The Breaking Time

From drunk to ruler: Liu Pang survives a Breaking Time

Despite his badassery, Liu Pang never slew a dragon. But Washington never killed a tiger either

Here's a story, and it's worth taking a moment to tell.

A very, very long time ago, Liu Pang (or Bang, depending on the translation), was born in a small village in China, a peasant. Generally regarded as a lazy drunk in his youth, Liu Pang was still charismatic enough that bartenders would pour him free drinks just to keep him around. Occupying various village positions from cop to headman, Pang eventually married relatively well and, as a leader of his town, ended up picked to lead a group of draftees to work on the emperor's tomb.

Yes, that Emperor's tomb

In was a dubious honor. China, at the time, suffered under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, who had a love for massive building projects that, whatever their uses, also happened to work large portions of the laborers to death. In fact, he loved these projects almost as much as he adored utterly crushing anything that might contradict him. Life expectancy either way was not good. So, one by one, Pang's drafted labor force slipped away. Heavily influenced by Legalism, perhaps the most cold-blooded political philosophy ever developed by humans, the emperor's laws were heavy on death penalty. Rebellion? Death. Late for duty? Death. Swimming in a thunderstorm? Death. Conscripts escape? Death.

Well hell, at least a death on the run might be quick. Driven by the same combination of insightful ambition and selfishness that had preoccupied his life, Pang ditched the rest of his band and went off to get drunk in the swamp. Some of them followed, and soon Pang was a genuine bandit lord.

When the old tyrant died, his machinery fractured, and the state quickly fell apart. Pang emerged from brigandage and became a minor warlord (same job, better title). Charismatic as ever, he picked capable subordinates, winning cities and former enemies over by the innovative tactic of not looting and burning them to the ground. A Taoist, he simplified laws where he want, reducing taxes on farmers and shaking off the mechanistic oppression of the Qin era. Later historians would marvel at his ability to draw loyalty (and repeated reinforcements) from the peasantry, but a large part of his appeal stemmed from simply not being a raging asshole when everyone else was.

Defanged metropoli

London! Culturally vibrant! Economically mighty! Politically impotent! Photo by Jason Hawkes

Cities! Over half of humanity now lives in the damn things. Naturally, the futurists are f'ing beside themselves over the wonders this portends. Why, here's prosperity prophet Richard Florida, writing in The Atlantic about how "giant city-states" will own your future: 

Gradually, our great complexes of cities and suburbs are being knit into mega-regions -- giant city-states that are home to millions upon millions of people and generate billions and in some cases trillions of dollars of economic activity. Driving this is not just our individual choices and preferences but the very logic of economic development. Geographic concentration and clustering speeds the transmission of new ideas, increases the underlying productivity of people and firms, and generates powerful economies of scale.

He's got a point, of course, though for additional perspective you should read Nicholas Lemann's (paywalled, sadly) piece on the fight over urban identity. But there's one problem with dubbing this the new age of city-states, namely, the "state" part: most metropoli don't have a huge amount of say in government, often even in their own.

Why, for all their economic and cultural importance, are cities still politically impotent?

The Age of Splinters: More and more countries...

Thousands celebrate South Sudan's independence in Juba. Photo by Roberto Schmidt, AFP

On Saturday, South Sudan, after a long struggle, became the world's 193rd nation. While the country has a challenging path ahead, it's certainly an improvement after years of struggle against an oppressive regime.

Their break with Sudan also marks the latest in a decades long trend: nations splintering instead of forming.

Parag Khanna, writing in Foreign Policy, hails the trend:

Because of this wave of self-determination culminating in sovereignty, there are today more autonomous political units in the world than at any time since the Middle Ages of a millennium ago. Within a few decades, we could easily have 300 states in the world. Moreover, we are gradually returning to the medieval world of thousands of multilayered communities ranging from the supranational European Union to the magnetic city-states of the Persian Gulf to the indigenous communities of the Inuit of Canada and Greenland.

---

The coming partitions must be performed with a combination of scalpel and ax, soft and hard power. Above all, the world must recognize that these partitions are inevitable. Our reflex is to fear changes on the map out of concern for violence or having to learn the names of new countries. But in an age when any group can acquire the tools of violent resistance, the only alternative to self-determination is perpetual conflict.

Khanna mostly focuses on post-colonial states, admittedly a major part of the trend. In their haste to hack up the world, would-be overlords often drew boundaries with a complete disregard for local factors. So you get Iraq, Sudan, the Congo and plenty of others.

The medieval era ended with momentum moving in the opposite direction: nations encompassed broader identities, then took on colonies to become empires. For awhile, it looked like the whole world would end up under a handful of governments. The zenith — just after World War II — saw a rudimentary international structure in place.

