The false dichotomy of U.S. politics

The Trumpists are our equivalent of Britain’s U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) and France’s National Front, both anti-immigrant, nationalist parties. For the past five years, Trumpists have clocked in at about 20 percent of the electorate, if one tracks numbers of committed “Obama is a Muslim-ists.” This makes them even more powerful than Britain’s UKIP, which won 12.6 percent of the vote in May’s parliamentary election. These numbers put the Trumpists on par with the National Front in France, which in March elections took 25 percent of the vote to the 32 percent that went to the center-right party of Nicholas Sarkozy.

The critical difference between our nationalist faction and the European ones is that their parliamentary systems register them as “parties,” whereas our two-party model makes it harder to see that what we’re confronting truly is the rise of a new party. Provided, that is, the Republicans don’t sell their souls.

If the Republicans can hang on to the convictions that make them the party of Lincoln, we ought to see the party split. For the good of the country, we should hope for it.

Good piece on how the U.S. two-party political system masks the underlying fragmentation of our nation's political beliefs. The incumbent two-party system has been around so long that it has a massive fund-raising advantage over any third party, and that's just one element of inertia working in its favor.

From a voter perspective, a two-party system vastly restricts the granularity of your vote and what it communicates to politicians. It's as if you and a dozen of your work colleagues had to decide where to eat for lunch each day, but despite having dozens of restaurants in the area, could only go to one of two restaurants because there were only two cars available to drive.

The true preference of the group might be split among many more restaurants. It's even possible every person might want to go to a different restaurant that day. But instead you end up with one group at Chipotle, and the other at some salad bar, and tough luck if you're in the mood for Chinese or sushi or something else.

For a variety of historical reasons, and it's a fascinating tale, we've evolved to be a two party nation. And at this point, the structural inertia is significant and not likely to be easily overturned.

But the ability to map preferences at a more granular level is something technology can enable at a scale not possible in days past, and I suspect it will be technology that changes American politics in a deep way over the next two to three elections.

First we'll see an election where technology swings a few key races in a very public way. My guess is that the same social networks that enable many more people to become internet famous will allow those same people to sway a lot more voters by allowing them to endorse at scale. Second, some simple mobile app will solve the voter laziness and voter information asymmetry problems and allow them to more efficiently discover which candidates most closely represent their views.

It's amazing how hard it remains to research how to vote optimally based on your personal preferences. It's easier to find a hotel to stay at when visiting a new city, or the best Mexican restaurant in your neighborhood. Google is of surprisingly little help when it comes to researching your ballot, and so many of us end up in a dark voter stall, staring at a long list of names we've never heard of, trying to choose some local area judge or reading some long pro or con position on a local proposition. Frankly, the heuristics I've turned to when faced with choices like that are embarrassing.

Organizing large sets of information, offering customized searching and browsing of that information using algorithms, user preferences, and social network context, and bundling all of that in good user experience on a smartphone has been the technology industry's hammer of Thor in industry after industry for the past decade. Restaurants, retail, news, music, and travel are just a few examples to have felt the blow.

For a variety of reasons, industries like finance, health care, automobiles, and government have remained somewhat immune. But that's about to change, and I believe politics is going to be one of the most visible to succumb. The killer election mobile app is coming, and the only question is who will build it and whether it will come in time for the 2016 U.S. elections.

Fundamental to that shift is making public what has long been private. I'm referring to not just party preferences but people's thoughts on individual issues and races. What do people you admire think about the issues on the ballot in front of you, and why? If much of this is made public ahead of election day, then suddenly we have a new, more efficient way to debate the issues and understand how and why different voters are going with particular candidates. Making messaging public was the greatest innovation of Twitter, turning the conversations and soliloquies of people into public theater. Making voting intentions public would have as great a social impact.

We already live in a generation where people feel comfortable making their views on everything under the sun public online, so I can't imagine it's a stretch to do so on political issues. The only thing stopping us from aggregating and organizing this information efficiently has been a focused, directed service.

Money has long been a proxy for political influence, but let's say someone Internet famous carries their millions of followers from social media over into the political arena. For example, let's say Marc Andreessen makes his ballot for the upcoming election public, along with a list of his views on all the issues and where he agrees and disagrees with each candidate. Or imagine popular economist Tyler Cowen gives his views on all the random propositions on a ballot, explaining why he thinks they make sense or not. And so on down the line.

