The US President: An Elected Monarch

The American President has the following powers (some with the "advice and consent" of Congress):

a) Propose legislation
b) Pardon felons
c) Issue edicts ("executive orders")
d) Conduct foreign policy and make Treaties with foreign powers
e) Veto or adopt legislation passed by either or both Houses of Congress
f) Appoint Officers of the State
g) Act as Commander in Chief of the armed forces

This makes the American President an eighteenth century King in all but name.

When the Founders of the United States composed the Constitution, they had a problem: How were the Powers of the State to be exercised, and by whom? The models of governance that they knew all had Rulers. A Ruler is both Head of State and Head of Government. Since the Founders knew that Rulers tended to morph into Tyrants, they saw their problem as that of limiting the power of the Ruler. And since the popular assemblies tended to replace law with current popular prejudice, they had to limit the power of Congress. And since Judges could make arbitrary rulings, they had to limit the powers of the Court. Hence the "three-legged stool", in which  Congress (which represented the People), the Supreme Court (which represented the Law), and the President (who represented the State) were set up to limit each other's powers.

So far, it's worked quite well. But as Mr Trump's Presidency shows, there was a weakness: The Constitution combines the roles of Head of Government and Head of State. This gives a rogue President the ability to ignore the checks on his power, especially when a political party sees him as an agent or instrument of their special agenda. No Ruler has ever been willing to be a mere instrument of some constituency, although they have been more than willing to use that constituency to acquire and consolidate power..

The irony is that while the Founders erected a Republic with an elected monarch, the hereditary monarch of the United Kingdom had already lost almost all the powers of a King. The  Declaration of Independence refers to the tyranny of the King, but it was Parliament that denied the Colonies their rights. It was Parliament, controlled by landowners and merchants, that saw the Colonies as both a source of raw materials and a market for their surplus goods. That  these factions were developing a party-controlled Parliament could also have served the Founders as warning. The Constitution makes no mention of political parties, and hence contains no mechanisms for controlling them.

The final accountability in America rests with the People, who every four years must elect their President, legislators, and other officers of government. In the long run, the People will choose freedom and responsibility, but in the short run they will often choose oppression and  licence.

Terry Fox (Repost)

Some time ago, sitting in the waiting room at the Health Center waiting for blood to be sucked from my arm for a PSA test, I saw Terry Fox's picture on the cover of an old Maclean's Magazine.

I remembered the time I saw Terry run.

I was on the way to the Sudbury airport to catch a flight to Toronto in order to attend a meeting that at the time seemed important, but whose purpose I have long since forgotten. The bypass had not yet been built, so I was driving through a light rain along the old two-lane road. Near Lively, the traffic slowed down. I saw flashing police lights ahead and thought, O damn, an accident, that'll make me miss my flight. And braked to a stop.

Then I noticed that the police car was approaching me, its red and blue lights reflected in the water lying on the pavement. Behind it I saw Terry Fox. I knew immediately who he was, even though his van was some 50 yards behind him. He shifted his weight onto his good leg, made a skipping hop, threw his prosthesis in front of him, and used it as a pivot to bring his good leg over to the front again. His good leg hit the pavement, and he raised himself again in that skipping motion to lift the prosthesis off the ground and bring it to the front again.

Step, skip, swing. Step, skip, swing. Step, skip, swing. He came towards me, step skip swing, step, skip, swing, step, skip, swing. I began to imagine how many times he must have done that since he'd left the East Coast. Thousands of times, tens of thousands of times. And wondered how his leg stump could stand the pounding. How the heel of his good foot could tolerate the repeated thump into the asphalt. How his back could take that twist and lift needed for each step.

My line of traffic began to move again, and I briefly saw Terry's face as he step-skipped past me. A couple weeks or so later we heard that he had to stop near Thunder Bay because the cancer had come back. I thought, He knew it even then, in Sudbury That was not just physical pain that marked his face, it was fear that he might not finish his run. I knew then that I had seen courage in his face.

Before I saw Terry, I'd dismissed his run as mere publicity hunting. Then I saw him. I saw that Terry knew he wouldn't make his mark as the rest of us have done, in our work, in our families, in our communities. He would never succeed at any career. He would never be proud of his children. He would not earn the respect of neighbours and friends. Because he wouldn't live long enough.

