Book Review: Kara Cooney's "When Women Ruled the World"

{March is the official start to Women's History Month! Here is one of two pieces about women's lives both past and present to celebrate.}

I happened recently upon an intriguing book chronicling the (often short) reigns of six ancient Egyptian queens. Partly out of curiosity to learn about an ancient culture I hardly knew anything about outside of the dramatized stories surrounding Cleopatra taught in schools and outside of them, and drawn to the the title's promise to shed more light on historical figures almost completely left out of the record, I gave Egyptologist Kara Cooney's 2018 publication, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, a chance. And I was not disappointed.

There were only six women leaders or pharaohs on record in the tombs, temples, statuary, stone tablets and other artifacts left behind in ancient Egypt's roughly 4,000 years of existence: Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret, and Cleopatra. Upon the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt in 3100 BC by the first pharaoh and warlord King Narmer, the ancient Egyptian lands of Northern Africa were uniquely positioned to flourish as they were protected from the constant instability of other societies of the time--namely, invasion and drastic population shifts--by the Nile delta, perilous seas, and surrounding deserts. Moreover, the Nile's annual floods and fertile silt left behind, made Egypt into the Mediterranean breadbasket. All of these blessings bestowed by its natural geography and unique agricultural situation allowed its societal institutions and culture to remain largely unchanged over its long history, passing down a patriarchal and authoritarian system of centralized rule underneath an Egyptian god-king. How then did these six women find the space to rule in such a society, however briefly their reigns may have been?

Not unique among hereditary dynasties, Egypt sought to stave off crippling internal power struggles partly by utilizing a system of incestuous marriage, and partly with the unique Egyptian tradition of ritualized killings of the competition (mostly male members of the elite and royal family) in the event of the previous monarch's death and burial, to consolidate power in one line of continuous descent. This included the children of the monarch begotten by the many women in the royal harem and his wife, respectively. While brutal, realpolitik ritualized killings of the competition eventually tapered off after the stabilization of dynastic rule, there were situations in which there was no fit male ruler to continue the dynasty: he was too young, crippled, sterile, or died young as a consequence of incest. To stave off a succession crisis and make the smooth transition between dynasty, Egypt relied on its women, usually the widowed Royal Wife, to serve as a stop-gap or regent where the male heir was too young or wasn't there, counting on the assumption that women wouldn't act against their children's or larger familial interests by ruling pragmatically (why buck the system that gave you your power and station?). This usually meant violence of any kind was out and consensus in, and that the women inherited their station at the end of a dynasty and in times of crisis, whether they were the frequent incest-driven succession kind or the more rare cases of infighting, religious feuds, or climatological shifts. (Funny isn't it how women tend to come to power in more unequal societies and during times of crisis to clean up the mess left behind?)

Merneith was the first queen to witness the brutalities of court life--notwithstanding the ritualized killings claiming up to hundreds of victims at a time or the fact of her gender being largely regarded as mercurial, passive, and easy to control by the men in her life. Merneith would not be the first or last woman to largely be used in leadership positions in order to shore up their support of a patriarchal system that had elevated them to those same positions of power. She was the pioneer of the six, ruling as (unofficial) regent while her young son, King Den, matured, with those same ritualized killings helping to shore up her unofficial reign along with an emphasis on her status as descendant of a god-king or kings. Using the template Merneith set down of achieving power as the feminine protector of the god-king's realm, Neferusobek followed up by managing to rule for four years alone after the untimely death of her sterile husband. She would become the first female king, with Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret, and Cleopatra VII following using the time-honored strategy of propaganda and other positive PR emphasizing her god-king lineage and willingness to do anything in service of the realm (this PR included grafting on traditional masculine-aspects of power onto their female figures in stone reliefs carved in their image in a sort of ancient-world pant-suit).

However, these women couldn't rely solely on their religious and political status and had to also use their educated minds to get Egypt out of a tight spots. For example, Cleopatra made powerful Roman alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and other Mediterranean powers to shore up Egypt against imperial rule and Nefertiti made peace with ostracized and powerful priests in a diplomatic tight-rope act after her husband Akhenaten tried disastrously to forcibly convert Egyptians to a monotheistic sun cult religion away from their traditional polytheistic one in a bid for even more power. In other words, instead of the proverbial two-sided coin of power being both male and female (stereotypical brash and bold versus cautious leadership styles), this pharaoh was of the view that a man need not share influence at all and sought to redefine power as only legitimate when exercised by a male.

