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Simple Solutions?
I just finished reading Kevin Williamson’s latest piece at NRO, The Stupid Psychopath Problem. Before I continue, I’d like you to have this Reagan quote in the back of your mind: “They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple.”
Williamson argues that Trump and people like Trump suffer from a severe case of what he calls “The Stupid Psychopath Problem:
The Stupid Psychopath Problem is the political distortion resulting from the fact that a great many people — some of them on barstools, some of them dangerously close to the levers of real power — believe that there are obvious, simple, straightforward solutions to complex problems such as the predations of the Islamic State or the woeful state of U.S. public finances, but that these solutions are not implemented because people in government are too soft, unwilling or unable to get tough and do what needs to be done.
I would argue that a simple solution to our national financial problems would be to borrow and spend less money. I happen to believe that some people on barstools might actually have some common sense that is severely lacking in people in Washington. I agree with William F. Buckley, that “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Washington group-think could be a stand in for Harvard University in an updated version of that quote.
Williamson focuses the majority of his critique on his belief that Trump is unprepared to deal with Islamic terrorism in general and ISIS in particular:
Men such as Donald Trump, and a half a hundred million idiots just like him across the fruited plain, really believe that the reason we haven’t eliminated Islamic terrorism is that it never occurred to anybody in the federal government — including the people who run, e.g., the U.S. Special Operations Command — to get tough. These people imagine that the trained killers in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and the often ruthless men who oversee them in Washington, simply are not willing to do what it takes to win. What that means, these people have no idea, because they are unwilling to think very hard about these sorts of problems and generally have no experience themselves. Trump is famously a physical coward who lied to stay out of the military during the Vietnam war, and he knows nothing about foreign policy, national defense, or the workings of the military, which is why all we ever hear from him is “get tough” and “win.”
It’s hard to read this paragraph and then read this story about the Marine Corp, which rather makes the case that those who know how to defeat the enemy are not running our military:
Marines across the Corps will be challenged on their unconscious prejudices and presuppositions as women get the opportunity to become grunts for the first time.
I am not a foreign policy expert, but I do have some knowledge and common sense. Many Japanese wanted to continue the war even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were annihilated with atomic bombs. A similar type of fervor has been alive and well in the hearts of Islamic radicals for 1,400 years. The idea that our current strategy of drones, targeted precision attacks, think-tank discussions on hate, policy papers, and mass immigration will eventually defeat them for good does not have any basis in reality. In the meantime we should continue turning the military in to a blotted social justice project.
Williamson concludes his piece with this:
The problem is that while there is an effectively endless supply of stupid psychopaths, there is no secret cache of simple, straightforward solutions to complex problems just waiting in a filing cabinet somewhere in Washington until a sufficiently tough guy comes along willing to be as cruel and as vicious as the hour requires.
Kevin Williamson attacks Trump as a “witless ape” and a “stupid psychopath,” but he has become just as insufferable. It’s as if he thinks that we are just one more browbeating away from ridding ourselves of Trump.
Finally, returning to the Reagan quote and the question for the Ricochetti I opened this post with: Are there simple solutions to complex problems?
Published in Politics
Right, but I doubt you’d find many here who think otherwise. That we are doing some obviously stupid things does not necessarily imply that ceasing to do them will bring us to an easy solution (though it’ll likely get us closer).
I think Kevin’s larger point is that there’s a human tendency that — when looking at something from the outside — to think that the problem is simple and that, therefore, all that is needed is someone willing to apply sufficient will and vision.
This is sometimes true, but it’s also generally not true. I imagine we’ve all, at some point, thought that a colleague’s failures implied that they were stupid or lacked will, only to discover that their job was actually more difficult than it seemed from the outside. Likewise, we’ve all had the satisfaction of someone telling us our job is easy only to see them crash-and-burn when attempting to do it themselves.
Again, this isn’t to say that everyone’s actually doing a good job or that some will and vision can’t go a long way toward improving things in many circumstances. It’s just that we should all apply a little humility before concluding that they’re all that’s needed.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Simple solutions for complex times.
There is no poverty in America. Poverty is a condition identified by increased mortality with regard to malnutrition, infectious disease and exposure. Those things have been eliminated from American society to the extent that they aren’t even tracked by CDC, NIH, or the census.
The poor in America do not suffer from this condition.
Pick one, either the poor in America go hungry or the greatest health problem they suffer is obesity. It cannot be both.
When people talk about “simple solutions” they typically mean straightforward and relatively painless.
