¿Por qué votamos como lo hacemos? – Por José Azel
Por José Azel
El voto democrático no siempre genera buenos gobiernos. El ascenso de Hitler al poder en la última elección libre de la República de Weimar, y la elección de Hugo Chávez en Venezuela, son ejemplos destacados. Consecuentemente, entender la conducta del votante es uno de los temas más estudiados en ciencias sociales en disciplinas como economía, ciencia política, psicología y sociología.
Como parte de este esfuerzo los cientistas sociales Christopher Aachen y Larry Bartels exploran “por qué las elecciones no producen gobiernos responsables” en su libro “Democracia para realistas”. Aquí, tomo prestado algunos de sus conceptos sobre el comportamiento del votante.
En nuestra comprensión tradicional de democracia, como votantes, tenemos preferencias sobre lo que el gobierno debería hacer, y elegimos líderes que prometen aplicar políticas en línea con nuestras preferencias. Esta romántica teoría de la democracia asume que ciudadanos comprometidos se informan de los muchos asuntos que la nación encara, y manejan los laberintos políticos para juzgar inteligentemente. La teoría romántica de la democracia también señala que los votantes evalúan las calificaciones de los candidatos y votan por el candidato que mejor refleja sus propios valores políticos.
Sin embargo, la ciencia política contemporánea ha encontrado poca evidencia de que los votantes reflejen este perfil ideal. Esto plantea peguntas de que si los ciudadanos pueden jugar apropiadamente el papel que requiere de ellos la teoría romántica de la democracia. Los estudiosos nos dicen que, independientemente del dramático incremento en la variedad de medios, el nivel de conocimiento político de la ciudadanía permanece muy bajo.
Aunque actualmente disponemos de un nivel de información política sin precedentes, descartamos los más penetrantes recursos a favor de diversas fuentes de entretenimiento. Los medios de 24 horas diarias han incrementado la variedad de información sin modificar el nivel promedio de información política.
Una teoría alternativa del voto democrático es la “Teoría Retrospectiva del Voto”. En contraste con la prospectiva teoría romántica de la democracia, la teoría retrospectiva ve a los votantes como evaluadores del rendimiento anterior de los líderes. Votar retrospectivamente solo requiere del votante monitorear su propio bienestar y el de sus conciudadanos. Los votantes no necesitan estar informados o comprometidos como requiere la teoría romántica de la democracia. Identifican el buen o mal rendimiento del gobierno en base a cómo ha impactado sus vidas.
Votar retrospectivamente no requiere que la ciudadanía conozca las políticas precisas de una administración o partido. Los votantes solamente necesitan evaluar cómo ha cambiado su propio bienestar o el de la nación. Los votantes retrospectivos aprueban o desaprueban el rendimiento anterior, lo cual resulta un poderoso instrumento de rendición de cuentas electoral. Por ejemplo, las evaluaciones de los votantes sobre las condiciones económicas son muy significativas determinando resultados electorales. La investigación muestra que los votantes tienden a recompensar líderes en funciones en buenos momentos económicos y castigarlos en los malos.
Consecuentemente, estudiando las elecciones, el voto retrospectivo mejora la competencia económica de los líderes políticos manteniendo a aquellos que son competentes gestores y reemplazando a los que no lo son. El voto retrospectivo induce a los líderes a esforzarse por buenos resultados económicos para poder mantener sus cargos.
Los estudiosos también señalan que el voto retrospectivo “no establece restricciones al funcionamiento gubernamental; más bien, el gobierno tiene libertad para innovar, sabiendo que será juzgado por los resultados de sus acciones más que por políticas específicas”. O sea, en esta tesis de espejo retrovisor, los resultados de las elecciones no dependen de ideas o ideología política, sino de nuestra aprobación o desaprobación del resultado real de líderes o partidos en funciones. En la práctica, el voto democrático no respalda la teoría romántica convencional de la democracia.
Aunque algo cínica, la lógica del voto retrospectivo parece sensata. La mayoría de los votantes están ocupados con sus vidas y no son capaces de tomarse el tiempo requerido para entender las complejidades de decisiones políticas. Prefieren preguntarse si las cosas van mejor o peor. En esencia, y quizás sin elegancia, no es la ideología política sino una mirada al espejo retrovisor lo que mejor explica por qué votamos como lo hacemos.
Julian, echemosle una mano con las traducciones. Me ayuda si encuentra errores.
el traductor de CAM sucks
Why do we vote as we do? – By José Azel
GUEST COLUMNISTS
By José Azel
Democratic voting does not always generate good governments. Hitler’s rise to power in the last free election of the Weimar Republic, and the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, are prominent examples. Consequently, understanding voter behavior is one of the most studied topics in social sciences in disciplines such as economics, political science, psychology, and sociology.
As part of this effort, social scientists Christopher Aachen and Larry Bartels explore “why elections do not produce responsible governments” in their book “Democracy for Realists . ” Here, I borrow some of your concepts on voter behavior.
In our traditional understanding of democracy, as voters, we have preferences about what government should do, and we elect leaders who promise to implement policies in line with our preferences. This romantic theory of democracy assumes that committed citizens are informed of the many issues that the nation faces, and manage political mazes to judge wisely. The romantic theory of democracy also notes that voters evaluate candidate qualifications and vote for the candidate that best reflects their own political values.
However, contemporary political science has found little evidence that voters reflect this ideal profile. This raises questions that whether citizens can properly play the role that the romantic theory of democracy requires of them. Scholars tell us that regardless of the dramatic increase in the variety of media, the level of political knowledge of citizens remains very low.
Although we currently have an unprecedented level of political information, we discard the most penetrating resources in favor of various sources of entertainment. The 24-hour a day media has increased the variety of information without changing the average level of political information.
An alternative theory of democratic voting is the “Retrospective Voting Theory”. In contrast to the prospective romantic theory of democracy, the retrospective theory sees voters as evaluators of leaders’ past performance. Voting retrospectively only requires the voter to monitor their own well-being and that of their fellow citizens. Voters do not need to be informed or engaged as the romantic theory of democracy requires. They identify the good or bad performance of the government based on how it has impacted their lives.
Voting retrospectively does not require citizens to know the precise policies of an administration or party. Voters need only assess how their own welfare or that of the nation has changed. Retrospective voters approve or disapprove of past performance, making it a powerful electoral accountability tool. For example, voter evaluations of economic conditions are highly significant in determining electoral results. Research shows that voters tend to reward acting leaders in good economic times and punish them in bad times.