Often, the thanks these women got for coming to the rescue was backlash from the society that temporarily granted them power, evidenced by the removal or attempted obliteration of their names from the kingly lineages recorded on tablets, statuary, or tombs. If they remained in the historical record at all, they would be remembered as leadership failures or as overreaching by showing naked ambition for power, rather than cloaking it as merely assuming the mantle of leadership in protection of her dynasty (sounds familiar). Akhenaten's cult-episode and Nefertiti's perceived blatant power-grab foreshadowed a trend in following dynasties that mostly barred royal women from positions of power, opening up marriage to non-royal females (the power disparities much greater here) and allowing Game of Thrones-style infighting among elite families to worsen.

While I disagreed with Cooney's broad generalizations about female leadership biologically trending towards the cautious, consensual, and prudent rather than the bold or aggressive unilateral style of a man's (society's social constraints rather than biology seems to explain better why a woman takes a more cautious approach to power in a patriarchal society that would crucify her for expressing herself any other way than the "proper" protector-of-the-family or supportive-nurturer role), I agreed with her concluding appeal that society needs to utilize all styles of leadership (whether perceived to be more feminine or masculine) in order to prosper. This makes the equality of the sexes culturally, economically, politically, religiously and otherwise even more imperative if we can redefine and re-balance the idea of power itself. However, as When Women Ruled the World shows, as a species, humans, whether in monarchical or democratic systems of governance, are both so close and yet so far from that elusive goal of parity.


Works Cited:

Cooney, Kara. (2018). When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt. Washington, D. C.: National Geographic.

Book Review: Susan Orlean's "The Library Book"

What do you picture when you think of a the library? A mere repository of books? A place you can go to get your documents notarized? The place you can go to consult with a reference librarian, or a clerk on their latest book recommendations? A place to study and research? Perhaps, a place where you can access the Internet for free? A community meeting space with adult and children's programming, such as story times or book clubs? A sanctuary when you want to get away from it all? Libraries are all of these things and more nowadays where the Internet and Internet-based technologies constantly call into question their continued relevancy. New Yorker writer and author Susan Orlean offers a look at the evolution of libraries over time through the story of the Los Angeles Central Public Library, which was wracked by one of the worst library fires in American history in April of 1986.

Orlean's story is part true-crime thriller, historical treatise, and journalistic endeavor, whose prose overall reads like an ode to the beloved institution of the library and the people that make it feel alive, patrons and workers alike. While not perfect by any means, dealing with the social problems of the society that hosts it, such as homelessness, unemployment, and mental illness, libraries have become regarded nonetheless as valuable community spaces. The community of Los Angeles was no exception in regards to the Central Library. Central Library burned for nearly seven hours in April 1986, causing the loss of 400,000 books and damage to a good portion of the surviving inventory, either charred by flames, buffeted by smoke, or soaked through despite the best attempts by the firefighters to cover the stacks with protective tarps. Not long after, Los Angeles heard the suspicions of arson investigators hired in the wake of the tragedy that the blaze was intentionally set.

Orlean writes of the visceral damage to community morale when libraries and their contents were targeted by arson, whether by a spited lone arsonist, a government feeling challenged by the ideas contained in their stacks, or collateral damage in an armed conflict. These kinds of disasters shake people to their cores precisely because one's life is fleeting and impermanent, but stories put into books live on; to burn those books is therefore psychologically damaging as much as they are physically to the patrons and library materials involved. Despite this, communities are also very resilient. After much of the shock passed, the community rallied in support of their imperfect library, whose crowding, flawed wiring, and lack of air conditioning had been issues before the fire. In October of 1993, the library would reopen renovated and twice the size of the original building with the addition of a new wing. Not bad, considering that the Los Angeles Library, like many other libraries, started off as small charity projects (the most famous being the Carnegie libraries project), stuffed into cramped quarters, with their collections at first only open to wealthy men.

"All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen." (Orlean, 2018, p. 310)

However, before the library re-opened in 1993, the city was occupied with the arson investigation, which. after fits and starts and dead-ends, zeroed in on aspiring actor Harry Peak, whose narrative shifted like the wind, being a person who liked pleasing people to the point of obsession and craved attention. He'd been at the library when the fire started, then he wasn't. It was pretty much a case with circumstantial evidence, frustrating arson investigators, who'd already been dealing with the challenge of trying to pinpoint the origin of the fire and how it started, considering pretty much all the materials in the vicinity combusted almost instantly. Like many matters, emotions ran high despite investigators and the public craving accountability and impartiality, meaning that the need to arrest and charge someone put immense pressure on the city. When the dragged out legal process finally concluded, with the city settling with Harry Peak over allegations of mistreatment by investigators, the case was considered closed. Yet, the mystery of the fire still lingers, with outside arson investigators questioning if it even was an arson in the first place and instead pointing their fingers towards the electric and environmental problems the library had at the time.

