In my town in North Jersey, Republicans dominate local politics. The Democrats rarely win an election to the Township Committee, sometimes don’t field a candidate, and any who wins then comes under pressure to become Republican if they want to get any of their proposals enacted. The school system’s been in turmoil, as parental-rights board members berate educators, who’ve been decamping to other districts. Lately, the Republicans have divided into factions, fielding two slates in an upcoming primary, without explaining where they differ, leaving unclear whether one or both groups are batshit crazy.
New Jersey remains a blue state, though with significant swathes of red, including the Jersey Shore, where Donald Trump recently held a rally. The Democrats have their own divisions. Sen. Bob Menendez is going on trial for corruption, and Congressman Andy Kim is running to take his seat; Tammy Murphy, wife of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, began a Senate campaign and quickly lined up support from many Democratic politicos, but bowed out amid public concerns about nepotism and after a lawsuit by Kim blocked the use of a “county line” primary ballot that gives high visibility to the party establishment’s candidate, relegating outsiders to a distant ballot line called “Siberia.”
At the national level, Fareed Zakaria, whose fascinating book Age of Revolutions astutely analyzes political forces playing out over centuries, somberly notes in a CNN column: “Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states, and behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it is best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate, but in general they have tended to underestimate Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country.” Although I’ve previously argued that Trump’s more likely to go to a prison cell than return to the Oval Office, I’m now intrigued by the possibility we’ll have a president who arranges—whether through directives to the Justice Department or a self-pardon—for prosecutions of himself to be stopped; and that the federal government may effectively terminate state prosecutions. All of these are steps towards dictatorship.
On the global level, concerns that powerful groups are seeking to install a world government leave me unimpressed. At NYU in the 1980s, Israel Kirzner, an economics professor of mine whom I recently mentioned in connection with his use of hypothetical thinking, argued that a world government would endanger freedom, because there’d be nowhere for dissidents to flee; I’ve long found this convincing, with the caveat that its cogency could eventually diminish if self-governing space colonies are developed. However, no existing international or multilateral body has achieved any significant degree of power independent of sovereign nation-states, and claims that talk-shops such as the World Economic Forum have any capability, or even intent, of establishing a global super-state evoke, in my mind, the contingency that such an outcome could occur only if engineered by uniquely potent “lizard people.”
Beyond Earth, political issues involving the use of celestial bodies are gaining salience amid growing capabilities, in the U.S., China and other nations, to send missions to the moon and various asteroids. I’d written about the possibility of radio astronomy in a “quiet zone” on the far side of the moon, and was intrigued by an opinion piece in Scientific American arguing for a nature preserve aimed at protecting such a capacity. Around the same time, as an editorial contractor for Scientific American, but one who can’t speak for the magazine, I was underwhelmed by a City Journal article, “Unscientific American,” criticizing the publication based on negative cherry-picking of left-wing positions, obscuring the numerous opinion pieces—such as about lunar radio astronomy—that aren’t remotely “woke.”
“Think global, act local” is a long-standing phrase of advice for improving the world. There’s some dispute about its origins, though I first became aware of the concept through reading René Dubos, French-American scientist and humanist. “Think planetary, act local” is how I’d rephrase it, since “global” doesn’t entirely capture the scope of some of the problems and prospects now facing humanity.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on Threads: @kennethsilber
