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<\/p>\nRussia and fake news, how current gas prices reflect actions untaken and short-term memories, Paul Krugman on Putin vs. the open society, and where Republicans might go with Ukraine conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
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NYT, Frank Bruni, 10 March 2022: Russia, Where All the News Is Fake<\/a>, subtitled, “The country has become a dystopian paragon of corrupted information.”<\/p>\n We are only as good as the information we get. Only as grounded, as enlightened, as capable of forming rational opinions about our political leaders and making intelligent decisions about our lives. If we\u2019re fed lies, we\u2019re lost. If we subsist on fiction, we dwell in a fantasyland.<\/p>\n Russia right now is to some degree a fantasyland. It\u2019s a place where the government-promoted narrative about what\u2019s happening in Ukraine is ruthlessly edited, audaciously manipulated and almost diametrically opposed to the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course some people *prefer* to live in a fantasyland.<\/p>\n It\u2019s astonishing how far people can travel from the truth. Then again, it\u2019s not. We have watched it happen here in the United States, among many of our fellow Americans, in regard not to Russia and Ukraine but to the 2020 election, to the safety and efficacy of vaccines, to so much else.<\/p>\n Instead of benefiting fully from a free flow of ideas and data and genuine insights, too many of us volitionally make do with an unrepresentative trickle. If the result isn\u2019t an alternate reality nearly as comical and tragical as Russia\u2019s right now, it\u2019s a distortion nonetheless, and a dangerous one to boot. We are only as good as the information we seek.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Slate, Henry Grabar, 9 March 2022: Are Gas Prices Too High? Or Is Your Car Too Big?<\/a>, subtitled, “When it comes to oil shocks, we have the memory of goldfish.”<\/p>\n This is another example of my thesis that most people have short attention spans, and are concerned about the future only the very near-term, in a way that imperils humanity’s ability to solve long-term problems.<\/p>\n Gas prices hit an all-time high this week<\/a>, according to AAA, and many Americans seem to be in disbelief.<\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t been that long<\/em>. The last time we had a run of high gas prices was from 2011 to 2014. True, prices then maxed out at just under $4 a gallon. But adjusted against wages or inflation, prices felt even higher then<\/a>. It was a major<\/a> issue<\/a> in the 2012 presidential campaign. We adapted\u2014by fracking the hell out of the Great Plains and becoming the world\u2019s top oil producer<\/a>\u2014and the issue was basically forgotten.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The article reviews the things we *might* have done, and why we didn’t. (Let it be someone else’s problem.)<\/p>\n Of course, Americans did not <\/em>wind up driving smaller cars<\/a>, taking more public transit<\/a>, living in smaller homes<\/a>, or inhabiting more walkable places<\/a>. In fact, we did exactly the opposite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n There are too many cogent and insightful comments about the war and about Putin for me to take into account, but I do always admire Paul Krugman’s takes.<\/p>\n NYT, Paul Krugman, 10 March 2022: America\u2019s Right Has a Putin Problem<\/a><\/p>\n Just a few weeks ago many influential figures on the U.S. right loved, just loved Vladimir Putin. In fact, some of them still can\u2019t quit him. For example, Tucker Carlson, while he has grudgingly backed off from full-on Putin support, is still blaming America<\/a> for the war and promoting Russian disinformation about U.S.-funded bioweapons labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the most part, however, America\u2019s Putin lovers are having a moment of truth. It\u2019s not so much that Putin stands revealed as a tyrant willing to kill large numbers of innocent people \u2014 they knew or should have known that already. The problem is that the strongman they admired \u2014 whom Donald Trump praised<\/a> as \u201csavvy\u201d and a \u201cgenius\u201d just before he invaded Ukraine \u2014 is turning out to be remarkably weak. And that\u2019s not an accident. Russia is facing disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why would some Americans admire Putin?<\/p>\n [M]any on the right simply like the idea of authoritarian rule. Just a few days ago Trump, who has dialed back his praise for Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong-un<\/a>. Kim\u2019s generals and aides, he noted, \u201ccowered\u201d when the dictator spoke, adding that \u201cI want my people to act like that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Concluding, with key point:<\/p>\n The point is that the case for an open society \u2014 a society that allows dissent and criticism \u2014 goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. That is, while you might imagine that there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he\u2019s wrong or urge him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.<\/p>\n Which brings me back to America\u2019s erstwhile Putin admirers. I\u2019d like to think that they\u2019ll take Russia\u2019s Ukraine debacle as an object lesson and rethink their own hostility to democracy. OK, I don\u2019t really expect that to happen. But we can always hope.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n