In the end, Orlean accepts the enduring mystery around the 1986 fire and instead chooses to focus her concluding chapters on the future of the Los Angeles Public Library. This is an appropriate, with the fire and the rebuilding aftermath serving as a symbol of libraries' continued evolution and survival in the face of the considerable pressures of modernization. Like other libraries, the Los Angeles Public Library is no longer merely a research center and repository of books and other print media, but a full fledged community space and information hub. It also functions as a contact center for social service agencies and community events, a meeting place for all sorts of classes and community clubs, and an access point to both electronic and print media at no charge. Yet, for all of the changes, the modern library at its core for many remains an irreplaceable and magical place of exploration and refuge in the Google Age, a feeling perfectly captured in Orlean's Library Book.  

Works Cited:

Orlean, Susan. (2018). The Library Book. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Book Review: Jeffrey A. Engel & et al.'s "Impeachment"

Impeachment. The dreaded "I"-word. It is a term bandied about frequently enough in today's 24/7 news climate to drive one insane, yet whose seriousness has been somewhat diluted in today's partisan political climate, with negative connotations of hyper-partisanship when contemplated by the party not in power. Yet, it has only been brought forward formally three times in our nation's 242 years of existence, making it a rare occurrence. How did this rarely-used mechanism come about? In what contexts were the first three impeachments invoked, and what can these cases tell us about our current moment? Four scholars and journalists (Jeffrey A. Engel, Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali and Peter Baker) present three case studies in an attempt to answer this question in their 2018 treatise Impeachment: An American History.

We may think that we have a monopoly on moments of national crisis nowadays, but that is hardly true. Often, the contexts in which the three motions of impeachment were passed were similar moments of national vulnerability. The same goes with the circumstances under which impeachment was first devised in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. An overwhelming and understandable distrust of any centralization of power after the Revolutionary War had left the nation no more than a thirteen-part confederacy, with the federal government unable to keep order, collect tax revenues, oversee commerce and the national defense, let alone govern effectively (most everything required three-fourths of the states to agree in order to pass in the legislature). The colonial powers circled around the young United States, sensing weakness in the new republic, adding to the Founders' fears that any potential future leader could be unduly swayed by a foreign power to the detriment of the country.

After much debate, a new constitution was devised, establishing a system of three separate and co-equal legislative, judicial, and executive branches, which had various checks on the others to keep them in line. Embedded into this document was the impeachment mechanism we know today, only to be used in cases when the president was found guilty of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," enough to warrant an expedited remedy rather than waiting for an electoral one in dealing with a potential tyrant (Engel et al., 2018, p. 44). Therefore, to the Founders, a strong executive was needed to govern by enforcing the will of the legislative (and indirectly the judicial) branch, but needn't be tempted to consolidate even more powers from other branches. Together with the checks and balances between the three branches and the safety valve of impeachment, the Founders believed they had found the needed governance model for their new republic to flourish long-term. They hoped that no one would have to use impeachment, but it nevertheless remained an option when electoral and other methods had failed.

To begin with the first case of Andrew Johnson, the nation was just barely emerging from the destruction of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which put the latter's Reconstruction policies in jeopardy. Serving initially as vice-president on Lincoln's Republican ticket in order to shore up support with Southern whites (largely supportive of the then Democratic Party), Johnson's actions and policies (many of them done with racist overtones) as president soon alienated congressional Republicans so much that they brought a case of impeachment formally against him in 1868. This case largely involved technicalities, with Johnson accused of violating a (dubiously) constitutional piece of legislation known as the Tenure of Office Act over a questionable attorney general appointment. The case did not make it past the Senate, however, failing to meet the somewhat subjective bar of "high crimes and misdemeanors" or a pattern of serious criminal activity (Engel et al., 2018, p. 44).

A vague case, void of specifics, largely motivated by political animus rather than specific legal violations, Johnson's case would inform the careful, bipartisan case of abuse of executive powers assembled by the House Judicial Committee chairman, Peter Rodino, between 1972-1974. The largely airtight, detailed case succeeded in pushing Nixon to resign in 1974 when it was revealed that Nixon threw the Constitution underneath the bus in covering up the break-in to the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters. This spectacle of corruption only served to feed the national unease over Vietnam at the time, where both cases seemed to demonstrate an administration mostly concerned with political survival over national well-being.

