Underground Man

From an article in a recent issue of The New Yorker:

…[S]omehow, Stalin gets a pass[...]During recent American elections, TV and other commentators sometimes quoted Stalin’s remark “It’s not the people who vote that count—it’s the people who count the votes.” As a comparison, is it possible to imagine any commentator under any circumstances quoting a witty remark of Hitler’s?

In a later article in the same issue, as if to confirm the point:

There was a fine difference between Stalin and Satan, and Churchill grasped it. In Antony Beevor’s history of the Battle of Stalingrad, the brutality and waste of the Stalinist regime—prisoners left to die in the snow, political commissars ordering the execution of innocents, the dead of the great purges haunting the whole—is sickening. But the murderousness of the Nazi invaders—children killed en masse and buried in common graves—is satanic. It is the tragedy of modern existence that we have to make such distinctions. Yet that does not mean that such distinctions cannot be made…

That first is from an article inspired by a visit to a Siberian labor camp, and the second a long piece about various attempts to biograph Winston Churchill. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that Stalin killed many more people than Hitler. He was able to do it partly because this willingness to “distinguish” Stalin from Satan gave him more time.

The author of the first article suggests that

Perhaps the world has even bought the P.R. [Stalin] engineered about himself, with the photographs in which he holds smiling children on his knee (children whose parents he later killed)—those happy photographs of him with a twinkle in his eye. That ogre’s twinkle seems to have achieved its purpose.

And so it seems. I have mixed feelings about the mystification of Hitler, but I am sure it doesn’t make sense for our culture to “distinguish” him from Stalin. If Nazi kitsch is completely taboo in our society, then so should be Soviet kitsch—I’m talking to you college kids who walk around with shirts bearing “CCCP” and the hammer and sickle. Imagine if I sold a tee shirt that said “My grandfather was at Dachau and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt!”

(The cheap shot at American liberals here is obvious: their decades of fascination with the revolution in Russia contributed to this state of affairs, while countless—and still uncounted—Hungarians, Poles, Latvians, Russians, et cetera, were being dragged out of their homes and shot in distant wastelands.)

I’m sitting in a Starbucks on a typical piece of suburban sprawl outside of Binghamton, New York.

As a business it’s no different from the other islands of banality with which it shares a sea of free parking. And the window offers a rainy view of powerlines and cars on the parkway. But, the wifi’s free, the interior is a hell of a lot more tasteful than Applebee’s, or my apartment for that matter, the staff seems friendly enough, and—here’s what seals it—everything in downtown Binghamton is closed this morning. I’m glad this place exists.

Addendum: I temper these remarks thus: Within a quarter-mile of my Cobble Hill apartment there are at least three Starbucks locations. That strikes me as too many. In highway locations where the customer base is far-flung (because they’re all driving), the brand is an important signal, as in my story above. A dense residential neighborhood like Cobble Hill, with a higher proportion of local regular patrons, would I think be able to support more diversity because instead of having the brand signal quality, there’s reputation among the locals, and you can also stick your head in the window and see if the place is popular/filled with people whose company interests you (can’t do this from the highway). I wonder why the coffee business was dominated by single proprietorships in Park Slope, while here Starbucks has a very large market share.

The Machinery of Freedom

Hey it’s free to read online, what’ve you got to lose? As the author explains, the book has two parts. The first half deals with his suggestions for improvements to the current system; the second half (which I’ve just started) deals more with practical aspects of a stateless society.

Part 1 feels like a loosely-connected series of short essays, which isn’t a problem. There’s some cool stuff, like his suggestion to solve mass transit problems. He proposes the jitney system, which is essentially formalized hitchhiking. If you drive to work and want to make a few bucks, you sign up with the company, as do the folks who need rides. They wait at designated areas along streets, get picked up by participating cars, and pay the drivers, perhaps through a Jitney debit card.

Part 2 has been OK so far. He goes through some private court scenarios, constantly (and appropriately) noting that whatever imperfections a private system might have are often far smaller than those of our current system. Two private courts might contract to deal with a third appeals court, which might in turn deal with other appeals courts and so on. Any of these courts may well be corrupt, but there’s good reason to expect less long-term corruption in a private system than in a public one. Still, I’m not sure how effective Part 2 is at changing minds. If you really, really think we need taxation to protect us from foreign threats, I doubt Friedman will convince you otherwise.

Overall it’s worth a read. Jim, you’ve read this thing, what’s your take on it?

My Thoughts:

1. Diving. It’s as bad as ever. Watch for this: A player is dribbling with pressure from one defender. He has one poor touch, and a second defender is closing in for the easy steal. Boom, the dribbler goes down, fetal position, grabbing his ankle. The thing is, he almost always gets the call. As long as the refs respond to this nonsense, the players will keep doing it. But to keep things in perspective, once you get past the visual spectacle of the guy writhing on the ground faking an injury, this aspect of soccer is no worse than in NBA basketball. Whenever Kobe or Pierce take a challenged shot near the basket, for example, they scream out/flail their arms. That’s generally all they have to do to get the call. It’s less pathetic, visually, than soccer diving, but has a comparable impact on the game. I’d prefer the refs call the games differently, but it won’t be the reason I choose to watch or not. There’s been one ref, the bald guy, who has occasionally made the international sign for “Get the fuck up” to some blatant fakers. Kudos to him.
2. The clock. Other sportswriters have covered this, but it’s worth repeating. Let’s get an official clock, that can be stopped at the ref’s discretion to prevent the inevitable stalling that teams employ when leading late. Added time clearly doesn’t work; teams are still stalling even though the refs tack on a few minutes.
3. 3.Tactics.Why do they kick it long so often on goal kicks/other low-pressure situations? For most 50+ yard aerial passes, a player from each team positions himself where the ball will land. They both jump, one of them gets his head on the ball, attempting to deflect it to a nearby teammate. I’d be amazed if the team that kicked the initial long ball retained anywhere near 50% of these. So why do teams do this? Do they have so little confidence in their ability to advance the ball and create a scoring chance through short passes, runs and such? Sure, when you can loft a ball over the defense into space for a speedy striker on the run (like Ghana’s second goal vs the U.S.), go for it. But most long balls are nothing like that. The U.S. was far too quick to launch these passes in their elimination match, which usually resulted in a loss of possession. Have coaches analyzed problems like these statistically, and concluded that field position matter that much more than ball possesion, or are they just guessing/doing what previous coaches have done, as has so often been the case in other sports? I’d guess the latter. It could also be risk aversion: Ghana’s first goal came off an inexcusable turnover by a U.S. defender, so from then on they overcompensate by booting it long at the slightest hint of pressure. It’s bad soccer, and I’d like to see less of it as the weaker teams are knocked off. My cursory Google search for statistics-based soccer analysis came up empty; it looks like there are sites trying to sell their models to teams, but there’s definitely far less material out there than exists for American sports.

A piece in The Village Voice of June 23-29, the “Queer Issue,” reports that the Obama Department of Justice compared gay marriage to incest in a legal brief. The writer takes offense at this. My question: what does he have against incest? Might he be an incestuophobe?

Headline and leader from the homepage of today’s Times’ web edition:

High & Low Finance Supreme Court Rolls Back a Law Born of Enron By FLOYD NORRIS

The court gave a victory to the mastermind of the Enron fraud and may throw out a reform law inspired by it.

As usual, I did not read the article. Remember, this a front-page headline, not an editorial or an op-ed.

I’m tired of this bullshit for today.

Licensed and Illegal Vans Battle It Out in New York — New York Times