On some mobile app, you import all these people you follow on other social networks and have a ready-made ballot based on the collective views of all the people you trust. As the typical lazy American voter, you already feel more informed. If you want, you can tune your ballot by hand or take some simple survey on a variety of hot button issues to tweak your ballot. Now, ahead of the election, you publish that ballot to the app for anyone else, and more importantly the network itself, to see. People who follow you on other networks automatically follow you here, so now you can see whose votes you're influencing. You are, as on other social networks, both consumer and publisher.

Remember, this information is all made public ahead of the election, so the ripples actually begin long before election day. You're a candidate running for office, and you can go look at a list of the people with the most followers in your district. Suddenly, you realize that someone influencing a sizable bloc of voters in your district is choosing against you because of your view on some issue or proposition. The app offers a quick calculation of how many voters you might gain by changing your view to the other side. It could sway the election. You publicly change your view, and the app sends a notification to all the people who were going to vote against you, informing them of your policy shift.

That may sound a bit too precise, and perhaps that level of granularity isn't possible the first go round because the math isn't so clean. At the very least, though, you can imagine looking through the app to see the top influencers in your district and inviting them to a meeting or one of those fundraising dinners. Usually, a ticket to such an event comes at the cost of a sizable donation, but remember, fundraising and money have long been an indirect way of transacting in votes, but an app like this allows you to do so more directly.

Someone smarter than me can compute how dense a network like this needs to be in a region to be predictive, but if political polls based on random samples can be reasonably predictive, we may already be over the tipping point in many parts of the U.S.

Let's come full circle. This began as a discussion of the restrictive nature of a two-party system. A network like this could unlock the potential for a more granular set of options. A service like this might indicate that a candidate coming in with some mix of views from the left and right could capture a sizable voting bloc. That fabled third party could find a more efficient path to reaching that bloc through a set of influencers on the network who share a certain set of common views. But perhaps it's not just one additional party but multiple ones that find a path to relevance.

This is all jumping far ahead down the road, but it's not unreasonable to imagine how quickly change like this can come to a particular space in public life when you compare how we used to shop, search and browse information, find people to date, or navigate from one place to another just a decade or two ago.

We already probably have many more than two political parties in the U.S. Circling back to the piece I quoted at the beginning of this post, the author believes the Republican Party should split because it really consists of two distinct parties.

If we look to Europe, again, we can see the effects of these tools, not only on the right but also on the left. Progressive Internet activists in Germany, for instance, coalesced into the Pirate Party, which has been able to win seats in four state parliaments as well as the European parliament.

In other words, in this country, too, we would by now have Trumpists, libertarians and netizens in government, if we had a parliamentary system. But because we don’t, we have a very weird, historically important presidential campaign. The weirdness comes from the fact that it is unfolding inside the structure of our creaky, 19th-century two-party framework.

The real story, then, is not about this or that candidate but about precisely how the realignment of U.S. public opinion away from the two major political parties will shake out and about who or what the major parties will sell down the river while trying to save themselves as the “big tents” they need to be to win elections. And the burning question inside this story is whether our two-party system can survive the digital era. Or, perhaps better, how to ensure that it doesn’t so that we can save our center-right party, the Republicans, for the center.

Carol

The grain in “Carol” matters because Haynes and Lachman force 16-mm. film stock to reveal the extreme range of its expressive possibilities. The viewing of the film becomes a sort of extreme experience, all the more so for its concentration of the movie’s central dramatic elements in its performances and in the composition of its images.
 

Sitting far back, I saw the artifice in the actresses’ glacial, theatrical precision. Up close, their performances deliver a tremulous, tensile control, a precision that shivers with the passions straining to break out just below the surface—the surface of behavior, the surface of decorum, the surface of the skin. I don’t think that the subcutaneous frissons result from the actors’ performances but, rather, from Haynes’s performance-capture by means of Lachman’s grainy images. They’re not effects of the actors’ skin but of its appearance on the second skin of the film stock (the French word for “film” is “pellicule,” meaning little skin), which lends the actors’ theatricalized immobility an illusion of shivers.
 

Richard Brody on Carol. What a beautiful observation on the grain of the 16mm film stock on Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara's skin as symbolic of the irrepressible (if socially forbidden) passion beneath the surface. I once heard a director once refer to 16mm film grain as looking like golf balls copulating furiously, though I could not have predicted that metaphor tumbling out of my memory during a movie about a lesbian romance in mid-century America.

I was concerned going into Carol that the trio of director Todd Haynes and actresses Blanchett and Mara would be a menage a trots executed with such calculated precision that all passion would be suffocated. Blanchett is so technically gifted an actor it seems she can control the fluttering of each individual eyelid, and Mara has a certain stillness of gaze that always renders her face a mystery.

