Report to the Watch on Xi Jinping and the Three Stooges

The noosphere of our planet is full of people asking what to make of the incredible political changes of the past two weeks. The most dramatic change was Donald Trump suddenly giving up on the fight against what he called “radical Islam” (a bad term but a serious problem), declaring it won and over, shutting down our protection of the Kurds and shutting down the US government itself, turning over the Department of Defense to a corporate lobbyist, and aligning with Erdogan, a major stooge of the Third Caliphate movement – supporting even the use of murder by Erdogan in his efforts to build a new global caliphate under himself. I found it equally sad when Putin himself a few days before made it clear he had no constraints in supporting Erdogan’s ambitions, even to the point of hurting the Ukrainian people in an unnecessary and gratuitous way, and giving a great personal insult to the same Trump who was willing to carry his water. As of now, much of my mind now insists on considering Erdogan, Putin and Trump as the Three Stooges, Erdogan being the chief Stooge. Stooge for exactly whom? Putin and Trump clearly both dramatically underestimate the people and forces behind Erdogan.

Putin and Trump clearly support the greater use (AND CENTRAL CONTROL OF) of the kind of information technology which would create a top-down system of control of human thoughts and actions, which would fit the vision in the book 1984. This is clearly the kind of cynical “multipolar world” which FSB people have been pushing for for at least ten years.  (It is curious, when I go to google image search, the 55 faces it now shows include three Russian bankers I met only once… who explained their vision to me, along with many other folks at Rhodos.) (By the way, the capital letters in parentheses were Google’s idea. I accept its emphasis.) But Erdogan’s vision is quite different; he has shown a remarkable ability to cynically manipulate others like Trump, even as Trump does the same to his base.

Erdogan’s system, supporters and vision for the future of the earth remind me a lot of what I read in McNeil, Rise of the West, discussing the First Caliphate, the Abbasids.  Moving towards a combination of very strict sharia top-down restrictions on all commoners, combined with cynical corruption, hedonism, lies and repression by folks in power with pretensions to spiritual leadership. It is dramatically different from the more enlightened second Caliphate, centered on Istanbul and Sufi disciplines, which Erdogan and his allies want to kill off. Kill, literally. France24 has had a great series on Tripoli, showing how the Moslem Brotherhood (MB) types have been killing and oppressing sufis in that area… as in Pakistan… as in India… even trying to do the same in XinJiang and Xian itself!!! (Do they covet Lop Nor as the next addition to their caliphate? Hey, I have seen their operatives in Urumqi, fiddling with elevators…) Oh, and funding and supporting allies like folks in a certain Texas Mafia (think of Cruz, Lamar Smith, Tom Delay… whom I have also seen all too close up.

I have to admit, I was somewhat reassured when the Kurds linked up with Assad and Russia, and when Putin did provide at least some local limit to the Third Caliphate. But Putin has waffled like Loki for many, many years here, and shows no sign of understanding the limits to the vision for the future, in the novel 1984 which would ultimately crush the souls of humans and result in my view in the termination of their bodily existence as well. (In technical terms, the problem is that glorifying Nash equilibrium prevents rational cooperation and even prevents efficient market design in the general case.)  His involvement in the Airport Fake Coup in Ankara makes that clear enough, as do many other things, yea unto the blood which flows from blood sacrifices in certain places in Russia itself.  The movement behind Erdogan is in many ways a serious spiritual force as well, just like the thoughts of the Unabomber (do see the great Netflix video!). The hopes of the human species… are a matter of finding a sustainable path between Scylla and Charybdis, between fire and ice, between the “ice” of misued technology which folks like Taliban rightly oppose to the death, and the “fire” of the wild chaos and oppression which unabomber types would also wreak upon the world, also crushing the humans. How to develop advanced science which we really need, without being used and abused by the Three Stooges trying to re-enact 1984? (Obviously Xi Jinping is facing these questions, and this is part of the background leading to what he must face,

And what we must face very gingerly in order to be positive and constructive.)

There have been a couple of bits of real good news in the past two weeks. One, in advanced technology, is probably not appropriate for pubic posting yet. Another was the bipartisan sentencing reform, where a spokesman for the Koch brothers spoke clearly and decisively in favor of the deep value of human potential, which I view as “God’s main bottom line on earth which we must meet or die.” That was so great to hear. CNN also says that Trump is listening more to Rand Paul, who also speaks for freedom and human potential. Great fundamental values which we should never forget.  But we should never just kowtow to them, with eyes closed and rear ends in the air; the challenge is how to make real inner freedom and diversity of thought really available to real humans all over the earth, while also supporting voluntary human connections, also a deep part of natural human brains and soul both. The sad fact is that many well-placed people employ apparatchiks who implement the diametric opposite of what their bosses think they are getting; Koch money is often allied with money from folks like what Michael Lewis depicts who want to get rid of humans altogether, channeled through groups in DC, supporting folks ala Cheney who are the most severe threat to real freedom in the US today. When I worked at DOE, I remember being bemused when the House would send orders to DOE which seemed to rotate about 20 degrees on each layer down through the hierarchy, such that the orders on the ground were to oppose 180 degrees with maximum energy what Congress asked for. But now I know much more about the “wires” from the outside which inject that kind of spin. The (very serious and very real) antiAmderican “deep state” is actually the spin coming from an antistate, which simply wlil become more oppressive if the legal one subject to oversight is weakened. And so, well-meaning followers of God from Ankara to Texas end up injecting their energy to support oppression of the human spirit, which may simply put us all in the red and terminate our enterprise, if we do not do a bit better.