Ironically, even the empires' opponents got in on the act. Communism sought to be the international replacement for nation-states, superseding their own identities into a grander ideology.

Even after it was clear that the UN would never govern the world, the competing power blocs still seemed a trend towards centralization, especially as the European Union started to knit a continent together.

But post-colonial states kept splitting up and the USSR acted like an old-school empire before promptly collapsing like one. It's not confined to the developing world either: the EU doesn't look so hot, nor does Italy.

When did we stop looking at the stars?

Into the wild blue yonder

Last Friday, the space shuttle Atlantis broke Earth's gravity, headed for the international space station. It marked the last space shuttle launch.

While this is not the end of the space program, Atlantis' final journey marks a major point on a long, downward trajectory, not least for the 25,000 workers who will suffer directly from the program's end. These days, the government spends more on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than on NASA.

Appropriately, today is the 42nd anniversary of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," the classic lament of a doomed astronaut:

Let's not get too altruistic here, either. The space program's heyday came about in large part because Americans and their government viewed it as part of a greater war against the USSR.

Still, NASA's zenith proved something: we can go to space. We can send people to space. The resources exist. The technology is there. Hell, at this point the technology is old.

The only remaining question is: do we want to? When people look out at their society and think "what do I want us to do?" is "go to space, and keep going" on the list?

Not for a long time. People can talk efficiency all they wish, but governments have proven perfectly capable of spending larger sums on far more questionable things (remember all that air conditioning?). The program's death marked a deeper turn.

Partly, the shift came from space travel's birth, tied to the Cold War and '50s hubris. By the era's end, people were, rightly, tired of the damn struggle, and anything associated with it. "Space Oddity" was one early marker, the increasing skepticism of science fiction another.

"Fighting the commies" was never the whole reason, of course. Space exploration had real popular appeal for a long time, tapping into a primal grandeur, combined with humanity's explorational urge. But, forever tied to far-off dividends and the conflict that created it, the whole enterprise proved vulnerable to accusations that the only thing all that money created was "garbage floating in the sky," as Ursula LeGuin's infamously dismissed.

Defenders could even point to more immediate benefits, like the ridiculous amount of more down-to-earth devices spawned by space research. It didn't help. This is the kind of popular argument won in the heart, not the head.

The fact is, the populace at large decided space travel wasn't a priority. It lost its glamour, its war, its money and its support. There were other fears, other dangers. Everything that's followed, from the lack of cutting edge spacecraft to the shuttle's end, is all part of that downward spiral.

So here's the question: we decided to give up on space travel. What did we get instead?

Was it worth it?

"Your kids are no stupider than their grandparents"

Clio rolls her eyes at your historical ignorance. Painting by Pierre Mignard.

A column from Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker on America's lack of historical knowledge drops some essential wisdom:

The federal government has spent nearly a billion dollars in the past ten years to teach history to history teachers, but the money is no match for countervailing initiatives and trends—No Child Left Behind, and its emphasis on reading and math; the rise of social studies; the tyranny of the unobjectionable textbook; widespread faintheartedness in the face of cultural and political discord; and stronger pot.

And yet it may be that, while kids aren’t getting better, they’re not getting worse. The history of history-education evaluation is littered with voguish pedagogy, statistical funny business, ideological arm wrestling, a disproportionate emphasis on trivia, and a protocol that insures that each generation of kids looks dim to its elders. “We haven’t ever known our past,” Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford, said last week. “Your kids are no stupider than their grandparents.” He pointed out that the first large-scale proficiency study—of Texas students, in 1915-16—demonstrated that many couldn’t tell Thomas Jefferson from Jefferson Davis or 1492 from 1776. A 1943 survey of seven thousand college freshmen found that, among other things, only six per cent of them could name the original thirteen colonies. “Appallingly ignorant,” the Times harrumphed, as it would again in the face of another dismal showing, in 1976. (And it’s not just Americans: an infamous 2004 survey revealed that a small percentage of Britons aged sixteen to twenty-four believed that the Spanish Armada was vanquished by Gandalf.)

Admittedly, Gandalf vs. Armada is pretty awesome. It's particularly ironic that the perpetual scare over the next generation's lack of historical knowledge is itself ignorant of history. For at least a decade I've seen an e-mail purporting to show the decline in educational standards compared to an 1895 eighth-grade test (Snopes has a debunking). Of course, the reason the history part of the test is partly indecipherable is because it relies on ways of grouping epochs that were the voguish pedagogy of the 1890s. That even the historically educated don't remember those is no particular loss.

