Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman

 

Reading Richard Feynman gives me the feeling that I can understand a little bit of the mystery and beauty of science.  I thought I would read the short introductory paperback before deciding whether I should attempt the three-volume Feynman Lectures on Physics.

After reading QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, I wanted to read more of Feynman and again have that feeling I could really comprehend modern physics. It is like riding in a strong tailwind on a bicycle.  I am zipping along above 25mph and can think for a moment I am really that strong, at least until I turn into the wind and feel merely human again. 

Feynman give me a science high.    

In the first lecture, Atoms in Motion, he says, 

    Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or, more likely, to be corrected.

On page 2, I know what science is. Two pages later the section titled Matter is made of atoms begins:

If in some cataclysm, all of the scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creature, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact whichever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms--little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling each other upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Entertaining and brilliant.  The rest of the book bubbles with insights, elucidating basic physics, showing the connections of all the sciences to each other, then a chapter on energy in its many forms, followed by gravity--the weakest force, ending with quantum mechanics. 

I am going to read another Feynman book this week. 

How General Erwin Rommel Rationalized Supporting Hitler

I am reading a book about the careers of the of the most well-known generals of World War II. All of them were decorated young officers in World War I. They made the army their career, serving in diminished armies until the late 1930s when war put all three in command of great armies.  

Rommel is known as the Desert Fox, really his worst performance as a commander, and for joining the failed plot to assassinate Hitler after in 1944.  But he was for Hitler before he turned against him.  His path to making peace with Hitler has chilling parallels with today.   

From the book:

In 1932, the Nazi Party's achievement in becoming the largest party in the Reichstag was not greeted with concern by the Army Officer Corps, but with hope. Although I do not like their methods, wrote Oberst Karl Kuhn of the General Staff in his diary in November 1932, most of my acquaintances see developments as good for Germany and good for the army.  

Most of the soldiers seemed to agree, although most seem more concerned with the implications for their pay and accommodation. The officer corps had reservations about the Nazi Party and its leadership, the tub-thumping rhetoric of Adolf Hitler feeding widespread distrust of the former First World War corporal, but many were willing to see what the Nazis could come up with to solve chronic German problems.  

Berlin based Oberstleutnant Paul Uckleman wrote in his journal that he thought Hitler is no gentleman and described his colleagues as brutes, thugs, and men on the make, using vile tactics and supporting questionable policies. Nevertheless, Uckleman also wrote that perhaps Hitler is the man to destroy the Communists and help revive Germany and the army.  

It was a view that seems to have reflected Erwin Rommel's own thinking about the Nazis. Hitler and his party were distasteful, but they were better than the alternatives in their offer of an enticing vision to end internal crises, bolster the economy and provide a muscular nationalism that would break the Versailles Treaty shackles reinvigorate the armed forces and redraw Germany's borders. As Rommel’s biographer Ralf Georg Reuth has argued, the most influential part of the army hoped that Hitler would become vanquisher of the discord that had traumatized German society since 1918. 

The Purpose of Life? To Live--Yogi Sadhguru

Yogi Sadhguru

A friend sent me a YouTube link of Yogi Sadhguru answering the question, "Does life have a purpose?"

His answer surprised and delighted me. Although I have read widely in Jewish, Christian and Buddhist literature, Hindu teachings never attracted my interest. But Yogi Sadhguru could be Rabbi. He has such clarity.  If you are interested, you can either listen to the YouTube video above or read the transcript below.  

"Does life have a purpose?"

No. 

Isn't it fantastic that if there's no purpose, you have nothing to fulfill, you can just live? 

No, but you want a purpose? And not a simple purpose. 

You want a God-given purpose. It's very dangerous. 

People who think they have a God-given purpose are doing the cruelest things on the planet. 

Yes or no. 

They are doing the most horrible things and they've always been doing the most horrible things because when you have a God-given purpose, life here becomes less important than your purpose. 

My life is important. Life is important. When I say life. I'm not talking about your family, your work, what you do, what you do not do at your party. I'm not talking about that. 

A life, this is life, isn't it? Life is within you or around you. The ambiance of life. You are mistaking the ambiance of life for life, your home, your family, your workspace, your party. This is all ambience of life. This is. Not life, isn't it? 

Yes or no. 

You're mistaking the ambiance for the real thing, no? Life is important. Because that's the only thing you know. You don't know anything else. Do you know something else? Rest is all imagined stuff, isn't it the only thing there is? That this is being and alive and that's all there is. So, is this important? 

It is of paramount importance. Not you as a person. That's not important, but you as a piece of life is very important. Because that is the basis of everything. When I say that is the basis of everything in the universe exists for you. Only because you are, isn't it? 

Yes or no. 

