The Ambivalence To Extremism Pipeline In Politically Polarized Contexts

Very counterintuitively, extreme political actions seem to be associated with people who start out ambivalent about issues in the context of high levels of polarization.

Political extremism varies across people and contexts, but which beliefs will a person support through extreme actions? 

We propose that ambivalent attitudes, despite reducing normative political actions like voting, increase support for extreme political actions. 

We demonstrate this hypothesized reversal using dozens of measures across six studies (N = 13,055). The effect was robust to relevant covariates and numerous methodological variations and was magnified when people’s attitudinal or ideological positions were more polarized. 

It appears to occur because being conflicted about political issues can feel psychologically uncomfortable, making extreme actions more appealing. Notably, this emerged when people thought ambivalence was justified, whereas leading them to consider ambivalence unjustified suppressed the effect, suggesting that ambivalent people are coping with but not necessarily trying to reduce their ambivalence. These results highlight the interplay of affective and cognitive influences in extreme behavior, showing that beliefs people feel justifiably conflicted about can promote extremism.

Joseph J. Siev and Richard E. Petty, "Ambivalent attitudes promote support for extreme political actions" 10(24) Science Advances (June 12, 2024) (open access). Hat tip to Guy in the comments.

Juneteenth

Juneteenth, celebrated today on June 19, is now a federal, state, and local holiday.

It memorializes the several days in 1865 when many slaves in the Confederacy were made aware from Union forces that they had been freed by Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Until then, that proclamation had been largely an empty promise.

This was a monumental and profoundly life changing event for almost every slave who received the news. But it is a complex memory, because it was also only one huge and critical step in the very long process that still isn't complete. It was an absolutely necessary step, but it wasn't a sufficient one to chance society enough to do justice to those who heard it by itself.

Reparations, in the popular imagination, forty acres and a mule, never materialized. Reconstruction was short lived, and was followed by about ninety years of lynchings, discrimination, and Jim Crow. Many freed slaves continued to do work similar to what they had done while they were slaves, but while migrating from one plantation to another as they saw fit, rather than being bound to a master. Their economic well being improved, but more incrementally than dramatically. Their path to education and business ownership and gaining the skills to be competitive in the economy was winding with one step back for every two steps forward.

A parity of legal rights on paper finally started to be achieved in the 1950s and 1960s, but it took decades longer for even those legal rights to be anywhere close to being fully realized. And, even then, having legal rights, and being able to use them in a way the secured the descendants of the freed slaves who heard the news in the Juneteenth days of 1865 something approaching parity in social and economic well being has taken longer than that. In 2024, we still aren't all of the way to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s promised land.

So, Juneteenth is an important day, but was not a moment of a singular victory whose benefits were reaped right away. It was a beginning and we haven't made it to the end yet.

Detecting Aircraft

The U.S., at least, is pretty good at developing anti-radar technology to help the stealth aspect of its aircraft. But this has limits, because there are other ways one can detect aircraft:

1. Visual spotting on the ground with a good communications network that can tell people where an aircraft is heading.

2. Visually identifying the aircraft with satellites or very high altitude aircraft. 

3. Locating the aircraft based upon the noise it makes. This could be automated, a bit like systems the identify the location of firearm discharges automatically by triangulating the source of the sound from multiple listening devices. One could have a whole national network of noise localizing devices tuned to detect aircraft.

4. Locating the aircraft based upon heat or other aspects of its jet emissions such as chemical signatures or contrails that it might leave.

5. Covertly monitoring takeoff locations and guessing at where the aircraft might be heading, taking into account its range and any fuel drop tanks it is carrying.

6. Getting spies or electronic bugs or using signals intelligence to learn from commanders or lower level personnel where the aircraft are headed and when.

7. Covertly planting tracking chips on aircraft, or personnel or cargo or bombs and missiles on the aircraft which are hard for the force using the aircraft to locate.

Frustrated With Biden

There are plenty of areas where President Biden is doing a perfectly adequate job as President and he's presiding over a strong economy, record low crime, and a period of relative peace as well as prosperity although there is always some national defense action brewing somewhere. But in some ways that are critical to him being re-elected, he can be very frustrating.

Some of the things that Biden does most poorly are using the bully pulpit, tooting his own horn, and letting the American people get to know him personally, which wasn't so important when he was a long time Senator from Delaware or a Vice President. 

When the State of the Union address comes around each year, about half of the really significant accomplishments are things I've never heard of and I follow current events very closely. 

He isn't a regularly presence in ordinary people's daily lives to the extent of most past Presidents. 

When he can't actually change something, he could hold a press conference and publicly air the frustrations he shares with the public over those issues. If he did, he'd end up on the front page of every website and newspaper in the country and get mentioned in every morning and evening news show without spending a dime of campaign money. But he wastes this opportunity again and again. 

If people were to see him regularly and one time in twenty times he made a little misstep, people would forgive him more than when they only hear about those missteps.

It isn't his natural style as a politician, and its hard to change how you play that political game after decades of success with another approach in different roles. But if he is going to win in November, he needs to recognize this problem and deal with it.

Military Quick Hits

* The assumption that a large scale amphibious assault in a hostile entry, like the D-Day invasion, remains an important capability of the U.S. military, is unfounded. There hasn't been a significant amphibious assault anywhere in the world since the Korean War in the 1950s. What country would the U.S. invade that way? China? North Korea? Russia? Iran? It is hard to come up with plausible scenarios to motivate the need for this capability.

* Republicans in Congress are pro-disinformation. The U.S. Defense Department shamefully spread anti-vax disinformation about Chinese vaccines during the COVID epidemic.

