Aiki-ken at Ryo Bo Zen OnAlex and Lisa MIyaguchiCriag Capistran, Mischa Mulligan, Alex Leavens in France
I posted this shortly after his memorial, but took it down almost immediately after because it was inadequate. It still is.
Alex was a talented Aikidoist and I had the privilege of being his sempai, training partner, and teacher. His Aikido had precision and power. He left the art too soon.
We didn’t stay in close contact once he and Asako separated and he left the dojo. Every so often we met by happenstance on the street and then at PSU where he was taking writing classes and I guest lectured on real estate.
I did reach out once to ask him to spend a day teaching Kyrian primitive skills.
Although I knew he had started writing, I never read any of his poetry until after he was dead. I had forgotten that he collected and restored axes.
Gonzalo Flores and Leslie Peterson met me at the memorial. A sad context to see old friends. It was difficult to speak with his sister and mother – what does one say to a grieving family whose son and brother took his own life?
Measure 110 which decriminalized possession of drugs is a great libertarian ideal – the state has no business regulating what any individual decides to do with or put into their body. The social benefit, thought legislators, would be that the burden on the criminal justice system would be lessened and provide greater justice to racial minorities who are disproportionately arrested for possession.
The Economist first reported on Oregon’s experiment and provided Portugal as an examplar, but quoted a salient warning from Portugal’s National Coordinator for Drugs and Drug Addiction, “Decriminalising without doing anything else does not lead to any improvement of the situation.” Oregon legislators ignored the advice and moved with ready-fire-aim implementation. None of the warnings heeded nor support systems implemented:
He warns policymakers that any plan to decriminalise drugs must consider four factors: accessible treatment, prevention, harm reduction and reintegration. In Portugal, first-time offenders go before a panel at the Ministry of Health and receive a warning. Subsequent violations within five years of the first offence incur either a fine or other administrative sanction, such as community service. Punishment is individualised. Someone struggling with drug dependency may receive therapy, while a recreational user battling with depression may receive mental-health care.
Portugal has the advantage of being a sovereign country – Oregon forgot that it is not and Portland in specific became a Lorenzian attractor for addicts. The derelict non-contributors who flocked to downtown Portland are not all home grown.
Roaches in the rain
Measure 110 became law on February 1, 2021 in the wake of the Floyd riots of 2020 and the defund the police outcry – inflamed by Jo Ann Hardesty. We now have a police force gutted by retirement, largely demoralized, and undermined by the DA (thanks for nothing Mike Schmidt). Any surprise that Portland has become an open air, use and abuse drug market?
Every day I walk our properties and see the impacts. I watch the fentanyl zombies with their tinfoil getting high in alcoves. They congregate in clumps and shuffle – it’s like walking through a set for The Last Of Us.
A week ago, I saw one of them frantically call out for naloxone to help a fellow zombie who had just overdosed. I watched some Good Samaritan actually look through his backpack to find some. It took a measure of will on my part not to stop him with a “Why bother?” Oregon is considering legislation to make Narcan easy to purchase to help reverse these overdoses. Why bother.
Legislators were reckless in allowing decriminalization of possession without guardrails around their public use (still a criminal act, just unenforced) and without a mandate for treatment for chronic abuse. Responsible adults should never be accountable for what they put in themselves in the privacy of their homes – but everyone on the streets of Portland has violated that civil contract. They have forsaken agency.
Reformers are incredibly dangerous in their righteousness. Yes, there were felony imprisonments, admittedly an inefficient outcome, but at least under criminalization, possession charges were a tool to force people into treatment in lieu of punishment. Now its a voluntary admittance which – shocker – hasn’t worked:
Trying to get people into treatment through citations does not work, says Keith Humphreys of Stanford University. Without meaningful pressure on drug addicts, he says, “there is no mechanism at all to get them to change their behaviour.” From the 4,000 citations issued in Oregon in the first two years of the policy, fewer than 200 people called the hotline and fewer than 40 were interested in treatment. It has cost taxpayers $7,000 per call.
The problem remains a human one. Reformers assumed addicts could respond rationally to incentives. This is the same inane lack of understanding that leads the same type to believe that harsher gun laws will prevent incorrigibles from committing horrible murders. Limiting access to the means of destruction will not solve the behavioral impulse to commit the crimes.
You cannot legislate human behavior or its improvement. That takes true education.