The world exists for you only because you are otherwise it won't exist. In your experience. So, in every way, this is important. So, what is the purpose of this? 

See if you had a purpose and if you fulfilled it after that, what would you do? After that, what would you be bored? It is just that life is so intricate and so phenomenally intricate. That if you spend 10,000 years looking at it carefully; you still will not know it entirely. If you spend a million years looking at it. With absolute focus still you will not know it in its entirety. That's how it is. 

Is there a meaning to it? The greatest thing about life is that there is no meaning to it. This is the greatest aspect of life that has no meaning to it, and there is no need for it. To have a meaning. It's the pettiness of one's mind. That it is seek a meaning. Because psychologically you will feel kind of unconnected with life. If you don't have a purpose and meaning. 

People are constantly trying to create these false purposes. Now they were quite fine and happy. Suddenly they got married. Now the purpose is. The other person. Then they have children. Now they become miserable with each other. Now the whole purpose that I go through, all this misery is. Because of the children. Like this it goes on. These are things that you are causing and holding as purposes of life. 

And is there a God-given purpose? What if God does not know you exist? No, I'm just asking by chance. I'm saying in this huge. Which God is supposed to be the creator and the manager of these 100 billion galaxies, in that this tiny little planet? And you suppose he doesn't know that you exist? What to do? Possible, or no? I'm sorry I'm saying such sacrilegious things. But is it possible, or no? 

What if he doesn't know that you exist? What if he doesn't have a plan for you? Suppose he doesn't have a plan for an individual plan for you. Don't look for such things. The thing is the creation is made in such a way. 

That creation and creator cannot be separated. Here you are a piece of creation at the same time, the source of creation is throbbing within you. If you pay little attention to this process of life, you would not need any purpose. It will keep you engaged for a million years. If you want. There is so much happening. So much means so much unbelievable things are happening right here. If you pay enough attention. A million years of existence, it will keep you busy. Or more. 

Right now the need for purpose is come because you are trapped in your psychological structure, not in your life process. Your psychological structure functions from the limited data that it's gathered within that it rolls. And right now. 

Your thought and emotion has become far more important than your life, isn't it? So isn't it so? So because of this you seeking. A purpose as an. Escape from the trap that you have set for yourself. It is a trap set by you. You can easily come out of it. If the trap was set for you by somebody else, difficult to come out because they'll set the trap in such a way that you cannot come out, isn't it? I'm talking about life, not marriage.  

So this is a trap set by you. This is easy to come out, but that is the whole thing. Why it is so difficult is now you're identified with the trap. 

You like it. 

You like it because it gives you a certain sense of safety and security and protection and individual identity if you. Build a cocoon around yourself. It gives you safety, but it also imprisons you. Walls of self preservation or also walls of self imprisonment. When it protects you, you like it. When it restricts you, you do not like it. 

That is why we have doors. We like the wall because it's protecting us. But we have doors, so that way we can open it and get out when we want to. It doesn't matter how nice it is, we still want to go out, isn't it? So that is how it is with every trap that you set. It doesn't matter how nice it is, you still want to go out. 

So the psychological wall that you have built which gives you some sense of identity, which gives you some sense of being a person, an individual person, and which gives you security. Beginning to experience it like a trap somewhere, you want to break it. So one way of not breaking it is to find a purpose. 

Those who find a purpose in their life, they become so conceited. 

They will live within their own traps forever, thinking that they're doing the most fantastic thing. First thing you need is balance. If you have balance. Then you can try if you don't have balance it's better you stay on the ground. It's not safe for somebody who is not balanced to climb high. It's best you stay close to the ground. 

You should not climb. 

So first thing is to establish a balance. Then you're losing your psychological structure. Then you're losing your psychological structure without balance, which lot of people are doing today. 

Why does somebody want to drink alcohol or take a drug. Because it loosens your psychological structure. And makes you feel liberated for a moment but without the necessary balance. You have not worked for the balance, but you got freedom. Freedom without balance is destruction. Anarchy, isn't it? 

So first thing is to work for is balance an enormous sense of balance. Where even if you dismantle your psychological structure, you can simply live here, dismantling your psychological. Structure is an important process because that is your trap. That is your security. That is your stability. At the same time, that's your trap. Because the walls are set, you feel secure, but that's also your trap. 

If you dismantle your trap. You also dismantle your security, isn't it? You also dismantle your sense of purpose. You also dismantle everything that matters to you. So that will need balance without balance if you dismantle it you will go crazy. 

But don't look for a purpose because if you look for a purpose you're seeking madness. If you find one. You are surely mad? If you think you found a purpose in life you for sure have gone crazy. Because only the insane people have purpose. People who have purpose are insane in many ways. These are things that you create in your mind and believe it's true, isn't it? 