While the impeachment cases brought against Johnson and Nixon made it only so far as the House and Senate respectively, President Bill Clinton would survive a House vote on impeachment after winning the battle over his sexual misconduct (and his lying about it) in the court of public opinion. Again, like Johnson's case, Clinton's acquittal came about, arguably, over the overtly partisan nature of the proceedings rather than any specific, detailed enumeration of serious corruption. It was reasoned that yes, Clinton's conduct was terrible and lying about it didn't help, but his actions weren't an overt danger to the republic.

What then does this mean for the elephant in the room in President Trump? The erudite and heavily researched Impeachment leaves readers with an uncertain picture, hinting that the success of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation may ultimately hinge on a Rodino-like method of meticulous and bipartisan case-building, clearly connecting the president to serious crimes against the country like corruption, bribery, or even collusion with a foreign power in order to boost his electoral prospects. Can the nation and our representatives assemble the bipartisan trust needed in these kinds of investigations and subsequent (potential) impeachment hearings in today's divided times? Stay tuned.


Works Cited:

Engel, Jeffrey A., Meacham, Jon, Naftali, Timothy, & Baker, Peter. (2018). Impeachment: An American History. New York: Random House.

Book Review: Bradley Hope and Tom Wright's "Billion Dollar Whale"

What is it about stories like The Great Gatsby, Crazy Rich Asians, The Wolf of Wall Street, Bad Blood and Bernie Madoff that draw us in? Is it the rags-to-riches narrative that underlies the material excesses? Rather, is it the voyeur's look into a world of the ultra-rich, where the stories of gluttonous consumption, debauchery, and greed provide us a simultaneously scandalous and shocking portrait of a seemingly fantastic life that seems normal to them? Either way, these stories have become part of American culture, despite the 2008 recession and the Bernie Madoffs of the world, for better or ill. Further blurring fiction and reality is the real-life story of Jho Low, a Malaysian financier who became a billionaire by engaging in a fraud of mind-boggling, global proportions via the overseeing of the multi-billion dollar Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Wall Street Journal journalists Bradley Hope and Tom Wright chronicle the unlikely rise of this real-life Gatsby in Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (2018).

Before 1MDB, Jho Low started off as a Wharton graduate from a moderately wealthy family in the Malaysian coastal state of Penang, a former British colonial outpost. Heir to a modest garment fortune, he aspired to more, the lifestyles of the uber-rich Americans, Asians, Europeans and Middle Easterners he rubbed elbows with during his education. How would he achieve the glamor and glitz he so desired? First, it involved cultivation of the powerful. In this case, who you know seems to override what you know, especially in the world of 21st century finance. Low worked minor deals, positioning himself as a fixer, giving the appearance of his wealth by his ties with powerful benefactors, like Abu Dhabi royalty and Saudi Arabian financiers. It would be United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba that would provide the in to Low's eventual and nearly $5 billion 1MDB heist. After his early success in 2009 as middle-man to the Iskandar Land Project, an ambitious development project that aspired to give Malaysia a financial hub to rival that of Singapore. His Middle Eastern contacts introduced Low to Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, who'd become Low's primary patron as the 1MDB scam took shape.

Purporting to be a vehicle for strategic development and economic prosperity, 1MDB raised $10 billion dollars from investors all over the world. Then, around $5 billion went missing, gradually, partly to finance the prime minister's political funds and his family's lavish lifestyle and the rest to Low and his associates for their outrageous parties costing many times over in one night of extravagance what many families make in a year or many years (or a lifetime). How were the banks fooled? While the financial minutiae are dense throughout Billion Dollar Whale, lending credence to the authoritative nature of the account built on three years of investigative work, it ultimately came down to a complex stream of arcane transactions made between offshore shell companies (of Panama Papers fame), the accounts of Low's family and associates, and 1MDB that gave the appearance that 1MDB had the funds to pay its bills when the funds were actually nearly non-existent. The fund was really in the red, but for the scheme to continue, needed to convince investors that they were financially stable. So when bank compliance departments, whether with Goldman Sachs or BSI Singapore raised questions about these transfers, Low was able to weigh in with the help of his contacts, giving the illusory weight of a legitimate Middle Eastern fund or other business entity to the transaction to ease bank jitters over the shady documentation provided.