I lucked up on history. I had a natural talent and interest furthered by some incredible teachers. In retrospect, I think I got just about the best historical education available in public schools. I ended up with the highest possible score on my AP US History exam, and a year's worth of college history credit (my struggles with math are a contrasting story).

Paumgarten's column is dead-on on a number of fronts. History remains contentious (if you doubt this, go look at the YouTube comments for any video relating to the Civil War or Ireland). Parents want some control over their school systems and, in America, they have it through school boards.

So the really juicy, interesting parts all too often get left out in favor of bare-bones facts with little context. If my teachers hadn't had tenure, I don't like to think about what would have happened to them after some of their lessons. I wrote my final AP exam, for example, on labor struggles in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, including the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Can you imagine the outcry in some quarters against any teacher that honestly addressed that topic?

With its competing interpretations and ambiguities, history makes for a tougher sell than the clearer nuts-and-bolts answers of hard science education. Its benefits, while quite real, don't measure easily in terms of the economic development that obsesses many reformers.

Beyond that, is the fact that better historical education is essential to deal with the rapidly changing world we inhabit. But that's not commonly a hallmark of most educational systems, and the way tests are geared ensures a steady supply of statistical talking points to bolster the Woe-is-Us industry, just as it did in the last century. Improving that doesn't involve going back to some bygone era, but an actual evolution forward, in the teeth of those who would rip out of education everything that doesn't fit on a damn balance sheet.

Open government can survive a resignation

Yes, we'll survive

Apparently, open government is dying. So declares a column from Vivek Wadhwa in yesterday's Washington Post: 

Vivek Kundra’s resignation last week from his post as the nation’s Chief Information Officer is an ominous event.

Kundra’s goal was to set government data free via an expansive Internet effort called Data.gov, and encourage innovation with government-collected data through the Open Government Initiative. He had hoped to slash tens of billions of dollars from the government information technology (I.T.) budget by democratizing who and which types of companies can deliver I.T. solutions to the government. The most radical part of his program was to make public data available to entrepreneurs, allowing them to build new applications that solved problems for the government and their communities.

The program was off to a great start, with hundreds of thousands of data sets becoming available, and entrepreneurs building thousands of innovative applications. Then the ill-considered race to slash the Federal deficit started. The Obama Administration agreed to cut e-government initiative funding from $35 million to $8 million. Never mind that Kundra’s programs had already saved taxpayers $3 billion over the past two years.

Not surprisingly, Kundra resigned. Why preside over a portfolio of shuttered initiatives? In a phone interview, Kundra acknowledged that he is worried about the program’s funding, but told me that he believes that the open data initiative has so much momentum that it is unstoppable, echoing the sentiment issued in his formal statement that he is “confident progress will continue.”

The observation is understandable, if wrong. For all the smarts and individual experience involved, the Gov 2.0/open gov movement remains relatively new to politics, at least compared to other causes that measure their tenure in decades. I've noticed, since 2009, the worrying impression that open government depends on a narrow political window, specifically around the Obama administration's directives and appointments.

An alliance between sympathetic government officials and technologists has remained a hallmark of the Gov 2.0 push since Carl Malamud's work opening up the SEC in 1993. Advocates understandably place a lot of emphasis on that relationship, and I remember the focus at the first Gov 2.0 conference on getting "top people" from the federal government on board.

Kundra's appointment as the nation's first CIO was a big deal for these advocates, and they've invested a lot of effort in rightly defending the programs he's shepherded from shortsighted cuts. He's had an impressive record of accomplishments and his resignation at a time when the early momentum of the federal open government movement is being sorely tested can be disheartening.

Still, I figured something like this would happen, if not with a resignation, with some other setback.

Here, for me, is the rub in Wadhwa's analysis:

But, with Kundra gone, I am not optimistic about the program. Whenever a program loses its key evangelist, it normally dies. The Open Government Initiative is likely to suffer a slow, inevitable death.

No.

Capable evangelists certainly help, but history and experience both teach a very different lesson. Any political cause (and open government is one) throwing all its chips on one person will fail.

Look, we have politics not because we agree, but because we don't. On many things, we won't ever. To many involved, open government is a cause. I respect that and, on many levels, I agree.

But it will never be that way to everyone. For some people it will just be a bargaining chip, one interest among many or something thoroughly expendable when cutting times come.

Securing open government in the face of that requires a succession of leaders, multiple organizations and enough constituencies on board that even those who don't personally care have to take their combined influence into account.

Budget cuts, setbacks and resignations are all part of politics. Every cause suffers them, and the ones that endure do so because they can take the damage and keep on going. The ability to do so depends not on a single person but on the depth of support and the strength of advocates to carry on.

