Big strange year, isn’t it? I almost died near the beginning of it, then struggled with recovery amid the rational planning and lunacy of the pandemic response. All of it with politics in the background, slowly swelling to a continuous level of hysteria that is fun to follow. My fellow veterans already have a taste for it, the intricate planning required for big deals in times of high stress.

We called it Operational Planning, a process that generates Oplans as a means of preparedness. Take a case like a North Korean contingency. Or the invasion of Europe by the old Soviet Union. There is a myriad of events contained in the swift response to either of those things, and more such events around the world that require plans. It is widely known that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” but planning is still necessary. We had the Oplans on the shelf as starting points, with alternate courses of action needed at the “what if” points of the plans. You have to start somewhere. War is a complex business. Based on the presumption that victory is better than defeat, you start with the Oplan.

This chaotic year has some shared elements with that, though much more complex. It has been a remarkable experience to watch it happen, and recognize there are smart people working both sides of all the issues. Drawing conclusions about what is going to happen next is hard work. I think it is sad that all public utterances need to start with disclosure, but that is the way things are. I am not a registered anything. I worked in government service for administrations of both strange parties and served them as honestly as I knew how.

In view of the current situation, I carry a mask in the car for use when I have to deal with other citizens, keep my distance as possible and avoid singing or shouting in public. In continuing events, there are several hanging out there. There was rescue cash for the Kennedy Center in the first legislation to combat the health emergency. I support the preservation of the arts as a matter of public interest, but am uncertain how it fits in emergency health response. Someone had it in their Oplan, I have no doubt.

There is more Congress would like to do. Many of us have been concerned for many years about the tenuous financial practices of some of our great states that benefitted public sector unions, among other things, and lavished attention on decent pensions for public servants. Who could oppose that? At least until the system can no longer afford them. Then, some alteration to the Oplan is required.

The President called up the morning happy program on the network he favors and outlined the states in big trouble. He did them in order, saying, “New York, California and Illinois.”

That is about the list as I would start it, though I would throw in some of the other states committed to the same course of fiscal folly. If there is to be a solution, the traditional way to do it is to have a public debate.

That has been simmering for years, not a new crisis at all. The question of what to do about it rarely seemed to come up. It is not a popular issue for many citizens who do not belong to the unions, and it seems they ought to be able to express their positions on higher tax rates and other inconveniences that would go along with paying for it. Instead, those questions are kicked down the road until they become crisis matters, and emergency measures are needed to fix them.

Yesterday, we ran a piece by Arrias, looking at the Federal budget. It provoked some reaction from pals who settled into progressive orientation years ago, and who maintain that the portion of the discretionary budget devoted to national defense should be stripped and allocated to public support projects.

It is more than a little like the cities slashing their police budgets in the face of growing civil disorder. Same justification, of course, in that injustice must be addressed. I certainly support the right of citizens to choose their path ahead, but this one strikes me as curious. The righteous cries against the militarization of police forces, based on the selling of “surplus” weapons of war to local jurisdictions did not begin with the current administration, of course, but we have settled into a national dialogue that proceeds best on an emergency basis.

Again, I sigh and post the disclaimer. Generally speaking, I oppose death and disease, and prefer our next generation be well prepared to take their place in an orderly and fair society. In my experience that requires peace. I am cautiously optimistic that the developments in the Middle East this week may spread from normalization of relations between Israel and the Emirates may spread across the region. If so, that would be a good thing. That does not appear to be a universal position, though. It is curious, isn’t it? Like the pallets of cash shipped to an entity I have personally confronted since the seizure of our embassy in Tehran a generation of crises ago.

I was chatting this morning with some pals while the President was calling in to the morning news program he seems to like. He seemed a little agitated on the call, as if he had recently been informed of things he is not permitted to discuss publicly. I don’t blame him, but a bit frustrated that we are left with trying to understand what is going on from public sources already subject to coordination by others.