The cure for our financial problems is to spend and borrow less, true, but while the answer is straightforward it is far from painless. We are now deeply hooked on a debt-driven economy, and weaning ourselves from that is both necessary and inevitable, as well as inevitably painful. It will involve a deep recession and possibly a depression as that debt is wrung out, with a lot of things people have counted on disappearing.
The complicated part is deciding how the pain will be distributed. We probably won’t be able to make those decisions – they will be too “complicated” in the sense of consisting of nothing but bad and worse alternatives, and so will have them made for us as events take over and run their course.
This reminds me of every weight loss discussion ever: the solution is simple! All you have to do is eat less and move more! Works every time! Then inevitably, you have all the people come out for whom it didn’t wok – they have a thyroid condition, or another complicating health concern, or they’ve tried this and lacked the will to see it through, to the point where the solution may sound simple, but Americans keep getting fatter (and fatter).
Sitting at home lamenting that there are simple solutions is one thing, but implementing simple solutions in a complicated political sphere where you do not have dictatorial powers and the other side gets a say in the process is something completely different, and that part is something Trump appears to have no interest in acknowledging.
Not quite. Because there will always be Bad Guys, you need to not kill them or treat them badly if they opt to yield power and retire. Otherwise the next dictator is incentivized to never yield.
I think this is correct. It depends on what we mean by simple.
There is a simple way to solve the current terrorism, but it is not easy or humane.
Probably, but just being simple doesn’t make them necessarily good.
Also – one might have a basic, simple strategy (eg assist local powers to take ISIS down only when and where they can credibly take its place as accepted administrators that don’t sow more chaos) – but implementing it is complex, because in real life there are a lot of moving parts (some of them Russian).
Ironically, that last paragraph pretty well describes Williamson, too. He’s always been a pompous jackass who tries to hide his ignorance with snark.
The problem in the Middle East would go away if people could just learn to get along.
Yes there are but no one really wants to be responsible for implementing them.
Social Security out of money? Reduce payments or increase taxes. Or both. Democrats and Republicans don’t want to be responsible for the first, Republicans don’t want to be responsible for the second, no one in office wants to even suggest the third.
Medicare/Medicaid spending way too high? Reduce enrollments, increase taxes or eliminate the programs entirely. Democrats and Republicans don’t want to be responsible for the first, Republicans don’t want to be responsible for the second, no one in office wants to even suggest the third.
Simple solutions.
For all those who ask “What about the people who depend upon those programs?” or “Won’t that drive down the economy?” the answer today will be the answer tomorrow: Tough, we’re out of money. But no one wants to be responsible for having to give those answers.
Simple isn’t easy, it’s just not hard to understand or do. It’s not hard to increase tax revenue. It’s not even hard to shut down a government program (although the government acts like it is). It’s just not easy because the people in a position to do so don’t want to be held responsible for doing so.
^Yep.
I love his rants, and his eloquence and lucidity. I sometimes don’t agree with parts of his pieces, but nearly always learn something or am provoked to think. Much of what he yells at needs yelling at.
I think the wisdom in Reagan’s quote (and Hercules’ point) is more about people than about specific problems or solutions….
Once we start believing problems are too complicated, we subconcsciously yield to the experts and abandon our point. This may speak to my frustration in seeing so many fellow-travelers arguing over process and forgetting fundamental truths.
There is “simple”, the opposite of complex: it means having few parts, with few relations between them. That makes it easy to state or describe — taking few sentences. Example: “We should remove 80% of the regulations imposed by executive agencies”.
There is “simple”, the opposite of difficult: “easy”.
Reagan put that very well, and here’s a simple solution to our confusion about this: our thinking would be much clearer if we stopped using “simple” as a synonym for “easy” and only used it as the opposite of “complex”.
The solution to out of control debt and spending in households is to cut up the credit cards. Amazing how effective it is.
The hard decisions don’t have to be made because the easy solution is to borrow more money.
Interest groups become far less interested when there isn’t money getting shoveled out the door.
John Adams has a much longer, and slightly more eloquent, quote that says largely the same thing.
There is a lot of truth in it. Our system is extremely complicated, and it was designed that way to avoid tyranny. The most dangerous politician is the one who not only doesn’t understand the complexity, but who offers ridiculously simple alternatives.
Each of these proves far more complicated in reality than on paper.
This is why the Arabs stopped fighting Israel symmetrically. When the enemy won’t engage you on terms favorable to you, it is difficult to win. Becoming overly aggressive hurts Israel a great deal among the international community. Israel’s path to victory exists, but it is a winding, complicated road.