* The U.S. Air Force isn't sure if it will move forward on building a "Next Generation Air Dominance" warplane, basically a successor to the F-22 and F-35. There is speculation that this may be driven by dissatisfaction with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the only domestic defense contractors capable of building such a plan. Cost and viable alternatives are also factors:

Paying for this next-gen fighter, which is expected to cost about $300 million a pop, will be tough as the service expects to spend increasing amounts of money in the coming years on F-35s, the new B-21 Raider, and the next-gen Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. And in addition to budget constraints, new technology developments and drones have the service rethinking the future of air dominance.

NGAD may be the only place the Air Force can take a reduction, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, given all the other programs the Air Force needs to pay for, and the desire to grow its new collaborative combat aircraft program.

The service also may be rethinking its overall concept of operations to rely on B-21, CCAs, and stand-off weapons [i.e. long range missiles] rather than a traditional aircraft, Clark said. But given emerging technologies, it’s still unclear what air dominance is exactly going to look like in the future.

The collaborative combat aircraft program, sometimes called the "loyal wingman" program, is a drone aircraft that supports a manned jet fighter. 

* In the short run it looks like naval warfare between China and the Philippines is more likely than war between China and Taiwan.

Guns v. Knives

When law enforcement shoots someone armed with a firearm, there is rarely any question that using deadly force was reasonable. But when law enforcement shoots and kills a woman armed with a hunting knife, admittedly after TASERs failed, I doubt their competence.

Officers shot and killed a woman who was holding a large, hunting-style knife at an intersection in downtown Denver on Sunday, police said.

Officers used a Taser on the woman twice but she began advancing toward them as they tried to back up from her, Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said a news conference near the scene. Three officers fired at her, he said.

The shooting will be investigated and the results will be sent to prosecutors to decide if the shooting was lawful, he said.

“My belief is that the officers perceived a significant threat and responded to that threat,” Thomas said.

The shooting happened near Triangle Park at the intersection of Lawrence Street and Broadway. Thomas said a Denver Park Ranger was among the first to call and report the woman was in the intersection around 11:45 a.m. Sunday.

From the Colorado Sun.

ChatGPT Is Bullshit

Unlike blockchains, artificial intelligence software has great potential. But it isn't quite ready for prime time yet. 

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce humanlike text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs.

We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.

Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries, & Joe Slater, "ChatGPT Is Bullshit", 26 Ethics & Information Technology Art. 38 (2024).

Extremes Meet

The MAGA right (I started calling it the "far right" but when it makes up maybe 30-40% of the voting public, how "far" is that?) is almost always absurdly wrong.

But part of the reason that what should be an easy Presidential race in 2024 is because the left can fall into some troubling traps:

* A congenital inability to acknowledge good news in the economy. If the stock market is doing well, who cares about the well being of rich stockholders? If wages are up, who cares because prices are high (even if wages are rising faster than inflation). If unemployment is low, there must be other measures of it that aren't as good. The economy is extremely healthy right now, and while indeed, there are inequalities in the American economy and we have lots of billionaires, this is still a good thing for everyone, even the "bottom 30%."

* The patently false assertion that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Yes, at the national level, there is gridlock, and until that ends only bipartisan policies can be adopted. But there is a huge difference between the parties and is shows up in state policy, in regulations, in foreign policy, in appointments including judicial appointments, and in the budgets and legislative efforts that do get proposed. This nihilism plays into the hands of people who oppose everything that they believe in and are trying to make the world worse.

* The failure to recognize that Israel is not just a puppet whom the U.S. President controls. The U.S. has some influence over Israel as a long time and important ally that provides it with a variety of kinds of aid that have helped it prevent its utter annihilation at the hands of hostile regional neighbors. But it has its own internal politics that are firmly in control of its policies.

* Allowing the best to be the enemy of the good. The standard against change should be measured is whether it makes the status quo better, not whether it is perfect in a utopian sense. In a democracy with divided control, perfect is rarely an option.

* An unwillingness to recognize that the lesser of two evils is the best that any democracy can offer. I didn't support Biden in the primaries in 2020 and argued strenuously that he wasn't the best choice. He won that election by less than a percentage point in the marginal state, and we can't know how other candidates would have done. I strongly favored having Biden not run again and leave the democrats with an open race to choose someone new. That didn't happen either. But that doesn't mean that Biden isn't profoundly better than Trump. Biden isn't a felon. Biden doesn't lie every time he opens his mouth. Biden understands how the government and the world work. Biden isn't openly hateful. Biden isn't trying to speed up climate change. Biden isn't coddling the rich to nearly the same extent.

* The false belief that essentially all sources of reliable information are corrupt and can't be trusted.

Politics is the art of the possible. Too many on the left don't recognize that and don't recognize that they don't have the political support necessary to make their vision happen overnight.

There are also select policy issues where left wing sentiment is well-intentioned but misguided:

* Opposition to nuclear power. It is cleaner and safer the opponents realize and the waste disposal issues are political rather than technical in nature.

* Opposition to marriage by minors, even when those minors are already in a relationship with someone and have children with them. In countries where there is no divorce or where minors are pushed into relationships that are imposed upon them this is a real problem. But the U.S. has no-fault divorce, and marriage empowers wives, rather than weakening them, by giving them more rights.

* Opposition to corporations when the real concern is with some other economic reality that really has nothing to do with the corporate form.

* Support for local businesses and independent businesses, when often those businesses are sometimes less efficient, and meet people's needs less well.

* Support for local family farms, when our very way of life is made possible by long distance trade in food stuffs and agricultural products, and when small family farms are an order of magnitude or two less productive per acre than larger farms. These farms are also often highly polluting and less safe.

