Vic Socotra

23 July 2009

Statistically Yours

(Juggling Numbers- W. Kozak)

My pal the Admiral is going to be 90 years old next month. He is not going to make as big a deal out of it as you might think. He told me over a cocktail the other evening that he had set a goal of living to be 80, long ago, and having exceeded his goal by well over ten percent, everything after was all gravy and a little anti-climatic.

I demurred, since the whole idea of seeing (and participating) in the much history is frankly overwhelming to me. Listening to the daily minutia of life in- oh, say the Great Depression- told by someone who was there to feel the gritty reality is literally time travel.

That why it is funny that there is not more about what marked this lazy summer day nearly a century past. Ninety-five years ago the Astro-Hungarian Empire issued an ultimatum to Serbia after the assassination of dapper Archduke Francis Ferdinand by an Serb assassin; the dispute led to the slow ballet of interlocking alliances and mobilization that resulted in World War I.

The anger and bitterness of the conflict made inevitable the tragic second act of violent murder, and the death of all the great European Empires.

I think you would have to say there was the world then, and then it broke wide open like an awful egg, spewing out dictators and death in a spreading stain that has not stopped yet.

Along the way there were things like Dick Nixon and Nikita Krushchev, arguing in a kitchen display at the exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow. I remember that, and the angry Russian later pounding his shoe at the UN.

It was fifty years ago today that Dick got his sly blade into the burly Soviet leader. The US Congress, bless their eternally pointy little heads, had passed a thing called the “Captive Nation’s Resolution.” It was one of those gestures that pass for something important, but means nothing. It did really piss Nikita off.

See, the burly Russian had been the Commissar at the Stalingrad Front, which surely stands as one of the most appalling and intense experiences of a very intense century. The slick American appliances on display collided with his life experience of enormous sacrifice, and the arrogance of the Congress drove him just about around the bend.

Serge Schmemann was there, and he has a clever account of the legendary exchange in the Times this morning. He had to sanitize the words, which I do not. “This resolution stinks! It stinks like fresh horse-shit and nothing smells worse than that!”

Nixon was a master debater at Wittier College, and he paused, waiting for the translation and emphasis. He coolly retorted: “I am afraid that the Chairman is mistaken.” He knew Kruschev had worked in a hog concern earlier in his career. “Pig shit smells fouler.”

Kruschev had to concede the point, and changed the subject.

Anyway, we are reminded of the encounter because fifty years is a round number, and we do not recall the week that led to the deaths of a hundred million people. Or more. It is just numbers, after all, and there are plenty of them to chose from.

I imagine this will be a much bigger deal, five years hence. The centennial will be a much bigger deal, and since we are very nearly at the point when not one human who actually remembers will remain, we will be able to make of it what we will.

That is the thing about numbers; seemingly accurate and precise, they are thoroughly mutable.

I was talking to the Intern in the kitchen last night. I had turned on the press conference with the President to see what the latest development on the restructuring of American society.

Numbers are funny, and the President started off with some cool ones. He said that sixty percent of the tab for health care coverage is going to be covered in “efficiencies” that he is going to find in existing programs, notably Medicaid and Medicare, and that they can scrape up the remaining third on some surcharges on the wealthy.

I like “surcharge.” That is a lot different than “taxes,” and I liked his definition of the wealthy for a change, which in this version of the numbers starts at a number than is expressed as a word: “Millionaire.”

That pushes the burden off me and onto someone else, so I completely relaxed. Everything is going to be fine now. In fact, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The President said that everything was going to double in ten years anyway, and this was really necessary to head off real trouble.

I was puzzled by that, since there are a lot of numbers. For example, 60% of personal bankruptcies are health related; overhead represents 30% of health care costs; 33% of American are obese, or 50% more of us than the British, 100% of Germans, and 250% more than the French; of the 47 million uninsured Americans, fully half are college students or people wealthy enough to not participate in health care plans by choice; nearly a third are people who are already eligible for Medicaid but who cannot be bothered to sign up; and ten million are undocumented guest workers.

That would leave between six and ten million people for whom this is a big deal, which is significant, but much different than the crisis. Of course, I can’t do the math any better than the President or the Congress.

The Intern is young and healthy, and was a bit puzzled by the all the statistics flying around. She asked me if I understood it, and I said not to worry. It is all just numbers, and you can do whatever you want with them.

“Think of a trillion of anything,” I said. She paused, wrinkling her brow. The number, suitably vast, is beyond human comprehension, though it is dwarfed by other numbers now being chalked up. Did she think of Angels on pinheads? Deficits?

“See?" I said. "Just numbers.”

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