Right now, fighting for my country is my purpose. Right now, if it's necessary, I will fight knowing fully well it's an unnecessary bloody fight. Just then you will fight only to the extent it's necessary. If you think this is your purpose you would want to destroy the whole world for. What nonsense you believe in, isn't it? Something is needed. We'll do it. With absolute involvement, there's no other purpose. 

The purpose of life is to live and to live totally. To live totally does not mean party every night to live totally means before you fall dead every aspect of life has been explored. Nothing has been left unexplored. Before you fall dead even if you do not explore the cosmos, at least this piece of life, you must know it in its entirety. That much you must do to yourself, isn't it? That's living totally. That you experienced the whole of this, all dimensions of what this is. You did not leave anything untouched. You just do that. That will take a long time. 

That's enough. A good enough purpose for you.

 

Supporting Ukraine on Capital Hill--Meeting Lawmakers

At Congressman Lloyd Smucker's office 

(my representative), advocating for aid for Ukraine

Yesterday, I joined members of the American Coalition for Ukraine to ask members of the Congress representing Pennsylvania to support the Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression.  The group I was part of visited the offices of Congressman Lloyd Smucker, Senator Robert Casey, Senator John Fetterman, and Congressman Guy Reschenthaler. 

Our message: Ukraine needs ammunition and missiles urgently.

The response from each of the staffers we met with was support for Ukraine, but then came the various expressions of regret.  The Republican congressmen face opposition within their own party.  The phrase "in the current climate" summed up that regret saying in effect, We wish we could do more, but..."

Both of the senate staffers were in support of Ukraine and fighting against Republican opposition in both the Senate and the House. We heard Senator Fetterman is "extremely disappointed" with the "dysfunctional House of Representatives."  He considers the abandonment of Ukraine support by Republicans "reprehensible" and "unAmerican."  

When I was at the last Ukraine Action Summit October 22-24 of last year, the Fetterman visit was the best. He stood with us on the steps of the Senate and declared complete support for Ukraine. I wrote about that visit here. For those of us who spent six years protesting Senator Pat Toomey, the best result of our protest is that Toomey did not run for re-election and John Fetterman took his place in the senate.  

Fetterman is just as strong on his support for Israel.  The walls of his office are covered with posters of the hostages taken by HAMAS terrorists on October 7. Those released are on one side, those still held are on the other.  

I have another Congressional visit tomorrow. I will write about that as soon as I can.  

I believe Ukraine is the front line of the defense of freedom and democracy against Russia and her authoritarian allies in Iran, China, North Korea, Hungary, Turkey, and all of those within America who support tyranny.  

Dark Tourism

 

Monument in the Dachau Concentration Camp

Tonight after services at my synagogue, I talked to a member of the congregation about about visiting Nazi death camps.  She never visited a death camp. She is thinking about joining a tour led by our Rabbi that will visit several death camps in 2025.  

We talked about how much death camps were part of the towns and cities where they were located.  Auschwitz is inside the city area of Oswiecim, Poland. Both times I went to the camp I thought how strange it was to hear the bells of the Catholic Church while walking through a death camp.  

The Flossenburg camp is in an area that was very pro-Nazi in Bavaria. the camp was part of the community. The camp managers bought food and other supplies locally, as happened at most death camps, and made no effort to hide the slave labor and death in the camp. 

A couple of years ago, I spoke to a professor who studies Dark Tourism: visiting places known for death and tragedy.  Ten visits to nine different camps and a dozen other museums and memorials put me right in the definition of Dark Tourist.  

Tonight the Rabbi talked about January 12, 2024, as the 100th day since the terrorist massacre, mutilation and kidnapping of more than 1,400 Israelis.  At every death camp, the guides make clear that all Nazi death camps had other prisoners in addition to Jews. But at every camp, Jews were the lowest of the various prisoners. They were most likely to be tortured and humiliated by design or by whim.  

When HAMAS terrorists invaded Israel torture and sexual violence and mutilation were the plan. The Holocaust began with humiliation and led inevitably to extermination. HAMAS has the same agenda. 

May the IDF destroy them completely.   

Transcript of Niall Ferguson on "Honestly with Bari Weiss"

 

Niall Ferguson on "Honestly with Bari Weiss" 

Transcript 

 Bari Weiss Niall, welcome back to Honestly 

 Niall Ferguson Oh hello. What an unexpected call. 

Bari Weiss Now everyone who listens to this show surely knows the name Niall Ferguson, but in case you're new to this podcast, Niall is a historian. He's an opinion columnist at Bloomberg. He's a senior. Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, he is the author of something like 20 books. Most recently, he published doom, the politics of Catastrophe. And he is also and most importantly, one of the founders of me of a new university, which is the University of Austin, or UATX. There you go for a plug, Niall, we. I really appreciate you being here. Niall Ferguson Good to be with you, Bari. 