And so: could Xi Jinping help us somehow to muddle through in this century and not be killed  by the Three Stooges?

In truth, I have often hoped for that.

Xi even published an article in Qiushi (sp?) before he rose to power, which discussed the need to fuse objective and subjective viewpoints, a key part of what we need to do to develop sane policy, sane cooperation, and a sustainable path between fire and ice (subjectivism fire and cold formal ice). He learned BOTH about Buddha AND about Marx, imperfect thinkers who nonetheless offered a few key seeds needed to fill in the potentially fatal gaps both in Mao thinking and Jiang Zemin thinking. It seemed like a promising base from which to develop a new synthesis. I was so happy, in visiting Guangzhou last year, to see banners saying that the communist party in that area defined itself by a series of principles which really do point beyond the barnacles of the past, and offer hope.  But in that same city, we saw the stark barriers both in geography and in food between the military caste and the others, showing that all was not quite well yet. In Qufu, we saw great leadership and understanding of the basic Confucian principle of Zhengqi (see my paper at www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf, published in Russia), but in recent years we have also seen decay to the degenerate version taught by Zu Xi (sp?) which twisted it towards extreme nepotism (the father of much of corruption in China) which Mao rightly opposed very directly… and opens the door also to the spirit of warlordism which destroyed many formerly great dynasties in China in the past.

To maintain a rapid pace of economic growth, and develop more advanced understanding of political economy as well, requires a fully scientific approach, including even the first person scientific method I discussed in the paper published in Russia. That is really just an APPLICATION of the mathematical principles of learning (well developed in the most advanced machine learning). But my probes tell me that Xi has fallen in practice to a more subjectivist approach, like a mild form of Trump’s way of thinking, making him MORE of a stooge than he should be to subjectivist forces of all kinds in china, creating unstable ad hoc accommodations rather than a real powerful unity (which REQUIRES diversity of missions and ideas, coupled together in a more intelligent framework).

This became very vivid to me a week or two ago, when the Financial Times published an excellent in-depth report on the latest Party Congress, which is more meaningful to me because of some background information I have.

Xi acknowledged that economic reform has been of central importance to the real people of China, whom the Party is supposed to serve to the utmost, keeping oil companies and the military especially in line. (They and nepotism are the greater threat to China). But then he echoed the midlevel analysts who said that the typical iron rice bowl state enterprises and historic culture were the key to that recent economic growth and to the future. Oops. That simply is not true, and shows that Xi himself has been living in a fishbowl of filtered information (a bit like Trump and the equally dangerous Texas Mafia). Paulson’s great book

https://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superpower-ebook/dp/B00CO7FMDC

gives us all really essential information about reform in China; even though Paulson goes too far in the direction of Jiang Zemin and ice, and really needs balancing out, it is essential to understand what caused the great growth in China (along with the reverence for education and science) in order to achieve the kind of balance which could MAINTAIN growth but ALSO protect us from the worst possible ice. To protect the real rights of the real humans who work in factories and schools, for example, while still supporting vigorous multidirectional feedback in the university sector, like what NSF stimulated in the US until the Texas Mafia screwed it all up (hurting the US far more than most people understand as yet).

The Financial Times reported that China does have serious economists who, like real scientists, disagree but do so honorably, test theories, and are open to new theories and approaches… what could save China.

But Xi has also somehow managed to empower APPARATCHIKS, WOLF PACKS, GESTAPOS (Google chose capitals) which repressed that discussion, and made sure it was not part of the planning for the future, and of what reaches him. It was like the time when Trump thought of hiring a psychologist to run OSTP, to shield him from the best real story known in the US.  No hope that way., No wonder that other folks who read FT suddenly contributed to the movement of the world stock markets…

One major technical issue here: if places like Facebook were going unstable before Zuckerborg was hauled in before a hearing in the House, but if the use of human censors as in China leads to an unsustainable situation of central control as in China... a slippery slope... can anyone build an IT System without censors which is less unstable than the old Facebook? Is collaborative communication in depth possible, like what Xi Jinping needs? Could machine intelligence help?