Consequently, by studying elections, retrospective voting improves the economic competition of political leaders by maintaining those who are competent managers and replacing those who are not. The retrospective vote induces leaders to strive for good financial results in order to maintain their positions.
Scholars also point out that retrospective voting “does not establish restrictions on government operations; rather, the government is free to innovate, knowing that it will be judged by the results of its actions rather than by specific policies. ” In other words, in this rear-view mirror thesis, the results of the elections do not depend on political ideas or ideology, but on our approval or disapproval of the actual results of leaders or parties in office. In practice, the democratic vote does not support the conventional romantic theory of democracy.
Although somewhat cynical, the logic of retrospective voting seems sensible. Most voters are busy with their lives and are unable to take the time required to understand the complexities of political decisions. They prefer to ask themselves if things are better or worse. In essence, and perhaps without elegance, it is not political ideology but a look in the reviewer mirror that best explains why we vote as we do.
Julian, let’s give CAM a hand with the translations. It will be good if you find errors in my automatic translations.
(CAM’s translator sucks)
No perturbe a Julián, que está redactando su comentario.
Manuel
La traducción me parece bien. Veo que ultimamente pones muchas versiones en inglés. ¿Van dirigidas a Danettee, cuyo primer idioma es obviamente el inglés, aunque intenta comentar aquí en español o es que estás participando en otro blog en inglés y estos posts aquí son unos ensayos?
I have heard that who think in many languages do it best, I practice my not-very-lucky English, I improve CAM translations, I connect in a less personal ways with ideas that seems to be more distant emotional if stated in other than Spanish language, I connect with people in other level, others can come and decide to comment in English (this will be hard to achieve though), you name it
Got it 🙂
Son muchas las razones por lo que las gentes votan. Influye la etnia, la cultura, la condición social, religión, odios, etc. También claro, pesa mucho el solicitante del voto, su imagen, carisma, empatía, discurso… afirmar que los resultados, o que el voto retrospectivo dan la pauta, puede negarse con el solo ejemplo de la no reelección de Winston Churchill al terminar la segunda guerra. Por eso quizás tenga alguna validez la popular creencia de que los pueblos tienen los gobiernos que se merecen.
Suponer que las preferencias electorales de una sociedad como la Argentina sean parecidas a la canadiense, cae en el ridículo. Comienza entonces este tema a tomar un sendero escabroso, porque evidentemente los estados irreflexivos del oriente medio, o los semisalvajes del subcontinente o del África, tienen particularidades que son incompatibles con las democracias occidentales como las conocemos.
Por supuesto que siempre habrá politólogos, idealistas y charlatanes que creerán que es un asunto de divulgación, enseñanza, credos, instituciones… Cada generación traerá su propia camada de soñadores que desperdiciarán mucho erario y tiempo en esas quimeras. Las democracias fuera del mundo asiático, necesitan para funcionar del componente caucásico, y este mismo componente que es condición sine qua non, tampoco es garantía de institucionalidad y derecho por si mismo, los ejemplos en Europa sobran.
Sin el ánimo de hacerlo extenso y conflictivo, suspendo los señalamientos concisos que puedan conducir a elecciones y “democracias exitosas”. Muy cordialmente.
the level of political knowledge of citizens remains very low.”
which is the point of Harari
with new techs the govs. are in position to know voters better than they know themselves and that has no precedent in History. It provides an edge to dictators, who now can have an additional tool to manage poor minions, we all.
Solutions?
not much, since education and Media remain a circus, but I hope that step by step the world will be moving toward better scenarios guided by good people, who will also has formidable ways to achieve success. This is a battle, and in a battle people use to show their best.
is this a good call?
I have heard that who think in many languages do it best, I practice my not-very-lucky English, I improve CAM translations, I connect in a less personal ways with ideas that seem to be more distant emotionally if stated in
other-than-Spanish language, I connect with people in other levels, others can come and decide to comment in English (this will be hard to achieve though), you name it
my comments are not automatic translations, the one I did of the this post yes was automatic; and probably better than some translations we have found lately in this blog
Yes, it makes sense. I get your point and it’s a good one.
The epidemic put trump’s genius to shine, like every
Challenge he has faced in the late 50 months, as it
It was his rhetorical that Some hard balance of authority and openness is obviously essential to going on at all. We have always known that having the confidence to act, and the clarity to see if the way we act is good, is vital to our continued existence. Our continued existence! It used to be a kind of metaphor, really meaning “the easy perpetuation of our familiar way of life.” No more.
By midweek, even the dance of wariness was muted: New Yorkers, largely sheltering in place, still allowed themselves to walk their dogs, but walked them alone on each street, with the next dog and owner at least a stoplight away. The dogs, puzzled not to have the greetings of others of their animal kind, sniffed doggedly in the dark, though now only at the scent of their solitary owners.
Vamos de Guatemala para guatepior.
118,074
Casos que tuvieron un resultado:
101,584 ( 86 %)
Recuperado / Descargado
16,490 ( 14 %)
Muertes
Many similar viruses are found in wild bats, and it seems likely that is the origin of this one, probably via an intermediate host. Similarly, we know that both SARS and MERS came from bats, so there is no reason to invoke a laboratory accident.
Researchers led by Shan-Lu Liu at the Ohio State University say there is “no credible evidence” of genetic engineering (Emerging Microbes & Infections, doi.org/dpvw). The virus’s genome has been sequenced, and if it had been altered, we would expect to see signs of inserted gene sequences. But we now know the points that differ from bat viruses are scattered in a fairly random way, just as they would be if the new virus had evolved naturally. ■
Bats are flying rats. And we know what happens with the rats.
And some bats are much worse, like Count Dracula.
mientras no haya pruebas contra China, no nos queda otra que adoptar como lo mas cercano a la realidad lo que las pruebas dictamimen. No hay prueba alguna de que este virus haya escapado de un laboratorio.
así
que no queda otra que adoptar lo que nos dicen las pruebas, pero como buenos investigadores, desconfiar siempre
The hope is to develop one for the new coronavirus in an unprecedented 12 to 18 months.
Develop a prototype
This usually takes years, depending on the technique used. With the current coronavirus outbreak, companies had prototypes within hours thanks to new technologies that can identify which bits of a virus might be used in a vaccine.
Animal trials
These are primarily to demonstrate safety and to test the immune response generated by a vaccine. In some cases, this stage can be skipped altogether, but there may be safety trade-offs.
Phase I human trials
These are the first tests in people, usually involving 20 to 80 individuals and are used to demonstrate safety and ensure any side effects aren’t too severe.
Phase II human trials
This requires larger groups of people and is used to test efficacy. Some vaccines can skip from here to regulatory approval when there is urgent need.