He could have waited for death, he could have worked with the doctors to delay it for as long as possible. No one would have faulted him for doing that. But he felt the need to do something worthwhile. What could he do? He had no skills, no special talents, no training or education. He had only his body and his determination. So he did the only thing he could do.

He used his body, he used himself, to draw attention, to enlist the rest of us in the struggle to understand the disease that was killing him, and would kill many others, and continues to kill.

Terry used himself up in doing this. He died doing this.

Every time we drive west through Thunder Bay, we stop at the monument beside the highway, and I remember. We stopped there again a few years ago. I sat and looked up at his face, a face that I remembered from a brief glimpse in the rain, and I noticed that people spoke softly as they read the inscription and gazed at the statue of Terry Fox.

What if you were the only one capable of lying?

 The Invention of Lying (2009) [D: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson. Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill) In Mark’s world, no one lies. Everyone tells the truth, and nothing but the truth (but not, thank the man in the sky, always the whole truth). A pretty dreary and morose place. Then Mark discovers he can “say what is not.” He uses his newfound skill to first make loadsadough and then to comfort his dying mother with a tale about “the man in the sky”. That story gets away from him. He woos Anna McDoogles, who wants a genetic match so that she can have nice skinny blond kids. True love wins in the end. The script includes a number of well-considered satiric jabs at the credulity of humankind, but sadly the full potential of the core idea is not, I think, developed. This is one of those rare stories that would work better in print than it does on screen.
     A competent job by all concerned, good for an hour and a half or so of mildly amusing entertainment. **½

Another Dickson anthology: Ancient, My Enemy

Gordon R. Dickson. Ancient, My Enemy (1974) Another selection by Dickson. The title story tells of conflict between an intelligent alien species and the human colonisers. The planet suffers terrible day to night temperature changes, the aliens are cannibals (because there’s very little plant life), and have a culture of individual violence. This does not end well.
    The other tales are mostly ones I’ve read either in their original magazine publication or in later anthologies. Rereading them was a treat. This collection is essential for a Dickson fan, and a good intro for anyone else. Dickson’s aliens are better imagined than most, although (like any SF writer) he creates then by pushing some human traits to extremes. He’s less reliable as a builder of planets. Their climates and ecosystems are always some part of Earth’s climate and ecology spread over a whole globe, which doesn’t make sense. Nevertheless, his stories are satisfying. *** to ****
This will be last Dickson review for a while.

Covid-19 will become endemic (Updated 2021-08-21)

Update 2021-08-21: The Delta variant has now become the dominant strain, but apparently does no more damage than earlier variants. It is at least a hundred times more infectious than earlier variants. Since even in vaccinated people it takes time for the immune system to react, so-called "break-through" infection in vaccinated people are fairly common. But unvaccinated people are about seven times more likely to be hospitalised, and to die.

Evolutionary theory predicts this: Any mutation that improves the odds of infecting a host will eventually dominate. The same theory predicts that more variants will arise, but if they are less infectious than Delta, they will not spread. The most worrisome possibility is that Delta could morph to be more  damaging.

Since none of the vaccines prevent infection 100% of the time,  the virus (SARS-COV-19) will continue to infect people, and mutated strains will continue to arise. Sooner or later, there will be a strain that the immune response to vaccines will not be able to fight efficiently, which means that the infected people will be shedding virus longer, which will hasten the spread of that strain. There is of course the likelihood that the immune response will also change, but that change will be slow, and so such new strains will at first infect a lot of people.

So we will have a virus that  mutates regularly, and epidemics will come and go. Covid-19 will become an endemic disease like the flu. Both will cause epidemics at fairly regular intervals. The evidence so far indicates that the covid epidemics will be worse.

NB: I have corrected an omission in the discussion of false test results below. The actual effect of a test error rate depends on whether it's the same or different for positive and negative results.

Update 2021-01-25: There are two worrisome new variants of the virus. One identified in the UK, the other in South Africa. Both are more infectious, and both may be more lethal, but the vaccines apparently work as well as with the original variants. The vaccination programs have hit predictable snags in production and logistics, causing a great deal of pointless finger-pointing.

 Today WHO announced that covid-19 "may" become endemic.

Huh?????