Olly Wiseman (Honestly co-host) OK, so we thought that we sort of go through some of the hot spots and then ask you to tie together what all of. These things mean. Obviously, there's so much going on in the world right now that I think many people can feel almost overwhelmed by one of those. The War in Ukraine, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and I can't believe. This but next month is. Going to mark the two years. Anniversary of that war hundreds of thousands have died in that war, and Russia, as of today, and we're at the very beginning of 2024, appears to be winning. There are also these horror stories I keep reading about Zelinsky calling up really older men to serve who are sort of being ripped out of lines at the grocery store and sent to the front. Lines and Zelensky. Saying that he needs an additional half a million troops even still, and in the meantime, at least among many people I know, it's anecdotal. Polls, though, seem to back this up. Americans seem less and less supportive. Of a war that maybe two years ago they hadn't sort of viscerally supported. Who does this go in your view. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, when the war began nearly two years ago, I thought the best analogy might actually be with the Korean War. You have to frame what we're going through as Cold War two in my view, and Ukraine was the first hot war of the second Cold War. And in just the same way that in 1950, the outbreak of a hot war made many people understand better. The world that they were in, I think that was true when the war broke out in Ukraine. It's obvious that Russia would not have launched that offensive without Xi Jinping's OK, that was what Putin got before the offensive was launched. And without Chinese support, Russia would not be able to sustain the war effort. Massive. Exports of microprocessors and other things keep the Russian war machine going. The problem with the analogy, and that was why I drew it, was what happened. Career because what happened in Korea was you had a year of extraordinary kinetic warfare and then two years of attrition affected stalemate and then a kind of Armistice, not really a full-scale piece that left the country divided with an extremely dangerous border. And it's still there as we speak. And I I've always felt that that was a plausible outcome for Ukraine, and not by any means the worst-case scenario, because after all, South Korea ended up being a very prosperous country despite. Something and Ukraine might manage that, but it's going to be very hard for Ukraine to win this war now for the reason you gave the United States has essentially lost interest. It's stopped supporting financially Ukraine and Ukraine is always to be truly running out of ammunition. This is a war of attrition. Therefore, Zelensky needs bodies. He needs men because the Russians have. A lot of them, and that that was always one of the asymmetries of this conflict. So, I expect the war to drag on through 2020. 4/2 at some point. What happened to the kids of the Korean? What was Stalin died. That was one of the ways in which the war was possible to end. I don't know whether Putin will oblige us by dying at some point soon. If he doesn't, I think this drags on. There's a worst-case scenario, of course, which would be that Russia begins to make significant gains. Significantly degrades Ukraine's infrastructure. It's failing to do that right now with a massive air campaign, but if you just take that analogy as something to work with, I think we're entering that phase of our version of the Korean War that. Will be called. 

 Bari Weiss Stalemate and Niall, one thing that we'll be looking out for in 2024 is what happens here in the US, but to what extent does Ukraine's future hinge on the election in November? I mean, is that going to make a big difference for? Me or the other? Well, people were. 

 Niall Ferguson Saying that in. Ukraine, when I was last there back in September, but it turns out you don't need. Donald Trump to get reelected for the aid to Ukraine to stop stopped. Ready and the election is, what, 10 months away? I think it's possible that the aid will restart cause Congressional leadership does not want to leave Ukraine entirely reliant on the Europeans, which right now it is. So. It's not entirely over Trump's real. I'll give at this point 55% probability. Would be a terrible blow for Ukraine. Not necessarily fatal Europeans understand. I've been spending a lot of time in Europe at the moment that they now have to face the possibility of being on their own. All that fine talk of strategic autonomy which we used to hear from President Macron will have to become a reality very swiftly. The alternative, they now realize, is too awful to contemplate, because if Ukraine loses after all the fine rhetoric of 2022 that puts Russia in an extremely threatening position for the whole of Europe. And remember, one thing that Putin has shown is that sanctions don't stop. A great power which Russia is not a superpower anymore. It's a great power with the backing of a superpower, Russia has mobilized in a way we haven't really seen in a very long time. And that large scale military mobilization is going to put Putin in a very threatening position. So, the Europeans can't really afford for Ukraine to be completely defeated. Because it will require them massively to increase their own defense budgets, which from a domestic political point of view is very difficult. 