In 2014, the first reports of financial malfeasance of 1MDB began to emerge, with more following as Low became sloppy in disguising his suspicious and bold transfers through major banking institutions. The scope of investigations in Switzerland, Malaysia, the United States and elsewhere widened enough, scooping up Low's associates left and right, bringing down even the Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and his family when he was voted out in May 2018 despite strongman tactics of intimidation and killings targeting the opposition in Malaysia and Low's use of a PR firm to burnish his image as a generous philanthropist to counter the negative publicity. As of today, Jho Low remains on the loose and the financial repercussions of the staggering debt on Malaysia's economy are beginning to be felt, even as the U.S. Justice Department continues its wide-ranging investigation into this massive instance of financial fraud.

What then, is the main message to take away from Billion Dollar Whale? While we may have shored up the kind of risky lending that caused the Great Recession, new unregulated vehicles have emerged (offshore accounts and cryptocurrency), combining with the traditional impetus of profit-making and a greatly interconnected (and unequal) global economy. This is dangerous ground, when individuals and companies play fast and loose with the rules and gamble with the future of the international financial system and the financial regulatory frameworks used to hold them to account are being weakened (Dodd-Frank, anyone?). Whether or not Low's offshore account-driven scheme will become the new model for aspiring frauds out there, Bradley and Hope's Billion Dollar Whale nonetheless makes the case for tighter regulatory oversight of financial institutions.

Works Cited:

Hope, Bradley, & Wright, Tom. (2018). Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World. New York: Hachette Books.

Book Review: Jeffrey D. Sach's "A New Foreign Policy"

A New Year...A New Foreign Policy?

In today's geopolitical landscape, there are plenty of dichotomies: realism and liberalism, multilateralism and unilateralism, cooperation and isolation, democracy and autocracy, negotiation and war, prosperity and poverty. The Trump administration seems to have only deepened these positional differences with its tendency towards extremes and hyperbole. These rigid contrasts often find their way into America's foreign policy, which swings back and forth on the spectrum with each passing administration's different political alignment. Is there a middle ground America can tread in an era of global challenges like climate change and nuclear proliferation that demand flexibility at the local, national, and international levels? Professor and economist Jeffrey D. Sachs outlines a potential third path of American foreign policy in his 2018 volume A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.

For those tired of the inflexible debates in foreign policy circles, yet another arena of toxic partisanship, Sach's book is a breath of fresh air. While presaging his arguments with the usual language of (potential) American decline ubiquitous in today's media environment, proclaiming an end to the "American Century" that began in 1941, he places an asterisk on this bleak assessment (Sachs, 2018, p. 12). America gained its superpower status with its ability to rewrite the international system to its advantage in the wake of WWII, when the former powers in Europe were not spared the overwhelming devastation of the global conflict. It converted this political advantage garnered from its victory into an unmatched economic dynamism that in turn fueled its military dominance, facilitating the building of a far-reaching network of outposts on almost every continent except Antarctica. No one dared put up any meaningful opposition to its superpower status after the defeat of its only major competitor in the Soviet Union. This encouraged the re-emergence of the dogma of American exceptionalism, present from the earliest days of the Founding, to a front-and-center position in American life, a "civic religion" that exhorts America as God's most favorite nation and rightful shepherd of the world, able to do largely what it wishes (Sachs, 2018, p. 12). The latter, of course, eventually breeds a hubris that this status cannot be challenged, and that is dangerous in itself.

So, what about today? Are we still the stop dog in the international system, a nation exceptional in comparison to the other 193 nation-states on Earth? The United States still remains a powerful and rich country, but the emerging dynamos of Asia and Africa, home to a growing majority of the world's population, are quickly closing the gap. China is often tagged as the greatest threat to America's continued dominance, with its economy surpassing ours in recent years, with America barely holding onto its per-capita wealth advantage. However, Sachs sees as counterproductive the subsequent reactions of alarm from the military and intelligence communities that have fueled a new arms race against what seem to be new adversaries rather than mere competitors. Instead of succumbing to a largely self-inflicted and steep decline due to generations of exceptionalist-guided policies favoring military build-up and adventurism abroad, coupled with favorable policies towards the rich and not the struggling middle class, Sachs sees a way to stay the present course.

As a first step, Sachs urges Americans to take the first step in admitting that it is no longer possible for America to remain the sole superpower in the world and for America to be a central player in a new, multipolar world. (No one can be all-powerful for long. It's a repeating cycle. How one handles it makes the difference.) This means accepting the somewhat bitter pill that American exceptionalism may not hold true as other nations gradually acquire the power to become equals on the world stage. Rather than re-trenching in Trump's new and toxic variant of American exceptionalism in his America First doctrine of xenophobic and racist isolationism, protectionism and unquestionable unilateralism abroad, Sachs urges a new conceptualizing of exceptionalism in the 21st century into one defined by the incredible potential and diversity of America's melting-pot of citizens.