* Support for AMTRAK even though it is mostly a dinosaur that is getting in the way of progress and needs absurdly high subsidies on most of its routes because the quality of the service it provides is so poor.

* The false belief that standardized tests are more racially biased and social class biased than other forms of evaluating students seeking to go to college.

* Afro-centrists who believe that, historically, Egyptians and the Moors were mostly sub-Saharan African in appearance.

Amtrak Ridership By Route

By comparison Greyhound served about 25 million passengers in 2023 and commercial airlines served about 369 million passengers.

Where Is The U.S. Political Divide Closest?

The chart

The chart above shows the results of the 2020 Presidential election, with the Biden electoral vote, popular vote and percentage of the vote, followed by the Trump electoral vote, popular vote, and percentage of the vote, followed by the popular vote and percentage of the vote for three third-party candidates, followed by Biden's margin of victory in popular votes and percentage of the vote. Electoral vote units in red voted for Trump and electoral vote units in blue voted for Biden.

The chart is sorted by Biden's margin of victory as a percentage of the vote and includes every state where the margin is less than ± 20%.

The chart omits the following eleven red states and one red Congressional district which Trump won with a margin of 20% or more, in order from least to mosts safe: Utah, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Nebraska's 3rd Congressional District.

The chart omits the following eight blue states, one Congressional District, and the District of Columbia which Biden won with a margin of 20% or more, in order from least to mosts safe: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine's 1st Congressional District, New York, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

Analysis

The chart is useful both as a gauge of which states are likely to be close in a 2024 rematch with the same top of the ticket candidates, and as a gauge of just how Republican or Democratic leaning various states are.

On the red side of the chart, the closest states were (from closest to least close): North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa.

On the blue side of the chart, the closest states were (from closest to least close): Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

In terms of the closeness of the vote without regard to the direction of the outcome, the closest states were (from closest to least close): Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.

Some other observations:

* Biden's campaign in 2024 needs to focus on holding states that he won in 2020. Biden won all four of the closest states, and six of the seven closest states. The battle ground states in 2024 will be Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan, where the winner in 2020 had less than a 3 percentage point margin of victory. It is quite unlikely that any other states will flip in 2024 from the 2020 result in this rematch election. Biden could win in 2024 with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan.

* Biden won 306 electoral votes in 2020 and needed 270 electoral votes to win. He could have still won without the 27 electoral votes of Georgia and Arizona. The marginal state was Wisconsin which Biden won by 0.63 percentage points. 

* The electoral college votes of the respective states will be a little different in 2024 due to the 2020 census results. Among states that Trump won in 2020, Texas gained two electoral votes, Florida, North Carolina, and Montana gained one, and Ohio and West Virginia each lost one, for a net gain of three electoral votes. Among states that Biden won in 2020, Colorado and Oregon each gained one electoral vote, while California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York each lost one, for a net loss of three electoral votes. These shifts wouldn't have changed the outcome in 2020, even if Biden had not won Georgia or Arizona.

* If Biden picks up any states that Trump won in 2024, his best shots are North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. North Carolina is a viable target. Florida would be hard but isn't outside the realm of possibility. But Texas would be a huge reach.

* Ohio and Iowa are lost causes for Biden. Trump has more than an 8 percentage point margin of victory in these states that not so long ago were "purple" swing states.

* Florida and Texas are much more evenly divided than you would expect from the stridently conservative policies of their state governments compared to states that are much more safely red states like Ohio and Iowa. Florida is, however, a lot less close in 2020, however, than it was, for example, in the race between Bush and Gore twenty years earlier, while Texas seems to be trending blue even though it has a way to go.

* Over the past four years, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida, and Texas, have gained a significant number of new residents from blue states. But Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan may have seen net outflows of liberals to other states.

* In every state, four more years of young and disproportionately minority and non-Christian voters have been added to the electorate (albeit with low voter turnout), and four years of older, disproportionately white, and disproportionately Christian voters have died.

* The abortion issue is likely to improve Democratic turnout more than it will impact Republican turnout in almost every state.

* Almost every red state has made it harder to vote in 2024 than it was in 2020. This could be a particular issue in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. 

* Going into the 2020 election Biden was polling with abut 51% of the vote in head to head polling, with a 7-8 percentage point lead over Trump, and in the actual election he won about 51% of the vote with a 4.5% lead over Trump, with a very large share of undecided voters breaking for Trump in the end. Current polling, after Trump's criminal convictions, has Biden and Trump at about ± 1 percentage point from each other (or worse), with Biden gaining about 3-4 percentage points in head to head polling from Trump's criminal convictions. Currently, Biden is polling significantly less well than he was on the eve of the 2020 election.

* The electoral college is still biased against Biden. Biden needs to win by about 4 percentage points in the national popular vote to win in the electoral college. So Biden needs to improve his polling by about three percentage points (and by six or seven percentage points if undecided voters break as they did in 2020). In a 269-269 electoral vote tie, Biden would probably lose to Trump in a contingent election on a state by state basis in Congress (which would also deny the District of Columbia any say in the outcome).

* A complicating factor is that independent candidate Kennedy in the Presidential race is polling at about 9% in national polls. It is likely that many respondents favoring candidates in polls would actually vote for either Trump or Biden in an actual general election, but it isn't clear how those voters would break. The current national polling average per FiveThirtyEight is Trump 41%, Biden 40% and Kennedy 9% (with the balance supporting other candidates or undecided). Biden currently trails Trump in the state by state polling averages in all seven of the battleground states.

Other considerations:

* The economy is exceptionally strong and this may penetrate into voter consciousness by the time that the general election is held, even though it has had a surprising weak impact so far.