Phase III human trials
At this stage, a new vaccine is tested on hundreds to thousands of people, to clearly evaluate both efficacy and safety.
Regulatory approval
After examining clinical trial evidence, regulatory bodies determine whether the vaccine can be licensed for public use. This may come with the requirement that follow-up safety data be gathered.
Mass production
At this point, manufacturing of a vaccine is ramped up under strict quality control and consistency standards.
Public access
When the new vaccine becomes available, governments and public health authorities have to determine which groups of people get it first. ■
Best ones fighting late corona: china & south korea
Today we found Paper toilet at Target
There was few though
In Australia, people have been calmly preparing for the absolute worst-case scenario: finding themselves out of toilet paper. Most of the country’s supplies are made locally, but a rumour of decreased production in China seemed to send panic through some communities, resulting in shops with empty shelves.
Rolls were reportedly being sold for hundreds of dollars online. Luckily, the Australian press can be relied on to help in a crisis. The NT News came to the rescue by printing an eight-page pull-out “complete with handy cut lines, for you to use in an emergency”. Eager to match this example, Feedback willingly proffered itself for this purpose, but sadly our editor insisted that we should still print some words on the page, even if it is to be used for personal hygiene. Please don’t hesitate to tear out this page if you find yourself in need.
Take a bow
In the UK, of great concern to the public is how to make formal greetings once shaking hands has been deemed too dangerous. The England cricket team has opted for fist bumps, but as this still involves hand-to-hand contact, it doesn’t seem like a vast improvement.
Elbow bumps are another popular option, but one whose wisdom seems questionable when you remember that we are also being advised to cough and sneeze into a bent elbow. Some are tapping feet, but having tried this out, we are slightly concerned that this could lead to a risk of losing one’s balance and falling over.
You don’t need to look far back in history to find some truly non-contact modes of formal greeting, such as the bow or curtsey, which might be more sensible.
Feedback recommends the “ner-ner” handshake, popular in school playgrounds, in which you extend an arm as if offering a handshake, but withdraw it at the last minute and wiggle your fingers in front of your face. Traditionally this is done with the thumb touching the nose, but touching one’s nose is now a complete no-no, so a 2 centimetre gap is advisable.
Sum tweet
If we had a penny for every time a media pundit showed a shockingly poor grasp of numeracy, Feedback would have enough money to launch an expensive but highly ineffective run for president. Well, maybe not if you did the actual maths, but why let that stand in the way of a good point?
The latest example appeared in a segment on news channel MSNBC that drew attention to a tweet decrying the $500 million spent by Michael Bloomberg on his short-lived election campaign. “The US population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over,” journalist Mekita Rivas tweeted. “It’s an incredible way of putting it,” said presenter Brian Williams, and on this point we agree wholeheartedly.
Mixed up advice
Thankfully, the media are being careful to get their facts straight on coronavirus advice. Having initially made an error in an article titled “Coronavirus: Nine reasons to be reassured”, The Guardian quickly made a correction. “An earlier version wrongly stated that ‘a solution of ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and bleach will disinfect surfaces’,” it said. “It is dangerous to combine such substances. It now states correctly that ‘a solution of ethanol, a solution of hydrogen peroxide *or* a solution of bleach’ will disinfect surfaces.” (Emphasis added.)
Chemistry lessons might also be required at the BBC, which stated that the E10 fuel being considered to help the UK reduce CO2 emissions “contains less carbon and more ethanol than fuels currently on sale”. It might be more eco-friendly still if boffins could work out a way to produce carbon-free ethanol. Thanks to James Olver for bringing this to our attention.
Sty phone
Surreal news from North Yorkshire, UK, where a fire broke out on a farm after a pig swallowed a pedometer that was being worn by another pig. “After nature had taken its course, it’s believed that the copper from the batteries reacted with the pigpens contents and in conjunction with dry bedding, ignited burning approx. 75sqm of hay,” the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service posted on Twitter.
We thought New Scientist was on top of the trend for wearable electronics, but this fad is more pervasive than we realised if even livestock are keeping track of their step count.
According to the fire service, the pedometer was being worn to prove that the pigs were free range. Feedback is a firm believer in animal welfare, but we are unsure whether instilling them with our exercise-tracking obsession is entirely helpful in this regard. We shouldn’t scoff though – pigs have long been associated with apple products, and perhaps this individual is a twirly adopted.
Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at feedback@newscientist.com ■
“El Dr. Birx dice que el 28% de las pruebas en Nueva York están dando resultados positivos, frente al 8% en el resto del país. Punto caliente”
the virus bites hard at BRI
“The goal for BRI is the creation of an economic world order ultimately dominated by China,” they asserted. At the Munich Security Conference in February, I heard no distinctions between Republican and Democratic members of Congress on the threat posed by China. Outside of government, the new Washington consensus has prompted a cottage industry of essays, reports, think pieces, and long-form journalism opining on What To Do About China.
Remember when I said that both the Soviet Union and Japan suffered from economic stagnation and demographic decline? There are good reasons to believe that China will be the next country in line. China’s population crisis is already baked in: Sometime this year, the median age in the country will exceed that in the United States, and by 2040 senior citizens will comprise a greater portion of China’s population than ours. To describe China as economically stagnant would be a gross exaggeration. Nonetheless, its growth rate has fallen by more than 50 percent in the last decade, and its productivity growth has fallen by far more than that over the past 25 years. It appears that China will get old before it gets rich. Yet the new Washington consensus is too panicked to observe these realities.
To be fair to the new conventional wisdom, it is not founded only on hysteria. A key premise of the old consensus was that engaging China would facilitate that country’s transformation from a one-party dictatorship into a more open and liberal polity. The actual results have been…well, not that. The apparent failure of the previous narrative to play out as hoped has rattled many people’s faith in the power of economic freedom to lead inexorably to political freedom.
Instead of classical liberal arguments about the pacifying effects of trade, the new consensus is replete with terms like predatory liberalism and weaponized interdependence. In the new narrative, China is an authoritarian state hell-bent on world domination; we must decouple the U.S. economy from China’s in order to check Beijing’s rise. The new consensus increasingly sounds like an update of the old containment doctrine, with China’s brand of authoritarian capitalism replacing Soviet-style communism as the existential threat to the American way of life that must be confined to a limited sphere.
It’s one thing to say that the old Washington consensus got China wrong. It’s another thing entirely to conclude that the exact opposite approach is warranted—and let’s be clear, that is what the Trump administration wants us to believe.
