Bayesian analysis says that one should be careful and diligent whenever possible to "check your priors," the beliefs and prejudices one carries with one into a given situation that cloud one's judgment. I am feeling that now.
Perestroika and glasnost kicked off in Russia when I was in college. The Berlin Wall fell in '89. Nikolai Ceausescu and his wife were shot in 1989. Mandela was released in early 1990, Freedom was on the march globally. This has formed the backdrop to my whole adult life, so the narrative seemed inevitable.
Recent events have seriously called that into question, I won't enumerate all of them, but it hasn't been just one thing. It has been complexity defined. Putin's invasion of Ukraine really demonstrates how high the stakes are.
Of course the whole situation is greatly complicated by the improvements in living standards we've seen in societies where freedom is under the most acute threat, specifically China and Russia. To what extent are those improvements a function of the opening of those societies to markets, and to what extent do they derive from the stability of their governments? We think one thing, Xi and Putin another. That's where the rubber meets the road. Time will tell.
One other thing. The Journal today quotes Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Captain in the Navy of all things, of saying in a debate about gas tax relief that Americans shouldn't be bearing the cost of this conflict. Oh yes we should, motherfucker. All of us. We are not at risk of losing our lives yet, but we have money and at the very least we need to be contributing that.
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