* Trump's New York State criminal convictions may have more of an electoral impact once he is sentences for his felony convictions in July. 

* Trump's other three pending criminal cases are unlikely to proceed to trial before the election. The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively delayed Trump's D.C. January 6 related trial until after the election even though the charges in that case are very likely to be reinstated. A Georgia appellate court has effectively put the Georgia election fraud cases on hold until after the election. The Trump appointed federal judge in the Miami confidential documents criminal case against Trump is stalling, although there is still some chance that it could go to trial before the election. 

* It is unclear what impact, if any, Hunter Biden's recent criminal convictions will have on the election.

* It is unclear what impact, if any, the Presidential debates will have on the election.

Which Countries Are Most Technologically Advanced?

Which countries are most advanced technologically, or at least, more advanced than the U.S., in various areas?

Civilian technologies

Civil engineering

* Rapid construction of public works and high rise buildings: China

* Earthquake resistant construction: Japan

* Dikes and canals: Netherlands

Electronics, digital technology, and consumer products

* Software and Artificial Intelligence: U.S.

* Technologically advanced voting systems: Estonia 

* 5G cell phone networks: Finland

* Wi-Fi and broadband access: Lithuania and Finland

* Satellites (GPS, communications, Earth monitoring, and "telescopes"): U.S.

* Cashless consumer transactions: Sweden, Finland, China, South Korea, and the Netherlands

* Computer chip manufacturing and advance electronics design: Taiwan and Japan

* Cell phone design: U.S., Sweden, Japan

* Toilets: Japan

Medical and biotechnology

* Trauma centers and stroke centers: U.S.

* Using drones to deliver medical care: Sweden (e.g. to deliver AEDs or drugs to medical emergency scenes)

* Public health, epidemiology, and health oriented population genetics research: All Scandinavian countries (including Iceland)

* Pharmaceutical development: U.S., Denmark (e.g. inventing Ozempic), Finland, Germany

* Ancient DNA analysis: Germany

* Animal Cloning: South Korea

* Cannabis horticulture and processing: U.S.

Energy

* Fracking: U.S.

* Geothermal energy: Iceland

* Tidal energy generation: South Korea, France, and the U.K.

* Co-generation (efficiently using waste heat from power plants): Germany

* Nuclear power and nuclear fuel reprocessing: France

Transportation

* Commercial aircraft manufacturing: Europe (Airbus) and U.S.

* Civilian supersonic aircraft: U.S.

* Electric car batteries: Japan and the U.S.

* Electric car adoption: In order by market share: Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and China.

* High Speed Trains: Japan, France, and China

* Ferries: U.K. and Australia

* Airport Security Technology: U.K.

* Ice breaker ships and civilian nuclear ships: Russia

Pure Science

* Particle Accelerators: Switzerland. The U.S. and China are in second place.

* Moon exploration: China

* Mars and other solar system exploration: U.S.

* Space telescopes: U.S.

* Graduate science and engineering education: U.S.

Military technologies

Naval

* Diesel-electric submarines and air independent propulsion: Sweden

* Military nuclear submarines: U.S.

* Anti-submarine warfare: U.S.

* Aircraft carriers: U.S.

* Amphibious assault ships: U.S. and China

* Missile boats: China, with Iran also leading the U.S. in this area

* Torpedos: Russia, China, and U.S.

* Littoral patrol warcraft: Sweden and U.S.

Air Forces

* Military carrier based aircraft: U.S.

* Maritime patrol aircraft: U.S.

* Warplanes (including stealth): U.S.

* Military helicopters: U.S. followed closely by Russia

* Military transport planes: Europe (Airbus) followed closely by the U.S.

* Guided aircraft launched bombs: U.S.

* Military aerial drone production: U.S., followed by Turkey and Iran

Missiles and strategic weapons and counter-missile systems

* Tactical nuclear weapons: Russia

* Active defense systems to missiles and rockets: Israel and U.S.

* Localized active defenses (e.g. against artillery and anti-tank missiles): Israel

* Anti-aircraft missiles: Russia, U.S., Israel

* Artillery missiles and long range artillery rounds: U.S.

* Anti-tank missiles: U.S. and Germany

* Hypersonic missiles: China

Ground military systems and small arms

* Tanks: Israel and Germany, followed by U.S. and Russia.

* Recoilless rifles: Sweden

* Mortars: Finland

* Small arms (e.g. machine guns): U.S. and Israel

* Mine resistant armored vehicles: South Africa and U.S.

* Sniper and gunshot location: U.S.

* See though wall and around corners tech: Israel

Other Military Technology

* Military field medicine: U.S.

* Electronic intelligence and cryptography: U.S.  

U.S. Navy Cruisers v. Destroyers v. Frigates

Historically, cruisers were specialized to conduct anti-aircraft roles and destroyers were specialized to conduct anti-submarine roles, but both the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and the Arleigh Burke class destroyers are now multi-purpose surface combatants that conduct both anti-aircraft and anti-submarine roles, in addition to being used against surface warships, missiles, and targets on land. The distinction between the two classes of surface combatants has basically ended.

This historical role of frigates has varied over time and now refers to a smaller surface combatant that is still suitable for anti-warship and blue sea navy roles, in contrast to a cutter, which is generally used in U.S. service by the coast guard in roles other than engaging conventional naval forces.

The U.S. Navy is phasing out remaining 13 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers (a class which entered service in 1983) by September 30, 2027. Fourteen cruisers of this class have already been decommissioned. 

This is pretty much uncontroversial, because the 9,600 ton Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers are basically an older versions of the U.S. Navy's 8,300 to 9,700 ton Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers (a class which entered service in 1991), which it has 73 of, with more ordered. The Ticonderoga-class cruisers provide no significant capabilities not found in currently serving U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class destroyers. 

