Biden and the Sweet Hereafter

Kausfiles gets poetic!

[There’s a discussion of this topic with Ann Coulter here on her UNSAFE Substack. ]

There’s a poem in the new collection from Mandy Kahn designed to cheer up people during the Covid lockdowns. One line stands out: "The old rules die faster than you do." She means to be reassuring, not discouraging (all we have to do is wait and the "ship of the new way" will come into view) but it works either way.

It also applies to a lot more than Covid. In huge core areas of human endeavor, the old rules are dead or dying but we're still here, in the Sweet Hereafter, eating, sleeping, working, while we wait for … something to heave into view that will give us structure and direction. 

— Most obviously, the old rule was you went to work, and learned a skill or went to college to earn more. But artificial intelligence and robotics may remove the need for vast swathes of human labor. Will people still have to work?, In the process, AI is nuking the rule that the way to get ahead is through training and education (those skilled, knowledge-intensive jobs may be among the first to disappear).

— College is less and less a mandatory station in the lives of ambitious young people, and colleges are disappearing.

— The old rule—or at least the ideal— in medical treament was that continuous advances in treatment would benefit the entire population, But newer treatments, promising longer lives, may be so expensive they can't be distributed on an egalitarian basis.

— Sexuality: A cornucopia of rapidly evolving genders (and so much more) beckons.

— Beyond FICO: Someone — your bank, your browser, your government, your tailor—may soon know practically everything about you and be able to punish you for it.

— The profession of journalism is collapsing. Even “the movie business is over … “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced [it].” [That’s Jerry Seinfeld].

— The auto industry is abandoning the rule of gas cars—which, for all its flaws, worked—for an iffy future of EVs.

— People are historically lonely, as old forms of socializing disappear.

This is all apart from the political effects of wokeism: schools without standards, cops who don’t punish criminals, doctors chosen on the basis of "equity," And it’s only a partial list.

These things aren't vibes. They are part of reality, as real as the Core PCE.

[Musical interlude.]

People wonder why President Biden isn’t doing better in the polls. Is he too old? Too liberal? Too unpleasant? [Yes, yes, yes.] But Bidens greatest failing by far, I think, is a near-total inabiliy to address the Sweet Hereafter problem. Presidents need to give their constitutents a sense of where the nation is going, why that's a good thing, where we all fit in. It’s part of the job.

JFK recognized this part of his job--it's why he insisted on going to the moon (in addition to waging the Cold War twilight struggle). Biden, who in earlier decades seemed to fancy himself JFK’s heir, is campaigning as if it's enough for him to run a state-of-the art 1988 Democratic campaign,  pleasing elements of his coalition with various programs and payouts--and more GDP!--plus abortion rights. Then he wonders why the electorate is still unhappy.

Isn’t the price of gas lower? Hasn't he presided over prosperity? Yes, he has. But prosperity isn't what it used to be. Without purpose or direction, it's hollow. Voters sense we’re drifting into a future that kind of sucks. You’d have to be an idiot not to.

It's not as if Biden couldn't come up with something useful to say, if he or Meacham thought about it. He could always revive and extend JFK’s goal of space exploration. One of the few actually inspiring news stories of recent weeks was the success of a small JPL team at reviving the 47-year old space probe Voyager 1, which is still traveling, now outside the solar system, and (now that they’ve fixed it) still reporting back.

But forget space adventures, which are a bit cheesy (and Musky!) and distant from the lives of most Americans. Why not pick up the promising parts of the various medical revolutions and tell voters that our goal is a society where disease has been eradicated and humans can live until .. 150? 200? 300?

At the least, if imagination fails, Biden could honestly acknowledge the situation, without moralizing, smug augury or partisan edge. Say he doesn’t know what’s next, which would itself go a ways toward reassuring voters they’re in sound hands.

Or he can generate more charts to show Americans they should really be happy with a sour and directionless prosperity, while they nervously wait on the shore to learn what the new rules , if any, will be.
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Kahn’s poem is “All You Have to Do.” You can see her read it here.