Education: 1530s, “child-rearing,” also “the training of animals,” from French education (14c.) and directly from Latin educationem (nominative educatio) “a rearing, training,” noun of action from past-participle stem of educare (see educate). Originally of instruction in social codes and manners; meaning “systematic schooling and training for work” is from 1610s.
China is a real geopolitical threat because of Xi.
TikTok is Chinese owned and the potential for data mining is real. But Washington’s reflex has been fear mongering rather than analysis; turning a genuine security concern into an excuse for domestic control.
Technological advances have always favored tyrants, so we are right to be circumspect. But there is a very dangerous expansion of US governmental powers in the vague language of the Restrict Act. We have been here before and should recognize the clear and present danger in this proposed legislation: it is just as odious as the Patriot Act.[1]
Legislation predicated on fear is never prudent.
Under the Act, the Department of Commerce would identify and ban information and communications technology products that a foreign adversary has any interest in, or poses an unacceptable risk to national security. The current list of “foreign adversaries” includes China (as well as Hong Kong); Cuba; Iran; North Korea; Russia, and Venezuela. That list can change without new legislation by administrative fiat.
Protecting US interests is critical and restricting our governmental use and purchase of products and services from foreign adversaries should be a given. We shouldn’t be buying chips produced or software developed in China for use in governmental or military applications – clearly. But allowing the government to regulate and punish (with 20 years jail time!) its citizens who use these platforms and technology is a brazen over-reach.
I fear that the legislation will in fact be enacted.
Why do people forget the very purpose of the Constitution was to limit governmental powers and not enumerate them? True leadership is needed to avoid trying to solve problems with legislation. The Founders knew the frailty of human nature and built safe guards within the framework. Yet from the beginning we have chipped away at those bedrock restraints, usually in the name of safety or virtue.
My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Too many historians of American politics laud the ambitious moralists without understanding the damage done. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society expanded governmental power to its current near-regulatory omnipotence.
Just read closely the implications of Wickard v. Filburn. The Commerce clause and the Department of Commerce is perhaps the single most powerful legislative arm the US government has in controlling the behavior of its citizens.
Tremble before Leviathan.
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With serendipitous timing, I decided to re-watch Rising Sun (1993) with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. I had forgotten the plot of the movie which is boiler-plate detective but is worth watching because it shows the importance of understanding cultural nuance, and more importantly, memorializes American fears about Japan in the early 90s.
The story revolves around an apparent murder connected to the Nakamoto corporation which is in the midst of sensitive negotiations for the acquisition of an American semiconductor company. The acquisition requires Congressional approval and after the murder, a key Senator – who was a guest at the party – abruptly changes his stance and signals he is now in favor of approving the sale. The game is afoot!
The parallels to our current concerns about China are striking. In the early 90s, Japan proved its industrial prowess – dominating (and decimating) US production in several sectors: primarily automotive and consumer electronics. (The movie also highlights early video imaging and editing technology – a key plot device that should heighten concerns on current AI capabilities.)
The political fears were palpable – three Republican members of the House destroyed a boombox in chambers in protest of Toshiba indirectly selling sensitive technology to USSR.The Coming War with Japan (1991) predicted the inevitability of a shooting war with Japan.
None of these fears materialized. Although Japan was running a mammoth trade surplus in 1993, that was no guarantee of economic success and in fact their domestic bubble was about to burst.
Although he doesn’t address the US fears of Japan (including Clinton’s hot-mic bashing) in the early 90s, Peter Zeihan provides a concise summary of the current state of relations between Japan and the US. Japan’s challenge to the US economy was brief and unsustainable, and more significantly, Japan now clearly understands its dependence upon the US.
Given this historical arc, does that mean our current fear of China is overblown? No – precisely because Xi has consolidated power in manner no Japanese minister ever could. A totalitarian concentration of power makes the entire nation state subject to Xi’s whims and makes his flunkies dangerously skittish. Until the people can assert their agency, China will remain an unpredictable but very real threat.
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[1] I hate politicians precisely because of their dissembling character. In a hasty response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress enacted “The USA Patriot Act: Preserving Life and Liberty.” Like most legislation, its title promised what its text revoked. The liberty of US citizens was trampled and the lives of suspect terrorists were made forfeit at the whim of US presidents. Bush II at least had vengeance as an excuse (petty as it was), but Obama – who won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” (farce!) – happily renewed this travesty of law under the new sobriquet “The USA Freedom Act.” Legislation he as a Senator railed against, he endorsed when it was his turn to wield its power – and using it drastically more often than Bush II. So much for international diplomacy. Watch Judge Napolitano and spend An Evening with him.