All of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers that are still in service have the Vertical Launch Missile system (122 cells in cruisers v. 96 in destroyers) as their primary weapon, 5" naval guns (2 in cruisers, 1 in destroyers), two torpedo tubes, two 25mm machine guns, the Aegis suite of sensors and weapons control systems, two defensive Phalanx Close In Weapons Systems (just one in later versions of the destroyer), and can carry two helicopters, all of which they share with the Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The Ticonderoga-class have addition 0.50 caliber machine guns and 8 Harpoon missiles. The destroyer has a laser dazzler and in some recent ones an offensive laser. They have similar speeds, although the cruiser has an almost 50% longer range at low cruising speeds. The cruiser has a crew of 330 and the destroyer has a crew of 323. The destroyer carries two small boats, mostly for boarding missions.

Only  three 15,656 ton Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers entered service (starting in 2016) and only two are in active service (twenty-nine planned ships in the class were canceled). The class was built around a major railgun weapon, or in lieu of that a 155mm advanced gun system, neither of which was ever built due to technical obstacles. It has a a crew of 175, a similar speed to other naval surface combatants, a helicopter and three helicopter drones, and two 30 mm cannons, which is less offensive and active defensive power than an Arleigh Burke despite its greater size. As a result, its role is undetermined. Mostly it is being kept around as a potential test bed for substitutes for its main gun of an undetermined type.

The other major U.S. Naval Combatants are frigates. The U.S. Navy has two kinds of them, the Littoral Combat Ship (in two designs, the 3,500 ton Freedom-class monohull design first commissioned in 2008 with 8 in service and 3 under construction, and the 3,422 ton Independence-class trimaran design first commissioned in 2010 with 15 in service and 2 under construction) which is being phased out early with seven already retired and no more planned beyond those already under construction, for the most part because the Navy does not feel that it has met its needs and because there have been some serious design defects. The U.S. Navy has also ordered the 7,291 ton Constellation-class guided missile frigate which is on order and is based upon a French design and projected to enter U.S. Navy service in 2029.

All older classes of cruisers and destroyers and frigates have been retired from active service in the U.S. Navy. The U.S. had already completely phased out the Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates from its surface combatant fleet in 2015.

Several new classes of cruisers and destroyers have been proposed, but none have entered production. For example, the CG(X) program to replace the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers was abandoned in 2010 on the grounds that it was duplicative of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers:

The CG(X) program was announced on 1 November 2001. An initial requirement for 18 CG(X) was raised to 19 under the plan for a 313-ship Navy in 2005.

A reassessment in 2007 suggested splitting the CG(X) into two classes, fourteen Zumwalt-sized "escort cruisers" and five 23,000 ton ballistic missile defense ships. There was political pressure for some or all of these ships to be nuclear powered.

The fiscal year (FY)2009 budget called for procurement of the first CG(X) in 2011, and the second in 2013. On 1 February 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled his proposed budget for FY2011. This budget called for, among other things, canceling the entire CG(X) program.

The program was cancelled in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. The CG(X)'s mission will instead be performed by DDG-51 Flight III destroyers, after the U.S. Navy concluded that the ships could rely on off-board and space-based sensors and so did not need a radar bigger than the DDG could carry.

The ongoing DDG(X) program is looking for a post-Zumwalt replacement for the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer. It optimistically targets a 2032 date to have the first member of this class built. Concepts for the DDG(X) imagine a hull and size and level of automation similar to the Zumwalt, and similar offensive and defensive weapons suites and a powerful laser weapon to use as an active defense system. But no specific design has been developed. The ability to reload the Vertical Launch system at sea is another capability that is currently being discussed as urgent for new ships and as a retrofit for older ships with these missiles.

Littoral combat ships can be specialized with modules, some of which are just beginning to enter service, for light surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, naval mine countermeasures, light amphibious warfare unit support, and anti-smuggling roles. But none of these missions has been very successful or received a warm reception from the Navy. Instead, the U.S. Navy has largely abandoned the idea of having specialized surface warships (apart from aircraft carriers, amphibious transports for Marine units, and hospital ships). The U.S. Navy has also largely abandoned the mission of having ships well equipped to provide fire support for Marines or other troops in coastal operations (a role that the Zumwalt class has been supposed to fill).

The U.S. Navy is not even actively developing a modern counterpart to the battleship, a large, heavy surface warship with as many naval guns that are as heavy as possible as it could manage, and heavy hull armor. Battleships haven't been used in warfare since 1991, when they provided naval support fire for troops in the Gulf War, and left U.S. Navy service in 2010. There are no battleships in service anywhere in the world, although Russia's one solitary Kirov class battle cruiser comes close (Russia also has two somewhat smaller cruisers  and one Kirov class ship in the dockyard being refurbished).

Indeed, only a small number of world navies have any ships above the frigate class.

For example, only a few ships are viewed as cruisers today except by the U.S., which is decommissioning them, and the Russian Navy, which has three in active service. The Italian Navy has an aircraft carrier that it calls a cruiser and while "the Type 055 of the Chinese Navy is classified as a cruiser by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Chinese consider it a guided-missile destroyer."

If Mermaids Went To School

artist: rojirojiroji

 

Quote Of The Day

N must have been likeable, because he had been married several times.

- Dan Danbom on Facebook (June 7, 2024).

Why Are Buses And Intracity Rail In The U.S. So Crime Ridden?

The biggest reason for low bus and intracity rail usage in the United States by international standards is that crime in and around transit is high and these means of transportation don't feel safe. It is a long standing issue, and it isn't nearly such a serious problem in countries all of the world. 