I was pleasantly surprised. It's not that the movie isn't recognizably Haynes'. There may always be an element of his work that is cool to the touch. But here he channels Wong Kar-Wai at times to turn the physical world, in particular its surfaces and barriers, into the inner surfaces of his actors. In that, what is 16mm film if not just one more layer on the canvas?

Another 2015 movie, Hou Hsiao Hsien's Assassin, came to mind. It, too, was replete with shots filmed through surfaces like gauzy fabric to remind us how emotions cloud our perceptions of another person.

Two moments in Carol, in particular, grabbed my heart and squeezed. One is a speech in an office, with divorce attorneys present. I know some find Blanchett's technical mastery a bit distancing, but this is one of the most moving moments I can remember from her. The other is a walk across a restaurant. Little happens, but everything does. I held my breath. 

The movie doesn't try too hard to explain their attraction for each other. Love can be like that. It comes in an instant, almost like a whim, and then can linger forever.

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Since it's Christmas, I'm going with Rooney Mara in a Santa hat.

War for the roads

Drawing on these arguments about power, precedence, and morality—and, also, through sheer numbers—pedestrians, drivers, and bicyclists all make strong claims to the streets. And yet the picture is even more complex, because almost no one is exclusively a walker, a cyclist, or a driver. We shift from role to role, and with those changes comes a shift in our vantage point.

There is, therefore, another, and perhaps more fundamental, source for our sense of vehicular entitlement: egocentricity. We all experience the world from our own point of view, and find it exceedingly difficult to move away from that selfish anchor. (Psychologists call this our egocentric bias.) Who we are colors what and how we see, and who we are changes depending on our mode of transportation. When we walk, we’re pedestrians. When we’re in a car, we’re drivers. When we bike, we’re cyclists. And whoever we are at the moment, we feel that we are deserving of priority.

When it comes to in-the-moment judgment, we don’t think abstractly, in terms of rules or laws or even common sense. We think concretely, in terms of our own personal needs at that very moment. It takes a big, effortful leap to tear ourselves out of that mode and accept someone else’s argument—and it’s an effort we don’t often make unless we’re specifically prompted to do so. And so, in some sense, it doesn’t matter who came first, or who’s the most powerful, or who’s best for the environment, or what the rules might say. What matters is what we, personally, happen to be doing. It’s hard to remind ourselves that we all play interchangeable roles within the urban landscape. In the end, it’s the role we’re in right now that matters. The never-ending war between bicyclists, drivers, and pedestrians reflects a basic, and often wrong, mental shortcut, upon which we all too often rely: Who is in the right? I am.

Maria Konnikova speaks the truth on the battle for our streets and sidewalks among cars, bicycles, and pedestrians.

Nowadays I spend about equal time as a driver, pedestrian, and cyclist, and the only conclusion I feel confident drawing is that everyone is wrong sometimes. Some drivers are terrifying, some cyclists are obnoxious, and many pedestrians are oblivious and inconsiderate.

Physics renders a car more dangerous than a bike which in turn is more dangerous than a pedestrian. All things being equal, I'm more terrified of road rage than obnoxious cyclists, and I'm more upset at reckless bike messengers than careless pedestrians. I'm more than ready for the age of the self-driving car because the combination of humans, with their emotional volatility and egocentricity, and a several thousand pound hunk of metal and glass is, when in motion, a movable instrument of death.

Stephen Curry

Perhaps the most remarked upon aspect of Curry’s game, other than its Platonic beauty, is that it appears to lack the kind of merciless ferocity that characterized the often brutal genius of Michael Jordan, who, when he wasn’t soaring through the air, punched a teammate or two and trash-talked heckling fans. Curry makes impossible, throat-cutting plays that somehow look both human and imbued with a kind of sweetness, if not mercy.
 

“What made Jordan so great,” Miller told me, “was that he could get the ball way up in the air and finish it. But you don’t have to dunk to be like Steph. Every kid looks at Steph and thinks: I can shoot and dribble. I can do that. You don’t have to be like Mike anymore. You know, Mike was an asshole. I was an asshole, too. But you don’t have to be an asshole to be successful. Steph is living proof.”
 

Reggie Miller on Stephen Curry's game (in The New Yorker of all places; they are stepping up the volume of their sports coverage, though in that distinctive New Yorker style).

I worshipped Jordan as a child because I grew up in Chicago when he came to the Bulls and became a star. But he's the type of player you idolize because of his competitive spirit and demonic will to win, not because his game is one you can emulate.