A proper U.S. strategy toward authoritarian capitalism in general and the Middle Kingdom in particular needs to appreciate the strengths and the weaknesses of the China model. Cold War hawks exaggerated Soviet capabilities, and today’s China hawks do the same with the regime in Beijing. Even if one accepts that China poses a significant threat to the American way of life, the optimal response is far removed from the actual response we are witnessing today. Indeed, it seems as though much of the policy response to China is predicated on a loss of self-confidence by the United States. Debates about China are stalking horses for debates about what is wrong with America.
As it turned out, American fears of the Soviet Union were wildly overhyped. Decades of demographic decline and economic stagnation proved that the Stalinist system was not, in fact, terribly viable.
WHAT WE GOT WRONG
THE POLICY CONSENSUS that surrounded U.S. support for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has not aged well. In a March 2000 speech, President Bill Clinton overpromised just a wee bit when he claimed that “the more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people—their initiative, their imagination, their remarkable spirit of enterprise. And when individuals have the power not just to dream but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.” Support for China’s entry into the WTO was bipartisan; the Senate approved it 83–15.
What did policy makers get wrong? Back in the day, liberal internationalists made two arguments about why China’s participation in the global economy was in America’s national interest. First, if China traded more with the rest of the world, it would alter that country’s domestic political character. Economic freedom within the People’s Republic would increase, leading to more economic affluence. These factors would nudge China into the same political evolution that its Northeast Asian neighbors experienced: greater demands for the rule of law, followed by political liberalization. No policy maker believed this would happen overnight; the Clinton speech quoted above is chock-full of caveats. The overarching belief, however, was that over time China would start to resemble, say, South Korea.
The second argument was not about changing the character of Chinese politics but about altering the existing regime’s incentives to disrupt the liberal international order. This logic was simple: The more that China needed the rest of the global economy to fuel its economic growth, the less Beijing would act like a “revisionist” state and the more it would act like a status quo power.
This was at the root of a decadelong call by the United States for China to be a “responsible stakeholder” in the system. As Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick suggested in the 2005 speech that coined that phrase, “China does not believe that its future depends on overturning the fundamental order of the international system. In fact, quite the reverse: Chinese leaders have decided that their success depends on being networked with the modern world.” Indeed, the Chinese and American economies became so intertwined that in a 2007 paper, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and University of Bonn economist Moritz Schularick dubbed them “Chimerica.”
The new Washington consensus is predicated on the notion that the previous few paragraphs are so absurd that they should be laughed out of the discourse. It might be worth taking a moment, however, to consider exactly how the old Washington consensus got China wrong before concluding that the exact opposite approach is the way to go.
INCREASINGLY OPPRESSIVE
EVEN TRUMP’S BIGGEST cheerleaders allow that the opening to China worked for a while. In his Hudson Institute speech, Vice President Pence acknowledged that “for a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights.”
In terms of economic openness, China did more than inch. Whether you look at the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Rankings, or one of various metrics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the result is the same. In the late ’90s and the early part of this century, China’s economy was indeed liberalizing. Beginning around 2006, there was a decade of stagnation and reversal of reforms. But in the last few years, the country’s economic freedom scores have again increased across the board.
The quality of China’s free trade agreements with other countries has consistently improved in recent years. Even in the area of intellectual property rights, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center ranks China ahead of Chile and India and on par with Mexico. At the China Development Forum’s fall meeting last year, I heard Chinese officials repeatedly brag about a new law permitting 100 percent foreign ownership of Chinese entities. It is possible that Beijing is simply gaming the system by making cosmetic policy changes to placate a business sector that desperately wants access to China’s market. Still, these metrics contrast sharply with Trump’s depiction of China as a unique rogue actor in the global economy.
This part of the consensus was nonetheless wrong in two fundamental ways. The first was that the increase in economic liberty would spill over into an increase in political liberty. If anything, in China the two have been inversely correlated in recent years. The leadership in Beijing, it turns out, never wanted to follow the path of South Korea; they wanted to follow the path of Singapore, a city-state with copious amounts of economic freedom and very circumscribed politics.
The nonprofit Freedom House observed in 2019 that “China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent years”—and that sentence, if anything, undersells the depth of repression. During the last 10 years, the country shifted from a routinized form of authoritarian power transfer in which new leaders were appointed every decade to the lifetime leadership of Xi Jinping. The repression of ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs in the western part of the country has been increasingly brutal and systematic. The erection of a massive network of internment facilities, prisons, and forced labor camps speaks to the regime’s ruthlessness and deep illiberalism. According to The New York Times, President Xi explicitly urged his subordinates to use the “organs of dictatorship” to demonstrate “absolutely no mercy” to the Uighurs.
When Clinton advocated for China’s entry into the WTO, he said, “We know how much the internet has changed America, and we are already an open society. Imagine how much it could change China.” Unfortunately, it appears that the People’s Republic has changed the internet rather than vice versa. There are a hundred different ways to prove China’s digital authoritarianism: the country’s online freedom plunging to a decade-low level, according to Freedom House; official efforts to create an Orwellian-sounding “social credit” system in which Chinese citizens would receive rewards and benefits for their public conduct; the massive expansion of the surveillance state; or the simple fact that far more Western news sites are blocked by China’s censors in 2019 than were a decade earlier. Reports that China is exporting its surveillance regime to sympathetic allies have been somewhat exaggerated. To paraphrase John Quincy Adams, however, Xi’s regime has become a fortress city on a hill, demonstrating to other aspiring autocrats its recipe for success.
The second mistake was in thinking that as Chinese citizens became more affluent and globally connected, they would become more classically liberal in their attitudes. Recent survey work conducted by Renmin University’s National Survey Research Center suggests a more complex evolution of views. While China’s young people are more tolerant of concepts like same-sex marriage than are their older neighbors, they hold more illiberal views on questions of race, religion, and human rights. Younger mainland Chinese are more supportive of authoritarianism than are older generations. And more affluent Chinese, those who can travel and access information beyond China’s censors, express attitudes similar to their less affluent peers’. Journalist accounts suggest that they are hostile toward Hong Kong protesters as well, believing them to be suffering from “post-prosperity arrogance.” Yet mainland reactions to Hong Kong are more varied than a lot of Western press coverage suggests.
The 1990s assumption that greater affluence and economic liberty would produce more political liberalization rested on a simple empirical regularity: That was the way things had worked in the past. And it might still work that way: The residents of Hong Kong have visibly demonstrated that even a taste of civil liberties makes people fight to preserve them. Still, it should be clear that waiting for the Chinese Communist Party to evolve is not a fast-acting recipe for good American foreign policy.
