard “it necessarily follows” as a kid, it sounded fishy. It sounds like “it’s necessarily successive.” How can it be cessive and not cessive at the same time?

It turns out the “cede” in “succeed” means “yield,” as in sub cedere: “to yield [the card that was] under [the last one].” And the “cede” in “necessary” means “yield,” too, and the “ne” means “not", so “necessary” is about being unyielding. So the expression looks even more oxymoronic than ever. But it’s not, because the expression is saying that the Fates unyieldingly deal (yield) that next card.

In fact, “it necessarily follows” apparently sums up the Romans’ view of the Fates. The Romans considered Necessity to be the Mother of all the Fates, rather than of Invention, as we do. The Daddy of the Fates skipped.

I’ve been thinking about the Roman Necessity since I attended the unveiling of the new King County logo in the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr., a success in a modern sense of the word. The Necessity in that case is evident in the more than 20 years of political work, involving nudging, dragging, provoking, and the occasional voting here and there, plus the fated presence of the right people on the King County Council, plus the right people to design the new logo, plus the good will of most people involved, and the vanishing will of those not.

But Necessity doesn’t always give you so much warning. Take desegregation, for example.

Mention desegregation to most people born after WWII, and they think of the South. They’d say the first big breakthough was 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. That decision came about in the same way our new logo did: Folks drove straight at it ’til they got there.

But I grew up in the Army and I have a terrific childhood memory, so I clearly recall that the U.S. military, which is a large national and not at all regional institution, needed desegregation and was already desegregating before the Southern schools had to. Not being very political when I was a toddler, I don’t recall how the Necessity played out, so I’ve since looked it up.

Here’s how it went down, courtesy of the Truman Presidential Museum and Library and others. In July 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which called for “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” Three days later Truman clarified the order, saying, yes (to General Omar Bradley, especially), that means desegregate.

Next, the generals dragged their feet. The Secretary of the Army said, the following month, that segregation had to go, but not immediately. Committees were formed to study how segregation could happen before the continents re-merged. Later, the Secretary admitted to favoring segregation. By December 1949, there was a new Secretary of the Army, but he was still saying we have to go slow.

Then, in April 1950, the Army ended its 10 percent quota of African-American recruitment. That quota had not been an Affirmative Action quota. It served to maintain African-American troop at a steady level to prevent fluctuations. In a segregated system, fluctuations of the segregated minority could create pesky logistical surpluses and shortfalls.

No one, including Truman, thought that the inefficiencies expected to arise from dropping the quota would have any noticeable immediate impact. In fact, until late June there wasn’t a problem. No chaotic fluctuations of Black troop levels, no logistical nightmares.

Then, before dawn, June 25, 1950, so much hell broke loose over the 38th parallel in Korea that Truman thought WWIII was starting. By the end of the next month, the U.S. and South Korean forces were almost driven off the peninsula, and everybody there needed everybody else’s logistical support. By the time the war was a year old, the Army was integrated in Korea and throughout its Asian outposts.

Necessity had arrived in camouflage.