Is that staying power there? That's a good question. The rebuttals to Wadhwa's piece (here's a good one) started cropping up almost as soon as it was published. While still far from a political third rail, open government has certainly expanded, on some fronts, since I began writing on it.

But Kundra's resignation is a good time to look at how open government can grow more resilient in the political fray.

This is big: censorship-cracking "internet in a suitcase"

So that's where the internet went

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's a tech innovation legitimately worth getting excited about:

In response to the government suppression of Internet access during the Arab Spring, "Internet in a Suitcase" will allow citizens to bypass censors and help them reconnect in times of government imposed shutdown. A "suitcase" can be transported to dissidents in a repressive country and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet, thus undermining the despotic governing powers. To track the project, you can follow the Open Technology Initiative on Twitter @newamericaoti.

In accordance with the United Nations decision that Internet access should not be denied to anyone, this project is the Obama administration's attempt at harboring democracy in these repressive countries while exercising a push at furthered free speech practices.The project is funded by a $2 million grant from the State Department.

This is huge. While people get far too excited over apps or augmented reality, this is the exact kind of durable infection that stands a chance of furthering actual, substantial change: reliable, easy to replicate and fulfilling a basic need, in this case communicating in the face of repression.

This segment from Al-Jazeera has more information:

Credit where it's due: for all the terrible government-funded things, this one is really beneficial. Of course, like the AK-47, this is going to spread far beyond the control of the government that started it. These tools need to be widespread, in the first world as well as the third, in slums, countryside and rust belts too. The more of them there are, the more resilient future social movements will be against attempts to totally shut down communication.

Mark my words, these suitcases will inevitably end up used against repressive governments of many stripes, including ones the US supports. That's for the good, and with this development, I think the ability to bring the hammer down on online communication just suffered a major setback.

Revenge of the commons

The original gang territory? The medieval center of Siena.

The commons has received much praise as a powerful model for our own era, but mostly forgotten is how those extolled structures were actually run, and what they did to their rivals.

Some fascinating information in this article on medieval communes:

Because much of medieval Europe lacked central authority to provide protection, each city had to provide its own protection for citizens both inside the city walls, and outside. Thus towns formed communes, a legal basis for turning the cities into self-governing corporations. Although in most cases the development of communes was connected with that of the cities, there were rural communes, notably in France and England, that were formed to protect the common interests of villagers.

Every town had its own commune and no two communes were alike, but at their heart, communes were sworn allegiances of mutual defense. When a commune was formed, all participating members gathered and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper.

What did it mean for a commune member to defend another? If a commune member was attacked outside the city, it was too late to call for help, as it was unlikely anyone would arrive in time. Instead, the commune would promise to exact revenge on the attacker, the threat of revenge being a form of defense. However, if the attacker was a noble, safely ensconced in a castle (as was often the case), the town commune could not muster the forces to attack him directly. Instead they might attack the noble's family, burn his crops, kill his serfs, or destroy his orchards in retribution.

"How do you govern a community?" is an old question. The rise of towns and cities as a counterbalance to aristocratic authority was a major factor behind the Renaissance and, by extension, the modern world. In some ways, the urban rise hasn't stopped; most of humanity now lives in a city.

The medieval commune busts the stereotypical version of medieval history that, if it considers the peasantry at all, considers them mostly as oppressed masses, focusing instead on the culture and fights of the nobility. Turns out that peasants were plenty active in trying to develop ways to make their own lives less dangerous and hurt those that hurt them. Furthermore, they began independently adapting this basic structure once it proved successful elsewhere.

The medieval commune began by addressing the most basic need: physical protection. It then follows to the most basic way of deterrence: revenge. It is revealing that, in such an anarchic environment, peasants and artisans had an extremely no-bullshit idea of what would protect their own independence, and on what principles their rivals operated.

Interesting too to compare the way the word "commune" has changed over the centuries, from a revenge-based structure of expedience to a byword for egalitarian experimentation. 

In function, the medieval commune was more like a gang than a utopian social movement, not striving for any higher ideal than "don't fuck with us and let us run our own affairs." Which, for a medieval peasant, was a big deal. Notice that this relied on organized banditry — including the slaughter of serfs — to protect its own independence.

Like a gang or tribe, anything outside its orbit was expendable, and it focused on striking where its enemy was weak.

Of course, the communes didn't stay that communal, because ad-hoc organization is usually a precursor to more formal hierarchy. The Siena commune, one of the most successful, was ruled by an oligarchy of nine local leaders by the late 1200s. In Italy and Switzerland, where communes had the greatest success, they formed the foundation for more structured city-state republics.