WEAPONIZED INTERDEPENDENCE?
CHINA’S INTERDEPENDENCE WITH the rest of the world has not been the pacific balm that liberals expected. Here, again, the old consensus did not get everything wrong. Traditionally, the rapid rise of a new “great power” triggered a hegemonic war. But as China has caught up to the United States, there has been no major hot conflict. Economic interdependence likely played a role in that.
The Chinese leadership is still rhetorically committed to an open global economy. Xi Jinping sounds more liberal than Donald Trump when he addresses the World Economic Forum. Even as Beijing has reciprocated U.S. protectionism during the bilateral trade war of the last two years, it has simultaneously lowered barriers with the rest of the world. Claims that the Belt and Road Initiative is entrapping countries into fealty to China have been dramatically overblown, to the point where even Xi Jinping acknowledged a need to rethink its branding. My own research suggests that if China is intending to upend the global economic order, it is doing so in a radically suboptimal manner. Harvard professor Iain Johnston knows more about China than I ever will, and he arrives at the same conclusion: When it comes to the global economy, China is not a revisionist state.
China’s stakeholder status, however, has not prevented the country from gaming the system. Reports of forced technology transfer—the practice of requiring Western-owned factories in China to use advanced technology, which is then copied and/or stolen—are legion, representing a serious cost to U.S. firms. The country’s cyberespionage, which was muted after a 2015 bilateral agreement with the United States, has flared up again during the Trump years. Beyond the economic realm, Beijing has adopted a more bellicose posture in its backyard. Even the most stalwart defenders of China’s foreign policy acknowledge that it has been testing its limits in the South China and East China seas, making territorial claims on islands and waters and backing them up with a vigorous naval presence
China has also taken a more active role in global governance, but not in the way U.S. policy makers anticipated. Name an important international organization, and the pattern has been the same during the Trump years: U.S. retreat matched by more active Chinese involvement. This is particularly true at the United Nations, where Chinese candidates have bested American candidates to head agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization. Chinese officials now run four of the 15 specialized U.N. agencies; the United States runs one. One former senior U.N. official described multiple agencies to me as “lost” to China. Beijing is aiming to control the World Intellectual Property Organization next. Each of these small victories permits Beijing to exert greater influence over agencies neglected by Washington. Instead of passively assimilating into the global community, the Chinese are looking to change it.
Beyond existing institutions, China has also created a panoply of new structures ranging from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to the BRI. These are designed to put Beijing at the center of new economic networks and to keep the United States on the outside looking in. Yes, China is acting like a stakeholder, but it wants greater say over the system as well.
The old consensus failed to recognize that as Chinese power increased, the country would be able to exploit that interdependence. As China’s market size has grown, it has become less reliant on exports. Beijing is now more willing to throw its economic weight around, forcing multinational corporations to comply with official requests or face a cutoff in access to the Chinese market. Its recent flexing of market power has been so aggressive that Victor Cha and Andy Lim of the Center for Strategic and International Studies dubbed it “predatory liberalism.”
If there was a crystallizing moment for the new Washington consensus on China, it was the National Basketball Association (NBA) fracas that played out last October. As the protests in Hong Kong heated up, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted a message supporting the residents taking to the streets. The backlash from the Chinese government was predictable: All of the team’s exhibition games were removed from Chinese television.
The backlash from the rest of the NBA was more disturbing. The initial response—from the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, to Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai to All-Star LeBron James—was to disown Morey for speaking up. As Cha and Lim explained in The Washington Quarterly, “the NBA cannot afford to lose the Chinese market with its emerging middle consumer class larger than the population of the United States.” Seeing a U.S.-dominated sports league kowtow to an authoritarian government was a shock to basketball fans and the foreign policy community alike.
The NBA incident is only the most visible example. The Chinese government has successfully applied similar pressure to U.S. airlines and Hollywood producers. On human rights, Chinese diplomats also have become much more outspoken in recent years, threatening “countermeasures” in response to any criticism from foreign governments. China has grown much more comfortable with using sticks as well as carrots as part of its economic diplomacy.
The other flaw in the old consensus was a failure to appreciate that China might exploit its economic position to engage in further surveillance and coercion of other countries, a phenomenon that political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have labeled “weaponized interdependence.” This is what has triggered bipartisan anxiety about the role that the Chinese tech giant Huawei is playing in the development of 5G mobile networks across the globe.
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained in December 2019, “Thanks to the way 5G networks are built, it’s impossible to separate any one part of the network from another.” Therefore, he declared, “it’s critical that [allies] not give control of their critical infrastructure to Chinese tech giants like Huawei or ZTE.” Similarly, in fall 2019, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) and Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) jointly requested that U.S. intelligence officials investigate whether a Chinese smartphone app popular among teenagers poses a national security risk. “With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone,” they wrote in a letter, “Tik-Tok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore.”
A COUNTERPRODUCTIVE RESPONSE
THE OLD CONSENSUS on China was flawed because it rested on a Whiggish narrative in which the arc of history bends toward free markets and liberal democracy. Such overconfidence was bolstered by America’s unparalleled standing in the world a generation ago. The United States was the global hegemon, and it seemed like the rest of the world was copacetic with this fact. But free markets and civil liberties are the exceptions and not the rule in world history.
A little introspection and humility are good things for a policy making community. Unfortunately, the debate has lurched all the way into full-blown panic mode. The new Washington consensus is less about the souring of elite attitudes toward China and more about the souring of elite attitudes toward the United States. American intellectuals have gone from believing in the end of history to believing that history will bury us. Columnists opine that the U.S. needs to copy China’s top-down tech strategies. Last summer, Foreign Affairs devoted 50 pages to what had happened to the American Century (hint: nothing good); in January, the same magazine ran a special section debating whether capitalism was doomed.
As one State Department official explained to me last spring, “The U.S. electorate lost faith in the global economic system.” In November, Nils Gilman wrote at The American Interest that “if the proof of the economic pudding is in the eating, China seems to have been using a better cookbook over the last decade.” The thought that dare not speak its name, the one underlying all of this anxiety, is that China’s model of political economy might be superior to America’s.
This anxiety has arguably led the Trump administration to respond to China in ways that are counterproductive. There clearly are areas of concern in dealing with the People’s Republic—on human rights, on economic networks where China might achieve dominance, and on true challenges to our national security. These contentious issues require targeted measures and cooperation with allies to give the United States a strong bargaining position. The Trump administration has done the exact opposite.