 Olly Wiseman Indeed, you mentioned what's at. Stake for Europe? What? Is at stake for. The world more broadly. If Ukraine loses this war in a significant. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, it wouldn't be the first time that the United States said we'll back you and your independence and your democracy for as long as it takes. And then that turned out to be for as long as we feel like it. You know, as the South Vietnamese, the United States not done terribly well since the late 1960s. In honoring this kind of commitment. Read the Quiet American and you'll find a certain familiar ring to it. Think of Afghanistan and the Biden administration's track record is much worse than you'd think. If all you read was the New York Times because it failed utterly to deter the Taliban from very quickly reasserting their hideous. Barbaric regime. In 2021, it failed to deter Putin from escalating his invasion of Ukraine, and it failed to deter Iran from unleashing its proxies against Israel. And my question for 2024 is. Who will they? Fail to deter this year because there is more that they can. 

 Bari Weiss Fail to deter well, now that segues perfectly into. My next question, which is about China and. It feels as though she. Thing is becoming more and more explicit about Taiwan and what China's plans are. I think the US official kind of intelligence prediction is that they think the range when kind of might try and take Taiwan might be between 2025 and 2027. Obviously, there's a chance that she acts earlier than America. Aspects so. What do we do with all this information? With all this forecasting? What's your feeling about where things stand and what we should be doing to be prepared for that? 

 Niall Ferguson I remember two years ago all the experts on Russia said no, no, no. Putin's not going to launch a full-blown conventional force invasion of Ukraine. And I was one of the few people who said. War is coming. I have a similar feeling the experts say China's not ready to make a move until in Taiwan. Until 2027, Bill Burns, director, Central Intelligence, has said this couple of times and I just wonder about that because as you say, she has most recently in his new year. Said that, this is still his priority, the Taiwanese election is. Is a way. And it seems. It is likely that a candidate will win. William Lai, who has in the past expressed his support for the idea of Taiwanese independence. That seems like a good pretext. As you get. For launching some kind of action. I think the mistake many experts make is assuming that action means full blown amphibious invasion. That's a really difficult thing to do across the Taiwan Strait and I don't think the People's Liberation Army is remotely ready to do it, but they don't need to do that. They just need to blockade Taiwan and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's sometime this year. China imposes some kind of economic blockade. If I were advising Xi Jinping, I would say do it. You'll never have a better opportunity. You'll never have an administration that will be more wrong suited if you do it, they're not ready. They've talked to talk about Taiwan. Remember Joe Biden on more than one occasion has sounded like he has an. Unambiguous commitment that to the defense of Taiwan after 50 years, where the United States kind of ambiguous about its commitment and yet at the very time when. The US is least. People honor such commitments. This is not the 1990s, when Bill Clinton could send a naval force and the Chinese were like, whoa, back down. Chinese now has the capacity to sink US aircraft carriers. If Joe Biden finds himself in an election year having to send a naval force across the Pacific to run that. Blockade. It's the Cuban missile crisis. Only this time we get to be the Soviet. And Joe Biden gets to be Khrushchev, and that that analogy is another Cold War analogy that I find useful. Cuba was an island just off the United States, tried to effectively turn into a missile base, and John F Kennedy imposed A blockade called it a quarantine. But it was a blockade. And this naval force. We sent. The closest we came to World War Three in the whole of the. If there's a Taiwan crisis of the sort, I'm imagining it will be like the Cuban missile crisis, with the rules reversed, the Chinese will be the ones doing the blockading, and we'll be accused of sending a naval force and risking World War three. So, I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope Bill Burns is right. We don't really have to worry about this until 2027, but. Let's put it this way. Our intelligence experts have been wrong in the past and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was a Taiwan crisis potentially this month.

 Bari Weiss Wow. Yeah. In the Middle East, it feels like there. Potential escalations the whole time, which the US just kind of ignores, which are those attacks on U.S. troops. Let's move on to that region and focus on the focal point of the conflict there, which obviously is the Gaza Strip and the war between Hamas and Israel. Give us your sense of what stage that war is at, what the next phase of the war looks like, what you think will happen next in Gaza. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, I think so far as I can tell from sources I have. That's the idea is to strike him up. It is not. Being given as much time as it would like. But the noises that come out of Washington along the lines of all these needs to get done, you. Have to stop. I don't think. Those noises are being accompanied by anything that really would stop Israel finishing this war, insofar as it's possible to destroy Hamas, I think it's happening. The problem is that there is another theater that can explode into life at any point, and that's the Lebanese border with Israel, where Hezbollah has a far greater, far powered disposal. The IDF would certainly like to act preemptively against that. It's not really able to for a political reason. That is something that Washington won't condone. So, I think the critical question is not what happened in Gaza. I think that's now fairly clear. I think it's what happens with Hezbollah in Lebanon that is crucial and the fact that Israel is taking the first steps against Hezbollah is, I think. 

 Bari Weiss What do you think the odds are of that kind of escalation and a broader sort of regional escalation in the kind of worst-case scenario involving Iran? And I guess the US? Some not necessarily direct conflict, but something approaching that. 