Emergency is justification for many issues other issues of high interest. It is a hoot, really, the way society is functioning these days. At the beginning of this emergency, Socotra LLC wondered with innocence at the social norms that were facing real challenges. You may remember some of them. Grooming went early. Masks and masking another key issue, along with Gym and spa memberships. Downtown real estate and education. The last two survived via virtual connectivity. All of them were fairly easy, if mildly inconvenient, and seemed limited in impact to the public commitment to them for the length of the emergency. You know, ‘until things get back to normal.’

As we have lurched from issue to issue, that has spawned more profound and longer social implications. Set aside the strange conflation of rioting laid over legitimate First Amendment rights. Couple that with the dramatic lessening of in-person requirements in the fancy office spaces downtown and we see something completely normal. Those that can, flee. Will any business decide to return to their glass shrouded showcases?

Again, response is a normative one. There is evidence of flight from the cities. A pal in the Northeast said realtors are working seven days a week in places like Vermont and New Hampshire to accommodate refugees from Boston and New York. General contractors able to respond to work requests in newly purchased homes is booming. That is similar to our requirements down on the farm, looking for a decent plumber or electrician to fix some issues that have piled up over the years. Like install a generator and check the pump on the well. Just in case.

The impact to the cities will take a while to fully appreciate. In normal times, the reconstruction would begin once normal times return. Now, there may be no requirement to do so. I speak not from a talking point, but from observation of the process of slow dissolution of the once great city of my birth, Detroit. It can happen. I have seen it.

But that is a matter of years to culminate. What are the nearer term consequences?

Of course, the election is looming, and leaping the gap from normal to crisis. There is a lot at stake, of course, but it is all being played out in the face of the health emergency. One approach to deal with it safely is the adoption of mass mail-in voting, accompanied by new practices known as “ballot harvesting.” Or something.

We have never done such things on the national level before. There is significant uncertainty about what standards might be used, and who might issue them. Several states already have such practices in effect, and we are assured they are ready for the emergency. Since the power to determine compliance to law is reserved to the states, we will likely have an election landscape that is a jumble of old and new standards. Any good Oplan will have options for that, I am sure. The arguments are already talking points. “Maintaining the traditional voting at polls with registered voter requests allowed for absentee ballots.” That will be accused of a plan for suppression. Mass ballot harvesting will be accused of malpractice and fraud.

There are many more talking points, since the smart people have been hard at work on their respective plans. One side is accusing the President of shutting down the Postal Service, based mostly on a picture of mailboxes being loaded on a truck being part of a long-planned replacement process. Emphasizing that point, I heard this morning that funds to support the Post Office have been slashed to cripple the election. The other side says the USPS is fully funded in the current budget, and the first few trillions of emergency response allowed the Postmaster General to borrow up to ten billion dollars for supplemental funding, just in case.

This is going to be a close election either way, if the last one is any indication. In the best of cases, there will be a fairly decent case to challenge the legitimacy of the result either way. After all, the theme of opposition to this administration has been what some maintain is its inherent legitimacy.

I believe our electoral system is relatively fair and works relatively well. To throw more confusion and controversy into it now only weeks before voting day will be really cool. Imagine this: election day comes and goes. A preliminary result may be announced, based on tallies from states that voted the way they always have. There will be delays in other states. Like the June primary election in New York State, officials are still arguing nearly three months after. In a close election, even contested results in a Congressional district could have much larger implications.

The flow of events is well established, though would be controversial if there is no agreed winner. The ballot of the Electoral College on 20 December would naturally be controversial. What are the consequences for Inaugural Day?

Last month I predicted a train wreck of confusion, filled with joyous mirth and more emergency. It is easy to take a bi-partisan approach and attribute it to incompetence, but it is equally likely to be subject to cries of malpractice. There are smart people already figuring it out, and what they are going to do as each point arrives. We will have to sit by and see what is going to work, right?

It is like an Oplan. Nothing survives first contact, but it is really interesting to plan for the next one!

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com