In dealing with China, the president has linked issues that should be kept separate. He casually suggested trading the prosecution of a Huawei executive for trade concessions and told Xi Jinping he would stay quiet on Hong Kong so as not to disrupt trade negotiations. And the U.S. trade war has not been limited to China; Trump has hiked tariffs on every major economy. The result has been that China has expanded its global market share even as trade with the United States has declined, and even as China’s human rights violations have continued apace. The success of U.S. efforts to block Huawei from participating in the construction of 5G networks has been limited at best. This is partly because Huawei has embedded itself so deeply in these networks, but it is also because the Trump administration’s diplomacy has been so ham-fisted. Even many of our close allies trust Xi Jinping more than Donald Trump.
The actual trade negotiations with China proved nothing short of a fiasco. The Tax Foundation estimates that the Trump administration’s aggregate tariff increases amount to “one of the largest tax increases in decades” and says that the costs of the trade war have already exceeded whatever benefits the 2017 tax bill was projected to produce for long-term growth. Moody’s Analytics estimates just one year of the trade war shaved U.S. real GDP growth by three-tenths of a percent and cost almost 300,000 jobs. The “phase one” trade deal does nothing to challenge the elements of China’s behavior that the new Washington consensus finds so objectionable. If anything, it does the opposite, creating a “managed trade” arrangement that flouts WTO rules and makes the Chinese government the guarantor of agricultural and energy purchases.
The lesson China has drawn is that it cannot and should not fully liberalize, lest it increase its vulnerability to reprises of the Trump administration’s economic pressure. Little wonder that Chinese firms have ordered their foreign suppliers to reduce their reliance on U.S. components, enraging American firms that deal in microchips and biotech. The new Beijing consensus about the United States includes talk of “financial war.” The Quincy Institute’s Chas Freeman has concluded that “both countries are in the process of reconciling themselves to protracted confrontation based on real and imagined differences.”
In U.S. history, only two historical examples parallel the decoupling scenario that the Trump administration envisages with China. The first is the Embargo Act of 1807, in which the United States sanctioned both Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic wars. It crippled the U.S. economy at the time, causing GDP to shrink by an estimated 5 percent. The second example is the imposition of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, a choice that contributed to a two-thirds decline in global trade. (Oh, and to the Great Depression.)
The existing trade war has been damaging enough. A true decoupling from China, one that extended to capital markets and higher education, would produce a similar shock to our economy. A reverse migration of foreign-born scientists and technicians would reduce innovation in the United States while bolstering it in China.
WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT
U.S. FEARS HAVE led to an overhyping of the communist regime’s competence. One reason Beijing acceded to the phase one trade deal was to remedy a pork shortage of its own making.
Not only has China’s economic growth slowed down; there is strong evidence that its officials have overstated its growth rate by more than two percentage points annually for the last 12 years. The country’s total debt-to-GDP ratio now exceeds 300 percent, as continued fiscal stimulus has not yielded faster growth.
China’s bungled reaction to the new coronavirus highlights how the regime’s authoritarianism could sabotage its future. COVID-19 got out of control because local authorities in Wuhan ignored warnings from doctors. The city’s mayor did not tell citizens what was happening in late December—when doing so could have halted the virus’s spread—for fear of upsetting superiors in Beijing. Chinese authorities are now aggressively quarantining affected regions, but much of the damage has been done. Official data from February showed the sharpest monthly contraction in the country’s economic activity on record.
For all the talk of China catching up to us technologically, a recent survey from Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies concluded that “the gap between the United States and China remains substantial.” By China’s own rankings, the country is still lagging in areas such as artificial intelligence research. Indeed, China’s own illiberalism hampers its ability to catch up; U.S. researchers are better at international collaboration than their Chinese counterparts.
My Tufts colleague Michael Beckley says that Beijing’s recent military assertiveness is coming not from strength but from weakness—from a “profound unease among the country’s leaders, as they contend with their country’s first sustained economic slowdown in a generation and can discern no end in sight.” A surefire way to exacerbate Chinese bellicosity, Beckley notes, would be to close off the U.S. market to China.
Continuing to pursue a true break would harm both economies and worsen the security situation. U.S. policy makers need to restore their faith in the free enterprise system that made us the world’s richest country in the first place and worry less about the Middle Kingdom.
There are areas in which the prospect of weaponized interdependence means that some negotiated decoupling will be necessary. In those arenas, however, the United States will need the cooperation of its allies—because otherwise, China is likely to be the one setting global standards in 5G and other technical areas. The U.S.-China Trade Policy Working Group, a collection of economists and lawyers from both sides of the Pacific, has put forward a framework for managing the relationship. As for coping with predatory liberalism, Adam Silver’s change of tune in the face of a media firestorm shows that negative press attention is the best way to get U.S. firms to stop kowtowing to Chinese authorities.
As long as China’s government acts in a repressive manner, there can and should be limits to the economic relationship. In winner-take-all sectors, prohibiting Chinese predatory practices makes sense. Yet the United States trades with allies that have similarly abysmal human rights records, from Honduras to Saudi Arabia. During the Cold War, we cooperated with the Soviet Union on arms control, space research, and other areas.
The Chinese state is brutal, but the answer is not to repudiate our commitment to openness. The United States can negotiate from strength with China—so long as policy makers in Washington remember what makes America great.
DANIEL W. DREZNER is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. ■
Es que hay algo que todavía las personas del siglo XX no acaban de entender y que nosotros partiendo del caso cubano y l;a C-40, nos dimos cuenta y hemos clasificamos para que se entienda por los académicos de las “ciencias políticas”.
…………
No pasa nada hombre, no pasa nada,… precisamente eso es la democracia sola, de eso trata la democracia y no lo acaban de enteder.
Solo el pueblo se puede equivocar, porque es el que sufre su error y porque es el que vuelve a votar para enmendarlo.
El gobierno no se puede equivocar; porque no sufren el error en su salario.
………….
OK:
El Error esta en hablar de democracia y no hablar de la otra ala del avión del progreso:
La Republica.
No hay avión que despegue sin las dos alas, pero por alguna razón siempre se habla de una sola ala; sin darse cuenta que la democracia sola no existe, porque no funciona.
Con la Democracia sola estarian en Cuba. La democia sola se llama dictadura.
………..
https://www.facebook.com/humberto.mondejar/posts/2401500933238816
Democracia: En su significado más trivial es elegir entre Si y No. Y una vez eliges entre Sí y No acaba en la dictadura de la mayoría ganadora.
República: Es el imperio de la ley, y ante lo único que los hombres somos iguales; por lo tanto evita que la mayoría que está en el poder someta a la minoría que democráticamente lo perdió.