Israelis, for example, packed buses in the course of living their every day lives, even when suicide bombers were terrorizing those buses.

A recent Denver Post story quantifies and characterizes the problem in Denver's transit system.

When Denver resident Jana Angelo rides the Regional Transportation District’s buses and trains, she feels trapped and says she sometimes hugs herself for fortitude.

She’s smelled fumes from passengers smoking fentanyl. She’s heard unhinged riders’ rants. Two “really high” men once fought right in front of her, said Angelo, 29.

“I was like, ‘Stop the bus!’ ” she said. “But the driver did not.”

Angelo packs a knife just in case, she said, and wears headphones, avoiding conversation. . . .

Passengers on RTD’s buses and trains were assaulted or threatened at the rate of one per day over the last three years, according to agency records obtained by The Denver Post. RTD drivers also are assaulted regularly — more than 100 times a year on average since 2019, records show — as they work amid crime and antisocial behavior, including riders using illegal drugs and unhoused people who sleep in station elevators and on climate-controlled buses and trains. 

. . .

The agency’s general manager, Debra Johnson, acknowledged the problems and said ensuring safety is critical. She’s discussed rising violence and crime in public transit with her counterparts in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“We’re all adversely impacted by the same elements of society,” Johnson said in an interview, referring to mental health problems, substance use and homelessness. “These are societal issues. Whatever’s happening in a municipality is going to spill over into the transit system. What are we collectively doing to help minimize and mitigate these societal issues?” 

. . .

RTD bus driver Dan Day, 43, recalled how, on a cold day in 2020 during his first year on the job, he saw a man down, bleeding from his head, while another man kicked him at the Decatur Station along Federal Boulevard.

Day took the bleeding man onto the bus and handed him paper towels. As he steered the bus around the station, the attacker approached it, pointing a gun. He climbed on, aiming the barrel at the bleeding man. Day was caught between them, learned it was a dispute about a sister, and brokered a truce.

“I had a sense he wouldn’t shoot,” Day said. “…I was just trying to follow procedure, to call dispatch, let them know what happened.”

RTD supervisors offered him therapeutic counseling. He declined, turning instead to classic stoic philosophers: “My own tools to just cope with scary and difficult situations,” Day said. “Keep yourself in the moment. This is just a moment in time. It is going to pass.” 

. . .

RTD bus drivers and train operators were physically assaulted 463 times between January 2019 and April 2024 — a rate of roughly seven assaults per month, according to the records obtained by The Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request.

In addition, drivers have reported 501 verbal assaults and threats of violence since 2021 — a dozen per month on average, the records show.

Assaults and threats targeting RTD passengers happen more often, according to the records. Since January 2021, 1,375 passengers have experienced physical assaults and verbal threats along bus and rail routes, records show. That’s an average of 34 a month over the past three years.

The troubles appear concentrated along busy streets including Colfax Avenue, Broadway and Federal Boulevard.

RTD’s transit police have been busy. The agency’s tallies show that, during the first half of 2023, transit officers made a monthly average of 36 arrests. They responded to a monthly average of 60 assaults, 486 disturbances, 1,206 drug-related incidents, 389 trespasses and 58 instances of vandalism, according to an agency document.

This year, a homicide on an RTD bus in west Denver heightened concerns. A 13-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting on Jan. 27 of a 60-year-old grandfather whose leg was blocking an RTD bus aisle.

Illegal drug use happens almost daily, drivers and train operators say. 

. . .

Light rail operator Roy Martinez, who previously worked as a bus driver and endured assaults, said he regularly smells illegal drugs on light-rail trains such as the E Line that connects downtown Denver with the south suburbs.

Typically, a rider places a fentanyl pill on a piece of foil and crushes it. Then the rider lights the powder and, hunkering under a hood or blanket, inhales the fumes.

Those fumes rise and spread through the train’s air system, Martinez said, noting he detects odors inside the locked front cabin where he runs the train. There’s no option but to push through to the next stop. “Then you stop the train, open the doors, air it out,” he said.

From the Denver Post.

The story presents a mix of questions and answers, some tucked away behind the scenes.

One obvious issue is that the U.S. has a weak social safety net, and the highest percentage of people who drive their own cars, if their licenses aren't revoked, and don't use transit. Transit is disproportionately left with people who are too disabled to drive, people whose licenses have been revoked, and people who are very poor. Even people without licenses who have money often ride share instead.

So, transit is heavily weighted with very poor people and is not well counter-balanced, most of the time, with middle class and more affluent people. It is also heavily weighted with people who have lost driver's licenses due to illegal conduct and substance abuse.

Big cities in the U.S. with transit systems also tend to have riders who lack social cohesion that can impose order through nearly universally held social norms, in lieu of formal law enforcement.

But another issue is that policy makers and people who talk about policy and involved in politics, like me, struggle to understand why people who act in anti-social ways in and around transit are acting the way that they do.

I can completely understand why someone might become addicted to smoking fentanyl. But I can't fathom at all why someone would feel like this is an activity that makes sense to engage in while riding a bus or a light rail train.

I'm comfortable trusting that Debra Johnson, the general manager of Denver's Regional Transportation District has a better handle on what's going on that I do. She blames mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness.

In other words, mentally ill and homeless drug users tend to use drugs on buses and train cars because that's more comfortable than doing it on the streets, under a bridge, or in an alley.

Public libraries, which are one of the few places you can just hang out without paying money, in a place shielded from the weather, face similar problems, although seemingly, fewer violent assaults.

Anecdotally, at least, the assaults seem to be driven by poor people with a lack of an ability to control anger and impulse, and a lack of access in terms of both personal social skills and formal access to other recourse to resolve situations where they feel aggrieved. 