After the needed perspective shift described above, to reach our goals of continued national prosperity, he concludes with a detailed and prescient ten-point New Years resolutions list of sorts to America as a whole:

1. Be nicer to the United Nations and our allies as a whole, even if they do not agree with every single resolution or position we support. Disagreements may actually teach us more than our agreements when it comes to solving the myriad of problems out there. And it's okay if we're not all-powerful as in our prime; that's why we have allies! (Even better, allies mean we don't have to foot the bill alone!!)
2. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement frameworks brokered by the UN are by no means flawless, but provide the best forum we got for continued political and economic cooperation at the international level. Recommit to these.
3. Give more to the UN. Yes, not a popular sentiment nowadays, but a boost of funding, even a modest one, to the UN is a fantastic investment and a bargain, with other countries chipping in to grow the pot even more to fund critical programs that help people all over the world. Also, the less we need to spend on getting more ammunition.
4. Yes, commitments can be scary and somewhat limiting, but ratifying those outstanding treaties (those relating to the protection of biodiversity, children, and women's rights) gives a huge boost to our reputation abroad (we don't want to be a loner on the world stage, right?) and a better boost to our chances to work together for the common good.
5. Nuclear disarmament is good. Nuclear proliferation is not, as well as nuclear war. Consider revisiting the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 129 other countries are also doing that and more. Why not us? We deserve happiness too.
6. Want to grow your economy and help with transnational problem solving? Of course you do! Invest anew in science and technology ventures with other countries, such as in renewable energy and smart grids. Two heads are better than one, remember?
7. You alone cannot broker Middle East peace (we know how that turns out). Get the powers-that-be there to the table with the leverage you have over allies in the region and into talks. Find what makes them insecure (extremism and poverty, anyone?) and push a framework that involves more cooperation on the common ground of the latter. Bullets don't help anyone listen after a while.
8. Invest in transparency! Start by making the CIA an intelligence-gathering agency only rather than a shadowy executive army that tends to destabilize and overthrow regimes worldwide if you let it, making it (overall) worse for us as a whole when we try to go in and clean up the mess.
9. You like being praised on the world stage? Yes! Then invest more in the R&D and education parts of the national budget for use domestically and abroad and cut down on ammunition and bombs. The world will definitely like you more then and you'll help the work towards eradicating the extreme poverty that tends to drive people to do desperate things in order to survive (i.e. terrorism).
10. Rediscover what makes you special and own it this year: your diversity. Migrants are our friends; most of us are descendants of them! Welcome them, don't shun them. Work towards comprehensive immigration reform that will help everyone concerned and watch your security and economy grow!

It's a new year America! What will we do in 2019? It's up to you!

Works Cited:

Sachs, Jeffrey D. (2018). A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Book Review: Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century"

In a 24-hour news cycle that constantly bombards us with the underbelly of the world--boorish politicians, hyper-partisanship, climate change, tech scandals, xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, fake news, rising income inequality and national debt and more--it is nice to be able to step back, take a deep breath, and look at the bigger picture. Before humanity can address its formidable catalog of problems, it is necessary to get our bearings in a world that feels chronically unsteady and vicious. Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari attempts to provide that big picture perspective, first with Sapiens, in which he tells of humanity's rise as a function of group cooperation fostered by grand narratives (think nationalism, religion) or the stories that people need to hear . Homo Deus looks at humanity's future, one in which we all potentially become cyborgs, more intimately connected to technology than even today. So what about today? Can humanity address what ails us so we can reach the new heights he predicts in Homo Deus? Harari's answer comes to us in his latest work, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018).

Like his previous works, 21 Lessons doesn't aspire to being an all-encompassing how-to solutions guide for the biggest problems facing humanity. It is more philosophical, thought-provoking, meant to stimulate the necessary conversations that need to take place globally in a vast population of individuals that do not know everything, let alone the latest advances in AI or cryptocurrency. A variety of subjects are addressed in loosely-connected op-ed-like chapters with characteristic wit and cautious optimism, such as fake news, immigration, terrorism and toxic nationalism, which Harari sees as symptoms of malaise in our current liberal international order. Moreover, while these problems are symptomatic of an ill-equipped system, Harari also sees them as products of technological disruption coupled by continuing advances in biotechnology, something free-market logic and an ever-expanding pie (doubtful nowadays, as we don't have exponential planets to draw from) alone cannot solve.

