We understand there are no holidays until tomorrow, though that requires a cross check from secular to national issues. We will devote today to adjustments from Game Day antics and attempt look prepared for tomorrow’s romance. We took a minor poll and discussed whether the findings in the aftermath were worth comment.

The Super Bowl occupied a messaging point of unity amid conflicting streams of info yesterday. The new Republican House is attempting to stir up some issue traction with the hearings scheduled on all sorts of things. One is happening already, an inquiry into a matter termed the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

That has been a frequent topic at the Writer’s Section at Socotra House. We attempt to apply the rules of the old Information Warfare community to what we hear. That would include all sorts of honest and earnest disclaimers, but you understand we view the news as something unique unto itself and not directly related to matters of fact. It has been spectacular in terms of volume and content.

The recent UFO Craze has an objective heritage in 1950’s modern history. The solution was to impede reporting on unidentified objects in space. Politics have intruded into what had been a relatively stabile topic. It could be simple. There is some sort of activity now being reported that were not. Some of them seem to be related to direct reconnaissance by the Chinese government. Others may not be. The fact that they are now requiring response is an interesting change against a blank historical string.

We don’t find it as alarming as it is interesting. But there are new narratives being crafted and disseminated about it, including talk about the old labels of Unidentified Objects. The Super Bowl added energy displayed in flamboyant fashion, but it was oddly muffled by dancers swaddled in costumes of indeterminate bulky gender. It was a display of a new sort of normalcy as word spread from Europe about an ongoing land conflict, and whether the Spring offensive has begun.

That is just one of the information streams in which we are immersed. It includes rattling of old nuclear sabers. The aftermath of the Cold War settled into a global but low-key conflict sufficient to distract us from other profound stories about how Ukraine came to be a matter of kinetic struggle. The expansion of NATO as a continent-spanning military alliance is part of it. A reality has been the de facto payment of the overhead of that organization has been American all along makes this reaction to Mr. Putin’s attempt to impose Russian control on a part of the old Soviet system prior to his own exchange of power may be the end of something, even as China rises.

That emergence is now predicted for that to be a war only a few years distant. From their perspective, a demographic challenge is emerging. The impact of the “One Child” policy- declining population- and the “Belt and Road” initiative to span the globe with a Chinese supply chain implies some disparate tension. Our policy makers do not seem inclined to share their course of action about what will be done.

That is part of the immersion of invisibility rendered by the new emergency government under which we live. The notion of “law” itself was bundled up into packages of legislation so vast that they have lost immediacy and become layers in a complex system. The mandate for auto shut-off cars is just one in the thicket. It is so complex that only those inside it can understand what special provisions have been carved out for those who understand them. This morning a reference to the last attempt to impose order on the burgeoning bureaucracy.

The names have been forgotten now, replaced by other voices. But a fellow named Jack Kemp rode this poney for a while in the early 80s. The concept was new back then, but reflected an effort to at least define what was perceived as a growing problem in the number of programs conferring entitlement. A distinguished panel including the legendary Milton Friedman made an attempt at conducting the analysis. They reported the number of programs solving identical problems with parallel solutions and hit 800 programs with significant redundancy. There was a suggestion for periodic review that went precisely no where.

An old school analogy for distributing funds is the Department of Agriculture. The Biofuels lobby is an example of eternal funding with mixed results. Now such programs are buried in years of Continuing Resolutions, or Infrastructure Bills so vast they are now passed without being read by the members voting on them. It shouldn’t be surprising it has turned out this way. The question is when it will cease to be functional.

There are Gatekeepers, since the complexity is by intent. Some of them are part of the new technical means of information sharing. Others are participants in the revolving door of Government and Commerce of which we have some experience. It is a world in which success can be partly assured with effective networks of internal and external power centers. It is profound and requires immersion to determine what layer of law is applicable under the interpretation of those who apply it.

In the backdrop is the commercial/public parallel in Lawfare, practiced by attorneys on both sides who use the process of litigation to bankrupt those involved in the contentious issue areas.

Describing the process enables us to stay with following the information streams to decrypt the basis of policies which appear to be government supported. It is less emotional that way. But it appears we have instituted a system that is intended to benefit primarily a political class operating inside a fortress of regulation and subsidy impervious to casual understanding. And where all the money is going.

It looks like a system similar to that of the 2008 Great Recession. Bank failures then were a result of erroneous Federal mandates regarding loan standards. That did not end well.

It failed, naturally, since it was not based on objective worthiness of real estate, but a natural human right to sign off on multiple loans with no intent of repayment. It resembles the discussion on increasing public debt ceilings, which has simply elevated the untrustworthy class of borrowers to be the Government itself. It is bigger. Much bigger. So are the opportunities George Washington Plunkett would have taken at Tammany Hall.

We imagine this is not dissimilar to other basic generational changes that have left dramatic social marks, but this one has the potential to create entirely new vistas of unlikely new bearing, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com