It isn't that working class and middle class people don't often do some of the same things. But they don't do that at bus stops, on buses, and on light rail trains. Driving a car reduces the amount of potentially triggering interactions you have with other people, although even that doesn't stop road rage incidents.

These situations on transit and in urban neighborhoods are something that urban people can't ignore, which is one of the reasons that urban people tend to be more liberal.

The whole situation is also an apt example of what makes illegal drugs a problem that we have invoked the criminal justice system to address, even if it has done a very poor job of it. Most vices, including illegal drug use, are primarily a problem because they are instrumental in creating a "bad neighborhood." 

If drug users were out of sight in an opium den somewhere, and didn't bother everyone else, we'd care less. And, modern opium dens might even be equipped to deal with overdoses and other forms of drug induced anti-social behavior.

Voters Don't Care If Elected Officials Did A Good Job

Governments that implement (or keep in place) policies with higher levels of support in the electorate do not do better in subsequent elections. This result holds when controlling for the state of the economy, and when using other, country-specific, datasets. The study reinforces conclusions from previous research that retrospective policy voting seems to be very limited.

From the journal Electoral Studies, in a study which had a quite large data sample. 

Twelve Judgments About People Based Upon Their Actions And Beliefs

If you don't tip your server in a sit down restaurant in the U.S., when the server didn't try to kill you or gratuitously insult you in a severe way, you are a bad person.

If you think it is O.K. to deny a child a school lunch because that child doesn't have money with them to pay for it, you are a bad person.

If you try to ban a book at a public library or school library, you are a bad person.

If you report someone, who is otherwise law abiding, to immigration officials for being an undocumented immigrant, you are a bad person.

If you support Trump over Biden for the U.S. Presidency, there is at least an 80% chance that you are a bad person.

If you believe that God commanded you to condemn gay people, and you try to follow that command, you are a bad person.

If you carry a gun in the grocery store and this isn't part of your job, you are a bad person.

If you aren't in the military or a SWAT team, and you aren't a museum curator, and you buy or build an assault rifle, you are a bad person.

If your truck "rolls coal" you are a bad person.

If you throw trash out of the window of your vehicle onto the ground you are a bad person.

If you believe that a young woman or girl who can't marry without parental consent or the consent of a court should need parental or court permission to get an abortion, you are a bad person.

If you do not provide medical care to treat your children for an injury, illness, or preventative medicine, because it conflicts with your religious beliefs, you are a bad person.

A Quick Rant

I am disgusted that so many Americans support Donald Trump when his mendacity and incompetence are so widely known. Some of the GOP and political right's high profile figures are almost as bad: Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and more.

I am disgusted at the corruption on the U.S. Supreme Court by justices like Thomas and Alito, and by the gross disregard for judicial norms and logic and common sense in many of the rulings it has made since the 6-3 conservative majority was put in place on the court (through dubious political tactics).

I am tired of the counter-majoritarian rules of the U.S. federal government lead to gridlock most of the time.

I am tried of having to deal with people who make bad decisions based upon the misinformation they receive from Fox News and less prestigious conservative news outlets.

I am tired of having my country's policies influenced by people who don't believe in evolution, who think the world is flat, who think the moon landing was faked, who think that the U.S. government is hiding secret technologies it received from aliens after they crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, who think that Noah's flood really happened, who think that vaccines are a threat but prayer heals, and on and on and on. And, I am tired of the nut jobs like Tucker Carlson and Evangelical Christian clergy who perpetuate these absurdities.

I am tired of living in a country where one of two major political parties, the Republican Party, absolutely refuses to acknowledge reality and embraces corruption and criminality and political violence. I want a political environment where you can have your own opinions but you are not free to make up your own facts, and everyone has to obey the law.

I am tired of living in a world where a handful of authoritarian bad actors like the current leaders of Russia and North Korea, can cause so immense harm to global peace. 

I despair that in the 21st century, Saudi Arabia is still executing people for witchcraft. 

Quotes About SCOTUS

I don’t need a black robe to hand down a judgment on the Supreme Court. It’s corrupt, rotten and hurting America.

From Maureen Dowd, "The Verdict Is In on the Supreme Court" New York Times (June 4, 2024).

The Roberts Court also has a history of embracing legal arguments that were widely viewed as risible by the legal community after those arguments were adopted by the Republican Party.

From Ian Millhiser, "Trump wants the Supreme Court to toss out his conviction. Will they? It’s hard to see how they’d do it legally, but this Court has a history of reading the law creatively." Vox (June 5, 2024).

Statistics About This Blog And Its Sister Blog

I've made 9,231 at this blog and 2,598 posts at its sister blog, Dispatches from Turtle Island, for a total of 11,829 posts, beginning in early July of 2005, about 19 years ago, a pace of 622 blog posts per year, although I've posted less in recent years than I did at first. 

This year, I'm on a pace to make about 360 posts between the two blogs, although this was depressed a bit when I was sick earlier this year and the pace for the rest of the year may be a bit higher.

The images below of the blogger stats page for each of these blogs (which were made before one final Dispatches from Turtle Island post was made) also show that these blogs have a surprisingly high amount of readership. They show that, between them, in May of 2024, the two blogs combined had 171,560 views (about 5,534 views daily, on average, although it fluctuated a lot depending upon when I post). Wash Park Prophet is licensed to LexisNexis and I make about $2 a month of royalties from that, which needless to say, in negligible.

For all time, the two blogs combined have had 6,545,145 views. By comparison, my posts at Law.SE (where I have the highest all time reputation of any user at the site) over the last 7 years and 7 months have had about 6.1 million views, and my posts at Politics.SE in roughly the same time period (where I am a moderator) have reached about 1.9 million people.