 Niall Ferguson And the US is. Extraordinarily reluctant to get into any kind. Of a war with Iran. Another administration might have taken October the 7th as the opportunity to impose major costs on Iran, and I think that would have been the correct thing to do. But this administration has been, from the outset, to me, inexplicably wedded to the idea that it could resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal, that projects of the Obama administration, and it never has really exerted to seek serious pressure on Iran. So, I worry a lot that this. Reluctance to confront the source of the trouble. Which is Tehran? One means that Iran's proxies have a sense of impunity. It's not only a must, but also not only Hezbollah, The Who sees in other proxies are feeling, you know, this is our moment because there's not really significant pressure being exerted on Iran itself.

 Olly Wiseman You know, if you're Israel, post October. 7th and one of the great lessons are you can't actually allow a jihadi genocidal group to remain at one of your borders. Isn't the lesson there that Israel must at some point strike Hezbollah to say nothing of Iran? 

 Niall Ferguson That would be strategically logical. The problem is. That Israel is so reliant on the United States and has been throughout its history, that it's very hard for it to act unilaterally in defiance of a very clear instruction from Washington. So, I think there's a real tension there that may persist throughout the year until the new administration comes along and says back to where we were, but that may not happen. As I said, it's 55% probability at this point in my view that. Trump is elected. I think Trump's election is really important, potentially because of its consequences for all that we've discussed and his. To reelect of Trump is very bad news for Ukraine. It's probably quite good news for Israel. I'm not clear what it implies for Taiwan so. It will be. A significant change, but. It won't be all one way, and that's one of the things that makes the interplay between domestic politics and geopolitics so difficult this year. 

 Olly Wiseman So, we, we've touched on Ukraine, we've touched on China, we've touched on Israel and the broader Iranian threat through Hamas and all of these other proxies. And I wondered if you could help us connect the dots. You tweeted something that I. Thought was really. Scary, but rang very true to me on. New Year's Eve. Here's what you said. Future historians will marvel at all this. It will seem obvious by 2033, if not sooner, that the Pax Americana faced a well-coordinated challenge from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in the early twenty 20s. The first move was the invasion of Ukraine, the second was the war of Iran's proxies against Israel. The third will most likely be a Chinese challenge to American primacy in the Indo Pacific. Perhaps if Xi Jinping is bold, a blockade of Taiwan, can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean when you say well-coordinated, like how? How much are they coordinated? 

 Niall Ferguson No2 world leaders have met more frequently in the last decade than Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And I can assure you, they're not discussing the respected merits of Russian and Chinese cuisine. The fact that they met immediately prior to the offensive against Ukraine at that, at that meeting, there was a kind of no limits partnership. Declaration is surely evidence enough. The fact that Iran is a major source of drones for the Russian air assault on Ukraine is further evidence. The fact that the attacks on Israel were preceded not only by meetings in Tehran, also leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but also by Chinese intervention, which is in some ways quite novel in the Middle Eastern diplomacy. To bring about some kind of rapprochement between the Saudis and the Iranians, all of this I. Think is part of a. The jigsaw that you can put together without knowing the classified information, obviously that people inside the government know a lot more than I do and I'm sure Jake Sullivan, as national security adviser, has far deeper insights than I can ever have. And I think on the basis of open-source Intel. Clear that there is coordination and although there is no ideological homogeneity between these regimes, China, which still nominally Marxist-Leninist communist regime, Russia, which is some kind of imperialist nostalgia trip back to Peter the Great. And Iran and Islamist Shia theocracy. And they don't have anything really in common except that they want American predominance to end and Pax Americana, which you know has had its. Effect haven't been such a bad international order that one would wish it to be replaced by a Chinese version. I certainly don't want to live in that world, and I wouldn't have thought you believers in the Free Press would want to either, so that's really where I think I would argue we are going. It's a major challenge to American predominance. The Biden administration said. We understand that better than Trump because we understand alliances and these alliances are our superpower, and that seemed to be. Who would reflect Ukraine? Because the Western alliance, broadly defined, also including Japan and some Asian countries, did come together, and it's supported Ukraine very strongly through that first-year party. Totally. But I don't think that alliance will look remotely as strong if things escalate in Israel. It's already pretty fragmented on the Palestine, Palestinian, Israel question. And as for Taiwan, I don't think any Europeans will show up if there's a crisis over Taiwan. And so, the Pax Americana, insofar as it was about. American economic might, plus alliances. I think it's more vulnerable than at any time since the end of World War 2. 

