Morning roundup:<\/p>\n
Interesting times in Tunisia<\/a>. \u00a0Is it the Arab’s world Gdansk or is that too much to hope for? \u00a0We’ll see. \u00a0But it’s something.<\/p>\n I was heartened to see that Yglesias<\/a> also excused himself from blogging extensively on Tunisia for much the same reason that I did: ignorance. \u00a0But he goes a bit further and discusses the incentive for high growth in the country,including a quote from Tyler Cowen<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n On this side of the Mediterranean, the judiciary is coming out against Berlusconi with knives sharpened, talking about trying him as a sex offender<\/a>. \u00a0I agree with Rodot\u00e0 writing in the Observer <\/em>back in November<\/a> that it’s really tiresome how the man seems to dominate the headlines. \u00a0There’s just no escape, even when actual revolutions are happening in the next country over. \u00a0Annalis Piras, in London for L’Espresso<\/em>, astutely points out<\/a> that attempts to defeat Berlusconi legally just make him stronger during elections — which probably will get called early this year. \u00a0How to get out of this Chinese finger trap? <\/span><\/p>\n Up in Austria, Mr. Glock’s past tribulations<\/a> seem like the sort of violent betrayal worthy of a Bernhard novel. \u00a0Across the waters in the US, our gun-obsessed culture futiley tries to understand madness, criminality and legislation by zooming in on the weapon<\/a> itself. \u00a0\u00a0I’m not sure why we have this misprision. \u00a0There are many reasons but the most overarching could have to do with David Reisman’s assertion that Americans tend to locate things outside themselves, which Margaret Mead also noticed. \u00a0While I dig around JSTOR for the original, here’s Todd Gitlin in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Lonely Crowd<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Mead herself pointed to a passage noting that other-directed conformism predisposed Americans to project power centers outside the self — a reason the paranoid streak in American life loomed so large, and perhaps also a reason Americans were excessively afraid that the Russians would take them over.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What if we just substitute “immigrants” or “socialists” for Russians? \u00a0Does that make it clearer, and take some of the blame away from a pugnacious\u00a0octogenarian\u00a0Austrian engineer? \u00a0I’d hope so. \u00a0The Times<\/em> piece shamefully ignores much of what is true about human society and economics of supply and demand. \u00a0Chekhov’s rule may be true in fiction but less so in real life: just because the gun is there, it doesn’t have to be fired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Morning roundup: Interesting times in Tunisia. \u00a0Is it the Arab’s world Gdansk or is that too much to hope for? \u00a0We’ll see. \u00a0But it’s something. I was heartened to see that Yglesias also excused himself from blogging extensively on Tunisia for much the same reason that I did: ignorance. \u00a0But he goes a bit further … <\/p>\n