360 x 360

In the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, two of the biggest vulnerabilities of occupying U.S. and allied forces that the local resistance in Iraq and Taliban in Afghanistan used were to shoot exposed gunners with snipers, and to use improvised explosive devices (IEDs), as land mines (sometimes controlled visually by cell phones), to exploit the flat bottoms of Humvees, tanks, and other armored vehicles.

Humvees weren't designed to be on the front lines, but ended up there in wars that had no front lines.

Armored vehicles, including tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, were designed to have side armor protecting them from direct fire in a two dimensional battlefield, and had the heaviest armor on the front where their opponents were supposed to be.

In the moment, the U.S. bought mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to respond to those threats. These featured curved rear surfaces to deflect blast energy from mines and make IEDs less effective, and either protected or remote controlled gunner positions to protect gunners from ambushes.

But neither the M1 Abrams tank, nor the M2 Bradley Infantry fighting vehicle, which are the mainstay of U.S. Army armored forces, were redesigned to provide mine and IED resistance, although some upgrades to protect gunners from ambushes and sniper fire were adopted.

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) that has replaced the Humvee has the features of the MRAP, but more thoughtfully put together without the time pressure of a war being conducted.

The Ukraine war has cast attention on another of the problems with almost all armored vehicles in protection. They almost all have lighter armor on top, because the threats that their armor was designed to stop were expected to come from opponents, like other tanks, in front of them, or at most, on the sides in a two-dimensional plane. So, almost all existing armored vehicles are especially vulnerable to anti-tank missiles and artillery rounds that strike from above, and to bombs dropped from drones and loitering munitions from above, relative to strikes from the front where their armor is strongest. Tens of thousands of armored vehicles in Ukraine on both sides of the conflict, modern and dated alike, have fallen to top side attacks.

A new generation of front line military vehicles and systems need to be defended not only from the 360 degrees surrounding the vehicle from all sides in a two dimensional plane, but also from threat below, like land mines and IEDs, from above, and from all angles from low to high in between, including fire from the side from ditches, and fire from above from tall buildings or mountains.

The Limits Of Armor

Of course that's not the only design issue facing armor in an era of new threats.

Offense has surpassed passive defenses for the foreseeable future. The maximum feasible amount of armor protection comes with immense weight, makes it hard to deploy to the conflict quickly, slows the vehicle down, makes it vulnerable to mud or pits and trenches, and makes it less fuel efficient with a longer and vulnerable logistics supply chain. But even maximal armor can be overcome by much smaller, lighter anti-armor missiles. And, lesser strikes to tracks on the vehicle, for example, can produce soft kills that force troops to abandon it.

While armor is invincible against small arms fire and shrapnel, and provides some meaningful protection against lighter anti-tank weapons like 20mm to 50mm canons and RPGs, no amount of armor is going to prevent a direct hit from an anti-armor tank round, an artillery shell, an anti-tank missile, and a guided bomb dropped by fighter aircraft or a bomber. For those threats, the only defenses are to be out of range, to be undetected, or to have active defenses.

When it comes to deployments, airlift and transportation of armored vehicles by rail and road bridges built to civilian standards in most places where the U.S. might go to war is greatly impeded for vehicles with more than 38 tons or so, while vehicles of 19 tons or less are much more easily deployed by air (including a C-130) and across civilian road and rail bridges.

The Problems With Tracked Vehicles

The same considerations that disfavor heavy armor also disfavor tracked vehicles. Tracked vehicles top out at about 45 miles per hour and that simply isn't fast by any measure. At that speed, even trying to get out of range of incoming opposition forces is basically futile. And, any military unit with even a single tracked vehicle is limited to the speed of its slowest vehicle. The last sixty years of experience have shown that the off road capabilities of tracked vehicles are utilized much less than planners anticipated (and again, a whole unit can't travel off road unless every vehicle in the unit has that capability), and the comparative disadvantage of wheeled vehicles designed to be used off road against tracked vehicles has greatly declined. Also, slow, heavy, tracked vehicles are hard to hide and not being seen by opponents who can destroy you until it is too late is critical in modern ground warfare. A drone can easily see where a tracked vehicle has been and trace that to its target. Tracked vehicles use at least twice as much fuel per mile as comparable wheeled vehicles.

Tracker artillery vehicles and missile launchers are ill suited to modern "shoot and scoot" tactics.

Active Defenses

Active defenses, in contrast, have made immense leaps and bounds. Electronic warfare devices can disrupt the controls of remote controlled or GPS guided weapons. Automated active response systems can shoot and defeat incoming drones, missiles, and shells before they hit an armored vehicle, leaving its armor to merely deflect shrapnel. Long range anti-air and anti-tank missiles can defeat incoming ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, drones, and enemy armored vehicles before they are within the range of direct fire weapons like the main gun of a tank, cannons, rocket propelled grenades, recoilless rifles (a.k.a. bazookas), or other enemy weapon ranges.

Vulnerable Logistics Supply Lines

Logistics also takes on a new relevance in an era of war without true front lines. No military unit can get far without supplies of fuel, ammunition, food, and water. The heavier and less fuel efficient military vehicles are, the more fuel they need. The more "dumb" their weapons are, the more ammunition they need. But in a world without front lines, logistics supply trucks are vulnerable because they are softer targets than armored vehicles. Increasingly, however, logistics vehicles need to be as protected against hostile fire as the vehicles which were traditionally the tip of the spear. So, we need to minimize the size of the logistics supply line and to make the vehicles that are a part of it more survivable, to at least the point of armored personnel carriers.