 Olly Wiseman Isn't it one of the other great distinctions between Cold War one and Cold War two? Are demoralization, like I'm sure you saw the videos meal of the past few days, the spectacle of young progressives marching in the streets of American cities praising. The hoochies of Yemen. Literally to say nothing of their praise of Hamas and back then maybe I'm have a revisionist idea of things, but it seemed like that. General Young Americans and Young American Liberals were on the side of the West, and it was self-evidently good that our freedoms were good and better than their lack of them. Is that a real shift, or am I just looking at the past with rose colored glasses? 

Niall Ferguson Think you are a bit. I mean, I think what's interesting about Cold War two is it seems to be going faster than Cold War one. So, we've kind of we're racing from the Korean War to the Cuban missile crisis. And when it comes to young people's attitudes, we somehow got to 1960. Yay already, because if you go back to 68. There is this enormous revulsion against the Pax Americana from within, and instead of chanting their support for our math, they were chanting their support for Ho Chi Minh right on the Harvard campus. Then in that, in that sense, part and parcel of, yeah, I mean, part of part of the Cold War is the useful idiots that you'll always find. 

 Olly Wiseman It was ever thus, right? 

Niall Ferguson On the Harvard campus and. In that sense, I think there's a kind of familiarity to this pattern, but I do think that it's easier, much easier for China to mobilize. And sentiment or anti-Israeli sentiment through social. Media than was ever. Possible in the first Cold War and. That that. Means that I think our task is harder. The way I. Would put it is cold. War Two has a lot in common with Cold War one, but economically the other side is much stronger. And it was true in Cold War one. Secondly, I think we are more divided and more capable of being divided and. In that sense, I think that there's a decent chance we'll lose. Cool. Do and that's what people find really hard to visualize. The reason people are worried is kind of think oh we you know we we're always going to win it's going to be fine. Don't worry and I'm like no I used to contemplate the possibility of losing the United States did not inevitably win Cold War when it looked like it was losing for most of the 1970s by 1979. It really looked like it was in trouble, and I think we just don't get across to people what losing might be like and why it might be bad. Ukrainians understand what losings like because they saw Bucca. They saw the bodies in. The streets of Bucca. It's really not what losing is like because they know that October 7th is like the dress rehearsal for Holocaust too, but we don't really know what losing would mean. And young Americans absolutely have no concept. Now, young Americans are so complacent about freedom that they're basically against it now, which is a kind of bizarre turn of events. And so, I kind of want everybody to read books like SSGB lend date and fantastic. He imagined Britain losing World War 2. What it would be like if the Germans had taken over. That's great. As it completely captures what it would have been like, we need a bit more about what it would actually be like if we lost. Suppose just let's just. Imagine that there is a Taiwan crisis, and they send two aircraft carrier groups, and the Chinese have sync both the carrier. And the US finds it has to sue for peace, and Taiwan has taken over, and seizing ping. Does the ticker tape parade through Taipei? What then? What does that mean? And I think a lot of people haven't really got anywhere close to thinking that through. They don't realize that they are losing. He seemed to be #1 losing the Pax Americana has massive costs. Like suppose suddenly the cost of borrowing for the United States government is no longer where it currently is. Suppose the. Dollar is no. Longer just seen as the fact that. The world's number one currency, all of. Could make life a lot worse. Supposing the Free Press was no longer really capable of operating because of the sustained campaign against it. Run out of Beijing. These are the things that people don't spend enough time thinking about because they are just complacent. Assume that somehow. All of this stuff is going on over there in in Ukraine and in Israel and Taiwan, and somehow, we'll be fine. But the reality is we will definitely not be fine anymore. We than we would have been fine if the Soviets. Had won the first Cold War. 

 Bari Weiss Well, Niall, let's just. Take that cherry thought. And with I'm.

 Niall Ferguson I don't want to be cheery? I want everybody to be to be scared because unless you're properly scared, you won't take the requisite actions to avert.  Bari Weiss I peed my pants during that. 

Olly Wiseman Let's ask you one final short question, which you can use to scare. Listen as if they're not already terrified like me, and that is, this is a, you know, 2024 predictions podcast. So, I want you to paint the picture of January 1, 2025, and tell me how things looked in Cold War. Two like, what's your best guess in terms of how we're doing in a year? 