No "may" about it. It will become endemic. The reason? Several, actually.

a) The wide range of responses to exposure to the virus, which vary from zero symptoms to serious and lethal illness to serious and lethal complications, to long-lasting after-effects. People with zero to mild symptoms are infectious.

b) Mutation. Current research on the mutated strains suggests that the virus will mutate continually, which means that by the time a vaccine or drug is developed, it may not work. Mutation also implies that vaccines and drugs would have to be updated at intervals, and that some future strains may be even more lethal than the current ones.

c) Variable immunity to the virus, which means re-infection and recurrence of the illness is certain. In fact, it's already happening. Also, the presence of antibodies does not guarantee immunity.

d) Variable incubation stage. It ranges from about 5 days to about 14 days after exposure. Also, repeated exposure seems to be a factor.

e) Variable asymptomatic but infectious stage, which follows incubation. Current data suggest two to four days.

f) Error rate of antibody test. It's about 90% accurate. Suppose an actual infection rate of 5%, then the false positive rate will close to 70%. (See the Wiki article on the base rate fallacy and the Footnote below.) This means that the anti-body test will generate a false sense of security.

These factors add up to guaranteed infections in future. The only unknowns are the future rates of infection, what factors affect those rates, and how lethal future infections will be. Experience with the flu shows that every now and then a more lethal strain will emerge. Current data suggest that covid-19 will be somewhere between twice and five times as lethal as the flu.

We will have to learn to live with it. It's likely that covid-19 will always be worse than the flu.

Footnote: Why a 90% positive accuracy isn't very good.
Suppose a 5% infection rate. Suppose a test with 90% accuracy for both positives and negatives. Then, in a population of 100,00, we will have:

Actual positives: 5,000
Detected actual positives: 4,500
Actual negatives: 95,000
Negatives detected as false positives: 9,500
Total positives detected: 9,500 + 4,500 = 14,000
Percentage of false positives: (9,500/14,000) x 100 = 67.8%

So if you get a positive test, it's more than twice as likely that you're negative than you're positive.

Two more by Dickson

Gordon R. Dickson. Beginnings (1988) Another Dickson selection. Reprints several much-anthologised stories, eg, “Danger – Human!” and  “Idiot Solvant”. Includes “Soldier, Ask Not”, one of the early Dorsai tales, and still one of the best meditations on the role of the soldier. Worth picking up if you find a copy. I found this one on a remainder rack, paid $4.95, worth the price. *** to ****

Gordon R. Dickson. Wolfling. (1969) Jim Keil is inserted into the decadent Empire’s heart by means of a bullfight staged to entertain the High-born visiting Alpha Centauri 4. He advances step by step into the Emperor’s favour, and prevents an assassination attempt by the Emperor’s cousin. He must defend himself against the would-be assassin, and wins (of course). Returned to Earth, he stands trial for treason, because the authorities fear his actions will draw the wrath of the Empire. He survives that final ordeal, too (of course). And he gets the girl (of course).

    One of Dickson’s early attempts at painting Earth and Earthlings as exceptional. He succeeds, not only because he develops plausible implications of his premises, but because of his above average ability to create characters that drive the story. True, the characters here are stereotypes, but in their context they seem to be more. Creating that illusion well enough that we accept it while the story unfolds is all that’s required, and Dickson delivers.
    Oh yeah, “wolfling” is the High-borns’ name for him, since he comes from an uncivilised world. ***

Strange talents, useful quirks: Dickson's Mutants

Gordon Dickson. Mutants (1970) A collection chosen by Dickson himself. It includes the classic “Warrior”, reprinted by Dickson in at least one other collection, and  anthologised several times elsewhere. Dorsai Commandant Ian Graeme comes to New York to seek justice for 32 men under his command who were led into unacceptable danger by their officer. The story draws a distinction between the merely military man and the man of war, or warrior.
     Another classic, “Danger – Human!”, explains both why humans have managed at least three times to build Galaxy-dominating empires, yet have failed to make them last.  Some aliens kidnap Timothy Parker,  a man from Vermont, alter his physiology and psychology to prevent death and madness, and keep him in a triply-secured cage to find out what makes humans tick. He gets out, steals a spaceship, and heads for home, where its technology will no doubt be used for a fourth excursion into interstellar space and the building of a rapacious empire.
     Dickson writes thematic stories, fables or parables really. But he has a knack for meshing character and plot so well that the didactic purposes rarely interfere with the believability of his tales. He sets his stories in several different futures, carefully imagined and plausible. He writes well, exemplifying Strunk and White’s advice to avoid adjectives and the passive voice. I’ve never been disappointed in one of his stories. Recommended. *** to ****