The algorithms are coming, the algorithms are coming! 

Why does technology (both biotechnology and inorganic computer technology) threaten the established liberal order and challenge it with reinvention? Humanity is already faced with trying to stave off the twin existential problems (I call them the Big Ones) of ecological disaster and nuclear war. Those who are at the forefront of the development of technologies like AI, machine learning, Big Data algorithms are profit-driven enterprises not primarily concerned with the ethical, political, and economic consequences of these technologies--like that automation could put a huge segment of the working class out of a job and in need of re-training. A core part of the liberal bargain entails governments looking out for the happiness and well being of its citizens, providing foundational social welfare programs and other services to help citizens prosper in whatever personal and occupational paths they choose.

What happens when automation, machine learning and AI combine to put a good deal of people out of work, while those who invented the technologies are doing better than ever? What happens if all human labor, excepting those operating these technologies (the rich/elites), becomes irrelevant? How do nation-states deal with these tricky issues that involve disillusioned people no longer trusting the grand narratives they were brought up with--whether it be a nationalism, a religious creed, or some other philosophy? The example of automation and significant socioeconomic disruption is just one of the many problems that threaten the liberal dream of a better life for everyone, a life that retains a sense of dignity that comes from being able to control their destinies. People don't particularly enjoy the unknown and the amorphous threats of advancing technology and near-invisible global catastrophes like climate change or nuclear proliferation produce an uncertainty-driven deluge of constant stress.

For all the serious historical and political examination of problems like fake news and terrorism, for Harari it comes down to stories: the stories that inspired ever increasing amounts of people to cooperate for the common good. While it is extremely uncomfortable to realize that human societies must rely on these stories to instill a common sense of identity and purpose in large groups of people (and that disruptions to these stories could potentially undermine the social order as we know it), it is nevertheless mind-expanding, not unusual for works that are audaciously all-encompassing. It is also discomfiting because as with advanced technology, stories can be used for good and bad purposes, powerful tools wielded by those who understand that humans respond more strongly to emotive rather than logical appeals (biochemical paths from evolution better suited to the African savanna--"Move quickly! No time to think!"-than today's over-stimulated world). In the case of nationalism: from "My nation is unique and I celebrate its heritage" to "My nation is superior to yours in every way and I owe it my undying allegiance." Religion? "My religion believes in peace and tolerance and I respect your differing method of achieving spiritual fulfillment" versus "There is only one God and I will fight you to show you the truth." And so on. Then, there is liberalism, the narrative of rational individuals coming together to create a society that believes in democracy, human rights, and the freedom for people to make their own way in life however they choose.

What then is the new story needing to be formulated to help reinvent liberalism to deal with our current slate of problems (whether they primarily stem from technology or not)? Harari's 21 Lessons doesn't provide one. Rather, the overall purpose of the treatise was, like its mind-expanding prose, designed to provoke mass self-reflection and discussion and take people back from the brink of apocalyptic thinking to a more healthy place of cautious optimism, critical thinking and healthy skepticism. That can make it frustrating for readers, but not any less intellectually satisfying. In the end, Harari seems to imply that it is only through a new and urgent worldwide discussion that humanity can find a new story, a new common ideal to organize around that can help society solve its problems and continue to advance. Humanity has done it once before with nation-states and liberal democracy. We can do it again.

Works Cited:

Harari, Yuval Noah. (2018). 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. New York: Spiegel & Grau.

Book Review: Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Accessory to War"

There are many advertisements out there on behalf of the military nowadays, featuring soldiers remote-operating drones at a distance, satellites zooming in on battle terrain as stealth jets fly overhead, conveying a sense of futuristic warfare as they attempt to recruit to their cause. Or smiling, yet serious, soldier-scientists--engineers, physicists, chemists, etc.--going about the business of both military operations and groundbreaking experiments and research. "You can be both [scientist and soldier]! Have a career and serve your country! Come, join the future!" is usually how it goes. Flash to an episode of The Big Bang Theory in which Raj, Leonard, Howard and Sheldon are wrestling with the ethical and moral dilemmas surrounding their project to develop a better guidance system for the Air Force--receiving funding to do this research project, but also realizing the system will likely become another tool of war. This complicated relationship between science and war is everywhere, suffusing our culture, economy, politics, governmental institutions and academia with this uneasy knowledge. To no one's surprise, this complicity between scientific advancements and better technologies of destruction goes way back. Providing a context for our present moment of cyberwarfare, drones and satellites is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-author Avis Lang's 2018 collaboration Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military.