 Niall Ferguson Before Democrats stormed the capital in protest against the obviously stolen election. Yeah, I mean I would. Say when you're doing predictions over. 12-month time horizon. The important thing is to remember that most things won't be massively different. So, Europe will still be kind of stagnating. The growth will be down. There may be a recession and parts of Europe and the far right will be gaining ground. So that's a kind of easy prediction. And Putin will still be President of Russia. Modi will still be Prime Minister because their elections are a foregone conclusion. So, lots of this is kind of. Easy to foresee. The hard thing to foresee is decision Ping. Take a risk in Taiwan. Suppose he does. He does by this time next year we'll know if the United States was able to deter or prevent or reverse the Chinese move, or whether. Buy this. Trying to walk. And so, it will be quite that will be the key I think, because I think the Ukraine war won't be over, Russia won't have won, Ukraine won't have won, Israel will still be dealing with the remnants of Hamas. It'll be either at war with Hezbollah or on the brink of it. Some of this is not going to change massively and. I don't think the Biden administration is radically going to change in its final year in office. So, I think Taiwan is what to focus on and if you have been to Taiwan, I really like Taiwan because Taiwan shows that the Chinese can do democracy. Well, and they do market economy really well. The question is, can they do defense really well and at this point the answer is probably not. And so there is a I think a real probability that there is some kind of Taiwan Strait crisis in the coming 12 months and on that will hinge I think the future of this. This Cold War that we've been discussing, there's other stuff one could talk about. Labour government in Britain, but that's all chump change by comparison with that. Olly Wiseman Niall Ferguson, thanks so much. 

 Niall Ferguso Thank you very much indeed.

Jefferson Davis Was Not Tried for Treason: America still suffers from that decision

 

The following is the beginning of a long article in the New Yorker magazine on December 4, 2023.  If you want to read more, send me an email at ngussman@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy.  

What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President After the Civil War, 

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. 

Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump? 

By Jill Lepore December 4, 2023

Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. 

A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” Davis knew the courthouse well. Richmond had been the capital of the Confederacy and the courthouse its headquarters. 

The rebel President and his cabinet had used the courtroom as a war room, covering its walls with maps. He’d used the judge’s chambers as his Presidential office. He’d last left that room on the night of April 2, 1865, while Richmond fell. Two years later, when Davis doddered into that courtroom, many of the faces he saw were Black. Among the two hundred spectators, a quarter were Black freedmen. And then the grand jury filed in. 

Six of its eighteen members were Black, the first Black men to serve on a federal grand jury. Fields Cook, born a slave, was a Baptist minister. John Oliver, born free, had spent much of his life in Boston. George Lewis Seaton’s mother, Lucinda, had been enslaved at Mount Vernon. Cornelius Liggan Harris, a Black shoemaker, later recalled how, when he took his seat with the grand jury and eyed the defendant, “he looked on me and smiled.” 

Not many minutes later, Davis walked out a free man, released on bail. And not too many months after that the federal government’s case against him fell apart. There’s no real consensus about why. The explanation that Davis’s lawyer Charles O’Conor liked best had to do with Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, known as the disqualification clause, which bars from federal office anyone who has ever taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” O’Conor argued that Section 3’s ban on holding office was a form of punishment and that to try Davis for treason would therefore amount to double jeopardy. It’s a different kind of jeopardy lately. 

In the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, legal scholars, including leading conservatives, have argued that the clause disqualifies Donald Trump from running for President. Challenges calling for Trump’s name to be blocked from ballots have been filed in twenty-eight states. Eleven cases have been dismissed by courts or voluntarily withdrawn. The Supreme Court might have the final say. The American Presidency is draped in a red-white-and-blue cloak of impunity. Trump is the first President to have been impeached twice and the first ex-President to have been criminally indicted. 

If he’s convicted and sentenced and—unlikeliest of all—goes to prison, he will be the first in those dishonors, too. He faces four criminal trials, for a total of ninety-one felony charges. Thirty-four of those charges concern the alleged Stormy Daniels coverup, forty address Trump’s handling of classified documents containing national-defense information, and the remainder, divided between a federal case in Washington, D.C., and a state case in Georgia, relate to his efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, including by inciting an armed insurrection to halt the certification of the Electoral College vote by a joint session of Congress. 

His very infamy is unprecedented. The insurrection at the Capitol cost seven lives. The Civil War cost seven hundred thousand. And yet Jefferson Davis was never held responsible for any of those deaths. His failed conviction leaves no trail. Still, it had consequences. If Davis had been tried and convicted, the cloak of Presidential impunity would be flimsier. Leniency for Davis also bolstered the cause of white supremacy. First elected to the Senate, from Mississippi, in 1848, Davis believed in slavery, states’ rights, and secession, three ideas in one. Every state had a right to secede, Davis insisted in his farewell address to the Senate, in 1861, and Mississippi had every reason to because “the theory that all men are created free and equal” had been “made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions,” meaning slavery. Weeks later, Davis became the President of the Confederacy. 

His Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, said that the cornerstone of the new government “rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” Trump could win his Lost Cause, too. Davis fled Richmond seven days before Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis,” Abraham Lincoln reportedly told General William Tecumseh Sherman, “but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.” After Lincoln was shot and killed, on April 15th, his successor, Andrew Johnson, issued a proclamation charging that Lincoln’s assassination had been “incited, concerted, and procured by” Davis and offering a reward of a hundred thousand dollars for his arrest.