We have seen a few modern examples of popular uprising against a modern military. They result in massacres. In the end, the enemy regime is more powerful as their most fervent opposition is dead or displaced.
Such men have many ways out of their predicament before they are killed, whether by invading forces or civil war. They rarely take them.
Prosperous people rarely relocate to unsafe environments, and any such enclave made up of natives will face the same cultural challenges that the rest of the area faces.
Once we can convince a majority of the public that this is the way to go, this is a great first step. We’ve had some success, but this battle will rage for decades.
You and I think the same way on most of these issues, but the fix is never truly simple. I suppose some of them could be if you had a benevolent dictator, but the challenges of winning arguments and elections are baked into the larger problems you are trying to solve.
I see Trump as an interventionist (albeit a bad one) who is saying things the dysfunctional family can’t stand hearing. Everything redounds to some co-dependent relationship, and there is an over-arching family fiction that must be protected at all costs.
It’s very complicated, especially after listening to everyone’s pet narrative, and there are endless reasons why some simple prescription won’t work.
It has evolved into this equipoise after a thousand battles and skirmishes precisely because there are simple actions that, if taken, will threaten the beliefs/desires of a family member and unleash mayhem upon the others as a result. Everyone has agreed to avoid these subjects for the sake of peace, or at least, to avoid family Armageddon.
At least we should keep these truths foremost in our minds as we navigate the complexity of actually solving these problems:
We are spending too much and borrowing too much and we have reached the maximum whereby taxation can help.
We are giving our culture and our sovereignty away for no apparent reason.
Our new social order is collectively insane, and we must recognize this as such.
We must address the Orwellian newspeak, the authoritarians on the left and the media who publicly shame and disenfranchise thought-criminals, and refuse to be distracted by pretending that Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan will save us.
Simple, seemingly radical solutions, should be given serious attention. Trump is the least of our problems once we open our eyes.
I think the principles are simple. I agree that implementation is complex. But the guiding principles do matter, and are lost in the noise today. I’ll do these one at a time.
Israel’s road has been long precisely because they refuse to win. The world can only complain about things the world can influence. A thorough and absolute victory very quickly becomes a fait accompli.
Imagine China invading Taiwan. If they did it completely and quickly, the world would be powerless. Any resulting sanctions would be dropped soon enough.
Throughout the Middle East, these popular uprisings worked. The follow-through was awful, true, but revolutions do work, especially when done by a motivated citizenry in urban settings.
The Iranians need carrots and sticks: empower the populace, and disincentivize the military, all the while cutting off the heads of anyone who pops up to run the Bad Guys. This is hardly a new formula, but for some reason we are not even trying it.
Do they? What is Assad’s exit strategy? All manners of dictators would consider viable options if they had them. But we corner them, and basically force them to fight. Stupid.
The cries from the world community to return Crimea to Ukraine died out almost as quickly as they started.
This has been well addressed by the stories and posts I have put up on this topic. But I think it is pretty clear that the US could back safe zones, allowing in only those who agree to a Code of Conduct. Over time, we could indeed build little Hong Kongs in a sea of Chinas. And those would become real alternatives for people who just want to live their lives.
True, and every victory is a step. The concept is simple enough. And people running for mayor of blue cities are starting to consider the idea in their platforms.
“When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at, and boasted of, in any new political constitution, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, and totally ignorant of their duty.”
-Edmund Burke
That to say, my concern with Trump’s simplicity is not even so much that conservatives might never have simple answers to complex questions (i.e. less regulation, smaller government, school choice, lower taxes), or that he lacks even a hint of understanding of these issues, but that what he does argue for is a simplicity of government action, along the exact same vein as Obama or Hillary or Sanders.
If he could display to me a thorough understanding of the separation of powers, and our system of checks and balances, and he would embrace these things as essential for the success of our nation, then I would be far less skeptical. But not only does he possess zero comprehension of these concepts, he openly supports their opposite.
Simplicity: Want a wall? Done! Obamacare? Gone! etc… etc… everything he says indicates a vision of the executive that runs contrary to everything that conservatism stands for.
Exactly. The simple solution is usually the right solution, and is usually the hardest answer. That’s why people contort themselves in knots to come up with “complex” and “nuanced” problems/answers. I call it manufactured complexity, e.g. complexity that exists for no reason other than to provide an easy solution, or further rent-seeking by guilds.
Nature has plenty of complexity. Human nature, not so much.