Xisssh

The protests in China against Xi's draconian "zero Covid" policies have inspired some loosely connected thoughts. The first is that, obviously, as with any public health intervention, we need to weight the costs and benefits. The cost of essentially totally shutting down city neighborhoods, factories, even whole cities, and not allowing people to leave their houses for days or weeks on end, is incalculable. Far less stringent policies proved unacceptable to many people elsewhere, though not necessarily based on good information. Nevertheless there were costs to people's social and emotional well-being, to children's learning, and to businesses. 

 

It's a complicated question, with no exact right answer, what measures were worth it, and I''m certainly in favor of retrospective assessment. Now that most of our population is vaccinated -- sadly, not all -- we've decided to pretend it's over. I'm don't think that's right either, we may be in for a rude surprise. We'll see.

 

In the case of China, however, Xi has obviously gone much too far. His attempt to essentially exterminate the virus in his vast realm by imprisoning millions of people in their homes was doomed to failure and, unacceptably costly, and even in the tightly controlled Chinese society inevitably going to cause social unrest. The folly is compounded by his refusal to import effective vaccines, even though the Chinese vaccines don't work very well. The problem is he doesn't get advice, or he doesn't listen to it, nobody will tell him that he's wrong, and the security forces blindly obey insane orders. 

There are people right here in the U.S. who seem to believe that democracy is inefficient or produces results they don't like, and that some form of autocratic rule will make a nation stronger or greater (whatever that means). I need only point to North Korea, Vladimir Putin's catastrophic rule, and the debacle in China. I believe I've already mentioned that I'm reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, so that should say enough. What puzzles me is how these men stay in power, when it must be obvious to all around them that their judgment is disastrous. 

Which brings us to the inexplicable inability of Republican politicians to repudiate their increasingly deranged and deluded former president. What is stopping the Republican congressional leadership from calling a press conference, standing together, and saying "This guy is nuts"? It is a great mystery. 

PS: If you think you have never met any white supremacists, you must be one.