No importa quién este en el poder, mientras no se viole la Republica; no pasa nada hombre, no pasa nada.
La mayoría entiende que es la DEMOCRACIA, pero no entiende qué cosa es la REPÚBLICA. Y así no hay país que progrese.
Y esta el otro extremo:
Estados Unidos es una república, no una democracia….
Eso es un disparate de ese profesor:
https://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/article235159787.html?fbclid=IwAR1Z_9dVi_5HIwrypiXwEt4HnXtN3jnYEw1hJJvqou8USa-h2p5GGsW5DmM
En la madrugada del 24 de marzo de 1976, el teniente general Jorge Rafael Videla hizo un comunicado en la radio nacional argentina informando a la población de que el gobierno constitucional de María Estela Martínez de Perón había sido depuesto y se instauraba una dictadura cívico-militar encabezada por los más altos cargos de los tres ejércitos. Nacía en Argentina un régimen autoritario que perduraría en el tiempo hasta 1983.
lo mismo dice hoy madudo en venezuela, que su gobierno es una alianza “civico-militar”
dictadores de mierda
Bueno….. no es tan simple el tema amigo Manuel. Menos aún homologar la dictadura militar argentina del 76 con la dictadura cívico militar venezolana.
En Argentina el poder militar depuso al gobierno democrático de María Estela de Perón para evitar
que llegue al poder una dictadura cívico militar comunista como finalmente sucedió en Venezuela.
Lamentablemente es imposible saber si los movimientos comunistas en Argentina tenían reales posibilidades de llegar al poder y si así era, cuánta necesidad existía de eliminar a sus cabecillas y más difícil aún es saber con exactitud cuántos eran los que supuestamente era necesario eliminar (Videla eliminó a entre 10.000 y 30.000 argentinos).
Más difícil aún es saber si era correcto o no eliminar subersivos comunistas que aspiraban a instaurar un régimen comunista en el país.
En China o Rusia o Cuba, por ejemplo, ¿hubiera sido correcto y justificado moral y éticamente eliminar antes de que lleguen al poder a Stalin a Mao o a Fidel con las decenas de miles de personas que los seguían para evitar que más adelante cometieran las atrocidades que cometieron? ¿Es moral, justo o ético matar para evitar algo que probablemente suceda pero que aún no sucedió?
>>¿Es moral, justo o ético matar para evitar algo que probablemente suceda pero que aún no sucedió?
Curioso. Ese es el tema de la película ¨Minority report¨, protagonizada por Tom Cruise y basada en un cuento de Philip K. Dick. (Otro cuento suyo, ¨Sueñan los androides con ovejas mecánicas¨ fue también llevado al cine en la película ¨Blade runner¨)
Ni siquiera se considera justo matar a alguien por algo que ya ocurrió a menos que se demuestre su culpabilidad: la presunción de inocencia.
Sin embargo, en el caso de Fidel Castro, Batista tuvo la oportunidad, que perdió, de eliminarlo por algo que SI había ocurrido: el asalto al cuartel Moncada. Castro aprendió la lección de que no se podían cometer esos deslices y siempre mató moscas a cañonazos. No dejaba ninguna posible oposición crecer.
In the early hours of March 24, 1976, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla made a statement on the Argentine national radio informing the population that the constitutional government of María Estela Martínez de Perón had been deposed and a civic-military dictatorship was being established. headed by the highest positions of the three armies. An authoritarian regime was born in Argentina that would last until 1983.
The same thing said today, when he was mature in Venezuela, that his government is a “civil-military” alliance.
fucking dictators
Manuel
Argentine national radio no me parece correcto. Mejor Argentina´s national radio.
you are right. it is the auto that makes mistakes like that. it may have some tool to provide feed back on this, but I have no time for that, friend
In the early hours of March 24, 1976, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla made a statement on the Argentine national radio informing the population that the constitutional government of María Estela Martínez de Perón had been deposed and a civic-military dictatorship was being established. headed by the highest positions of the three armies. An authoritarian regime was born in Argentina that would last until 1983.
The same thing said today Maduro in Venezuela, that his government is a “civil-military” alliance.
fucking dictators
Finding what matters
I am 73 years old, diabetic with heart issues. So, I am following the new rules: Live alone, remain alone, “sheltered.” The news is nonstop Covid-19. But I need life, not updates. I miss most that which I took for granted. I am rediscovering that my adult daughters really do love me, that my ex-wife and I still worry about each other, that my faith fills a very real spot in my life. My world may have flipped, but my priorities are falling back into order.
— Peer T. Lykke, Barrington, Ill.
In the early hours of March 24, 1976, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla made a statement on the Argentine national radio informing the population that the constitutional government of María Estela Martínez de Perón had been deposed and a civic-military dictatorship was being established. headed by the highest positions of the three armies. An authoritarian regime was born in Argentina that would last until 1983.
The same thing said today Maduro in Venezuela, that his government is a “civic-military” alliance.
fucking dictators
https://youtu.be/UTBk9_tvCkU
Carson on education & US be competente in
Coming world
¿Podía haber algo peor que las medidas que a mi me parecen desproporcionadas para combatir el coronavirus pero que, al menos, tenían cierta coherencia?
Sí. El intento de los demócratas, encabezados por la bruja Pelosi, de meter de contrabando en el saco de medidas todo lo que no tiene que ver con el coronavirus.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/24/nancy-pelosis-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-decision-to-hold-the-country-hostage/
Ted Cruz estaba furioso. Me parece que cuando le pasé a Manuel ayer la transmisión en vivo del debate en el Senado ya Cruz había terminado, pero tuve oportunidad de ver su indignacion (Disclaimer: no es que yo esté de acuerdo con las medidas SIN los agregados demócratas, pero con ellos ya llegan a lo alucinante)
Por eso no me creo ni la mitad de lo que me dicen acerca de esta ¨crisis¨: datos contradictorios, juego político… Allá los que quieran seguir la rima de este cuento chino. Yo paso. Me voy a poner la maldita máscara en Publix solamente porque es una petición de mi hija.
Creo que le voy a tomar prestado a Juan Bautista eso de ¨la voz que clama en el desierto¨.
Julian Perez
March 24, 2020 at 9:17 AM
PERMALINK
Could there be anything worse than the measures that seem disproportionate to me to combat the coronavirus but, at least, had some coherence?