Widespread disorder was a major reason for their existence in the first place, and the formation of centralized states both reduced that issue and created standing forces capable of subjugating the more rebellious communes.

Nonetheless, an interesting wrinkle here: contra the modern narrative, the communes were cooperative and competitive, with the threatened destruction of their foes (or their lands) a major reason for their existence. At the same time, their example shows that the most enduring structures start with an effective structure for a basic need and build from there.

Belling the cat

The mice in council, illustration by Milo Winter

There's an old fable, traditionally attributed to Aesop, though he probably never told it. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time all the Mice met together in Council, and discussed the best means of securing themselves against the attacks of the cat. After several suggestions had been debated, a Mouse of some standing and experience got up and said, "I think I have hit upon a plan which will ensure our safety in the future, provided you approve and carry it out. It is that we should fasten a bell round the neck of our enemy the cat, which will by its tinkling warn us of her approach."

This proposal was warmly applauded, and it had been already decided to adopt it, when an old Mouse got upon his feet and said, "I agree with you all that the plan before us is an admirable one: but may I ask who is going to bell the cat?"

That story came back to me yesterday afternoon, as I was driving back to Asheville after a lovely weekend far from civilization. NPR had a good segment on the country's debt ceiling problems. It's likely the ceiling will be raised after some sort of compromise (how bad a one remains to be seen), but the underlying problems have built up for some time.

There's plenty of blame to go around, mind, and narrow interests have way too much leverage over the political system.

But I think the narrative often pushed, of an innocent and just "people" held hostage to nefarious cliques, is lacking something, and the above segment illustrates why. Notice that the current unsustainable setup — massive spending on the military, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, along with an utter unwillingness to raise taxes — is extremely popular. The unpopular programs that people want to cut actually make up a minuscule part of spending.

Yes, most Americans, like most humans, deserve way better than what they receive. Conversely, I don't buy the bullshit narrative that the average voter bears equal responsibility for the worst actions of those in power. But the current set-up got that way in part because millions upon millions of people voted for its advocates. Repeatedly.

After all, a better-equipped military sounds good, right? And grandma really does deserve her check (plus, her demographic votes in massive numbers).

When it comes time to pay for all that, no one wants to foot the bill, or even part of the bill. Raising taxes isn't popular because few people say "I want more money to go to the government" especially when you don't particularly like the one you have.

Politicians like to be popular; it's a job requirement. Aforementioned interests prod too (what else would you expect them to do?) to protect their own pet causes.

All of which makes the current situation understandable — as most disasters are. It also points to the thornier side of the problems it highlights, because when you factor in the popular demands that led to the current fiasco, it's not just a problem of replacing an elite or throwing out some nefariously influential power-brokers.

This isn't limited to governmental finances, of course. All those new, smart devices guzzle electricity, fueling a thirst for coal (or oil, or nuclear) power. People waiting for their shiny martial arts implants won't bother to exercise. Voting for decades of "tough on crime" politicians has spurred a massive prison population. There is always a price, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Obviously, breaks in the wilderness make me quite ranty.

But there's something here. If we want to avoid this kind of clusterfuck in the future, it might be time to start asking not just about the benefits of today's plans for tomorrow, but about their consequences, and if we're fully prepared to accept them. Someone always has to bell the damn cat.

Hell yeah for the First Amendment

In all its glory, from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

I have no lack of problems with laws in this country, or ones we should have, or rights that don't get the protections they need. But, this BBC piece about the lack of abominable "super-injunctions" in the US reminds me of one thing America actually does pretty well:

While in the UK, the story has evolved into a debate about a "two-track" legal system - one for mainstream media and one for social media - in the US that debate rarely happens, because all media can get away with a lot more.

And injunctions? Forget it. Americans are bemused that famous people in the UK are able to stop the publication of details of their private lives, because it goes against one of their country's founding principles, free speech.

Does the First Amendment make violations of free speech impossible? Hardly, and it remains an ongoing fight. But the First, and the years of law built up around it significantly raises the potential cost for violators, and assures that a lot of loathsome laws will face a heavy challenge right out of the gate.

Every day working in media, I'm reminded that there are significant protections that most institutions, albeit gritting their teeth, have to abide by because the potential legal/media shitstorm if they don't is actually a deterrent.

Countries can learn from what others have done, and modify it to fit their own circumstances. In areas of health care, for example, or infrastructure, or legislatures not grinding to a halt, there's much America can adapt from elsewhere.

But when I see ridiculous things like burqa bans or hate speech arrests, I'm reminded that the First Amendment is to this country's credit, and could stand a serious look, worldwide, from those seeking to workably protect a fundamental human right.