Watch video of Jordan's jump shot and you see a jumper released at the apex of his jump. I couldn't shoot like that, and neither can most recreational players. It relies on great athleticism and strength, and it helps to have gigantic hands. I had neither. Shooting that way I could only really shoot from the free throw line in. What made Jordan's jump shot so effective was that he jumped so high it was nearly impossible to block.

Later in his career, as his athleticism declined, he added a variant: the fadeaway. Falling away from the defender, it was still impossible to block even with his decreased vertical leap. It was the primary weapon that allowed him to post up any guard in the league, and even most small forwards, until the day he retired.

[Earlier in his career he'd post up players on either block and then spin baseline and blow past the defender for a dunk or layup, but officials started to call that a travel, and later he lost the explosiveness to execute it consistently anyway.]

Stephen Curry has a jump shot but it looks more like a normal human being's jump shot, which is more of a set shot. It's a style of shooting that involves the legs and core more, and as a Bulls fan the players that come to mind who've shot in that style include Steve Kerr, Craig Hodges, Ben Gordon. It's how I have to shoot from that distance.

What sets Curry's shot apart from others who shoot that way, however, is the speed at which he can get the ball out of his hands. It's truly stunning to watch, whether on TV or in person. Estimates are that his release takes just .4 seconds. So despite releasing the shot from a much lower vertical distance than Jordan's jumper, Curry's is still very difficult to block.

Curry's version of Jordan's fadeaway, his unfair additional advantage, is his ball handling. If Curry needs an extra bit of separation from the defender, he can throw in a jab step or step back at any time, and literally in the blink of an eye (estimated to be 300 to 400 milliseconds, or exactly how long he takes to shoot) the ball is out of his hands.

Much of modern basketball is predicated on ball movement or actions like a pick and roll that create a temporary "power play" for the offense. The Miami Heat championship teams were really effective at using athletic and lanky lineups to smother the ball handler on a pick and roll and force the offense to reset, nullifying the pick and roll. With Stephen Curry, even if you double him off a pick and roll he can get a great shot off. That makes him as dangerous a weapon as there is given the modern three point line (I've referred to the 3 point shot as the NBA's modern arbitrage opportunity because it's worth 50% more than a 2-point shot but is nowhere near 50% as difficult to execute, not just for Curry but many NBA players).

Is there another feat in sports more suited to deliberate practice (popularized with the 10,000 hour rule) than the basketball jump shot? It's trivial to toss up a jump shot, and the feedback on whether you performed properly is near immediate. That's about as clean an instance of deliberate practice as there is, like playing a musical piece on the piano. You either play the right notes or you don't.

The difference between playing a piano and shooting a basketball, however, lies in that brief gap of time between the release of the basketball and its arrival at the basket. In that moment after Curry releases the basketball over the defender's head, as it traces its parabolic arc through the air and all the opposing players on the court have no recourse but to join everyone in the stadium in watching the ball flight, hope, anticipation, resignation, and appreciation meld for an instant. There is nothing to do but wait, knowing that the laws of physics have already determined whether the ball will go in the basket or miss, and there's nothing anyone can do about it any longer. It's just enough time to inhale, or exhale. Or to hold one's breath.

Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, a love story

RAW: A Hannibal/Will Fanthology is a fan anthology tribute to the romantic relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham from the award-winning television series Hannibal. It collects over 200 pages of fiction, art, and comics by 50 different creators, each of whom produced a new piece just for the book!
 

Can't add much else to that description of this amusing Kickstarter project. We are in the Golden Age of fan fic.

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I'm not sure what the right word is for how I felt about Hannibal the TV show. “Enjoyed” isn't quite right because the show did seem overly preoccupied with its aesthetic sensibility to an almost absurd degree. By season three I started to roll my eyes with every slow motion shot of blood blooming like crimson cauliflower in water. The show threatened to turn every viewer's flatscreen television into an expensive lamp.

And yet the choice was understandable. The aesthetic obsessions of the show mirrored those of its ur-protagonist Hannibal Lecter in a way that helped us understand his attraction to death and transfiguration (by way of dismemberment and sometimes disembowelment). Our occasional disgust reassured us that we were human, granting us a hall pass to feel the allure of empathizing with an Epicurean serial killer.

“Fascinated” is the more accurate description of my feelings for the show. As the show was largely about Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham's deep fascination with each other, that feels appropriate. I mourn its relegation to TV limbo land, from which a few rumors of resurrection from OTT services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon have come and gone.

Still, the idea of Hannibal Lecter endures, an updated version of vampires and other eternal monsters who represent those who refuse to let the strictures of society get in the way of their personal pleasure.