I remember learning in school about the technological boon to society from the NASA space program, from Velcro to infrared thermometers to warmer, better insulated blankets. Being a kid, I was amazed with science's capacity to push society forward with both the gaining of knowledge and development of better technologies. I suppose I was naive enough not to realize the two-way relationship between scientific/societal advancement and military capabilities, just one of the many dualities and paradoxes of humans in general: building by destroying. Empires rose and fell based off of the level of scientific capital and knowledge present in their societies and the ones they conquered. In other words, science was power in multiple dimensions. After all, the emergence post-WWII of the American superpower on the world stage was greatly facilitated by the scientific and economic boons of the war. Tyson and Lang give vivid illustration to this complicated relationship through a historical jaunt from ancient times to the present.

Those forerunners of today's powers started off by relying on the stars for navigation, time organization, and rituals. After all, knowing where and when you were allowed societies to orient themselves, plan ahead, and standardize everything from rituals to tax collection to the sailing that allowed everything from a more interconnected global economy to the conduct of military operations and conquests. Scientists from the beginning had complicated relations with the state, army, and economic interests with astronomers serving as prized court advisers. Recognizing celestial patterns and cycles and learning to predict them, knowledge gleaned from an immeasurable amount of time of patient observation and recording of the heavens was one of the cornerstones of early societies. It allowed Columbus to trick the natives out of their provisions by his ability to exploit the knowledge of a coming lunar eclipse and explorers to circumnavigate the globe and European powers to colonize and establish outposts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The fruits of celestial navigation and prediction gave way to further advances, gained by scientists wanting better observation tools with which to see the universe from and institutionalized armies wanting to see their enemies coming from farther away. The telescope, early message relay systems, the telegraph, photography, spectrography, radar, nuclear power, satellites, GPS and many more such advances flowed from this knowledge.

This perennial quest of constant improvement stemmed from the first stargazers, a quest motivated by humanity's desire to act upon their knowledge of the scale of the world they inhabited, a world that got bigger and bigger the more they advanced, until the seemingly last frontier for which humanity could explore (or conquer) was space. Resources continued their flow between the private sector, academia, and the military, juicing the economy in the process. Society profited from war, while trying to use its newfound knowledge and resources to the common benefit of all, fighting human nature itself.

While countries do engage in scientific collaboration both on Earth and in the emerging dimension of space (think the International Space Station), they also, true to human nature, have started to squabble as each tries to achieve the highest of higher-grounds in space. This is despite the fact that under international law, space is a commons for all humanity, much like the oceans and the air we breathe. [One of the more famous examples of scientific interests (i.e. funding for research and experiments) getting entangled with the geopolitical was the Space Race, an epic Cold War-era fight between communist and capitalist ideologues alike, national pride and international prestige on the line.] Space is getting crowded, full of dual-use, civilian and military satellites and debris from past space missions, making exclusive space control infeasible and space wars with Star Wars-like weaponry of high-powered lasers and the like incredibly dangerous, risking damage to your own space assets and that of your allies and adversaries. Not to mention the astronomical costs of the development of these new and more destructive weapons in the first place, which takes away from other areas of societal investment. Additionally, despite the military investments America continues to make (outpacing the rest of the world presently), China and Russia are closing the gap, developing space programs and capacities of their own and threatening American scientific and technological preeminence (and of course, power).

Instead of doggedly pursuing the doctrine of total command and control (and the development of even more dangerous weapons than the A-bomb) espoused by the American military, Tyson and Lang conclude the well-researched cautionary tale of Accessory to War by making the case for pivoting to more benevolent and economically beneficial space ventures--from space tourism to asteroid mining--that could not only help alleviate the resource disparities that are often the undercurrents to conflict, but open up a new frontier, a glittering future of humanity expanding into the stars. It is a vision of utopian prosperity more akin to Star Trek, where scientific exploration is heavily prioritized because of the alleviation or even elimination of basic need scarcities and embrace of more cooperative means of existence. However, it is a good vision to strive for, especially in a time when science and expertise is often denounced and human capacity for self-destruction is on full display all around us. We may not be able to completely defeat human nature itself, but science continues to give us all a choice to work towards beneficial collaboration rather than mutually-assured destruction.

Works Cited:

Tyson, Neil DeGrasse, & Lang, Avis. (2018). Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.