Yes. The attempt by the Democrats, led by the witch Pelosi, to smuggle everything that has nothing to do with the coronavirus into the bag of measures.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/24/nancy-pelosis-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-decision-to-hold-the-country-hostage/
Ted Cruz was furious. It seems to me that when I passed Manuel yesterday the live broadcast of the debate in the Senate, Cruz had already finished, but I had the opportunity to see his outrage (Disclaimer: not that I agree with the measures WITHOUT the Democratic attachés, but with they already arrive at the amazing thing)
That is why I do not believe even half of what they tell me about this “crisis”: contradictory data, political game … All those who want to follow the rhyme of this Chinese tale. I pass. I’m only going to put the damn mask on Publix because it’s a request from my daughter.
I think I am going to borrow from Juan Bautista the “voice that cries out in the desert”.
Manuel, la práctica hace la perfección 🙂 Tus traducciones van ganando en calidad.
Excepto: (Disclaimer: not that I agree with the measures WITHOUT the Democratic attachés, but with they already arrive at the amazing thing)
No da la idea. Por ejemplo…
(Disclaimer: not that I agree with the measures WITHOUT the Democratic attachés, but with them, they become total madness)
Alucinante puede ser positivo o negativo. En el original estaba en sentido negativo, locura. “Amazing thing” es positivo.
not me j, it was the auto-translator that comes with chrome
Google translate? Recuerda el link que puse
https://www.deepl.com/translator
Probé y lo tradujo así, que es mucho mejor.
(Disclaimer: not that I agree with the measures WITHOUT the Democratic attachés, but with them they already reach the hallucination)
good!
now I know better 🙂
when I see something great I think it is good having it translated.
…in case a millenial, or others, show up here
millennial
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age
Muere una docena de ninos a la semana por flu,
A alguien le importa?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age
A dozen children die a week from flu only in USA,
Does anyone care?
all that matters is corona
Sugerencias de Dennis Prager
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/69433-suggestions-for-this-difficult-time-2020-03-24
this is really good, j>
https://patriotpost.us/cartoons/28369
Ramiro Valdés, nefasta figura… Recuerdo una canción que unos amigos y yo le sacamos hace mucho tiempo, parodiando la zarzuela Cecilia Valdés. Creo que no he olvidado la letra.
Ramiro, Ramiro, Ramiro Valdés…
¡Sí, yo soy Ramiro Valdés!
Ramiro Valdés me llaman, nunca he sido bachiller
Para torturar me llaman, en eso soy el mejor
La sangre a mi me fascina, torturando soy feliz
Yo pincho con aguijones, yo soy Ramiro Valdés
Ramiro Valdés, mi nombre es
El guardián de las prisiones
Yo te arranco los cojones, yo soy Ramiro Valdés
También había muchos cuentos… Como ése en que Fidel Castro y Ramiro Valdés estaban pescando y atraparon un pez que no podían identificar. Ramiro se lo llevó al camarote y al cabo del rato salió diciendo.
–Lo tuve que quemar, pero me dijo que era un atún.
En otra versión del mismo cuento solamente atrapaban peces pequeños. Ramiro se llevó uno al camarote. Al ver que se demoraba, Castro entró a ver qué pasaba. Ramiro abofeteaba al pez.
–¡Habla, habla! ¿Dónde están los grandes?
¨Yo soy Fidel¨, dicen los pioneros… Pobrecitos. Al que se le ocurrió que dijeran eso acababa de ver Espartaco, probablemente.
Me recuerda el cuento del borracho que vio a los pioneros coreando su lema (ya era el período especial y no quedaban muchos que creyeran en aquello):
–Pioneros por el comunismo, ¡seremos como el Ché!
A lo cual el borracho dijo:
–Serán asmáticos, porque comunistas…
Y no sé por qué me acordé de éste… Debe de ser que los chistes políticos vienen convoyados en la memoria. En Cuba, en la calle, se hacían dos tipos de chistes: los verdes y los políticos.
Para los no cubanos. Radio Reloj es (o era, no sé si aún existe) una estación de radio que daba la hora cada minuto intercalando noticias y comentarios.
Era un tiempo en que estuvo de moda construir pedraplenes, carreteras que unían la isla con algunos de sus cayos.
¨Reloj nacional, ¡tin!, las ocho y un minuto.
Anuncia el gobierno revolucionario nuevas obras construídas
Tic, tic, tic, tic…
¨Reloj nacional, ¡tin!, las ocho y dos minutos.
Completado el pedraplén Habana-Cayo Hueso
Tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic…
Ugly New York>
BREAKING NEWS
“Astronomical numbers”: New York has over 25,000 coronavirus cases, and the rate of new infections is doubling every three days, the governor said.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 11:58 AM EST
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Tuesday that the apex of the disease in the state was going to be higher and hit earlier than had been expected
Hmmm… NY is mayoritariamente demócrata. ¿Será que el virus, aparte de a los ancianos con problemas de salud, afecta más a los demócratas? Siempre sospeché que democritud era una enfermedad.
Veamos qué pasa en California.
Futuro premio Nobel.
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult
Hoy llovió, todavía llueve, se que no tiene ninguna importancia para el blog, pero es el primer anuncio de la temporada monzónica y a los granjeros y las aves nos llena de alegría. Las ovejas agrupándose en el establo, el olor a boñiga y a tierra mojada… apenas para hurgar por un libro pendiente y sumarlo al menú. Qué maravilla una casona frente al Paraná, Ramiro. Imagino los sauces, los ceibos, el olor de los peces y el limo, las marejadas de los “vapores” de y hacia Asunción… ha sido usted afortunado, tal vez algún día pueda rescatar esa chacra y la casona para sus nietos. A mi me tocó donde el viento mueve el médano, fui un hijo del secano, que curte o destruye a los hombres. Entiendo su pasión por la pesca, lo mío es o fue la caza. A los diez años había resuelto ya mi vida, iba a ser cazador profesional de jabalíes, con dogos y a cuchillo, claro, pero también con un 94 caronero del 30 30 jajaja.
Hoy los inversores reventaron de optimismo porque la quinina “los salvó” (pobres mistos). Saben ustedes que la gente que invierte en bolsa, no los broker sino los que siguen sus consejos, son de lo más ingenuas. Los médicos especialmente, que por el sistema de salud americano engrosan sus bolsillos de manera indecente, se creen y compran cualquier cosa. A algunos les han vendido hasta el oro contenido en los suelos, y lo han comprado o tomado en garantía jajaja. Tengo una antigua mina de plata abandonada en una de mis fincas y por eso he estado en ese asunto y hecho pruebas de mena. Donde quiera que se hagan siempre habrá oro, una parte por millón u ocho o más. Claro que el problema es sacarlo jajaja, pero conozco doctores americanos que han “invertido” doscientos o más miles de dólares en esos “valores” jajaja. Saludos cordiales.