What we can learn from the 2016 U.S. Elections

This article was originally written a week after the U.S. 2016 Elections. 

The 2016 U.S. election aftermath has had me glued to social media. Many--even those in an exultant state--seemed to wander the web in a post-election hang over, wrestling and debating the realities of a presidency that few (even of Trump's own followers) had predicted.

Whatever else one may say of the results, it is certain that out of the shell-shock and frenzy has come a flurry of incisive commentary. Arguably this commentary has been sifting down throughout the U.S. election cycle, but suddenly in a few days' time, it was condensed into a deluge of thought. Friends who had last used their Facebooks to look up their exes were now posting and commenting on articles and opinions, taking part in a form of public dialogue that, though often discounted, can be invaluable. For the first time in the whole election cycle, my feed looked diverse; opinion came in from all sides. 

Since awaking last Wednesday, I have read too many post-election (and even pre-election) articles to count, from a variety of sources and sides. I have tried to avoid those that rely on click-bate and pander to more base instincts, but also haven't avoided articles and commentary that seem to oppose my own ideas. 

Here's a list of a few articles that have caused me to think and rethink in the last nine days:

1. There has been much name calling, and much ado about name calling, during this election and in the aftermath. Central to the issue of sweeping generalizations is the question of whether or not people can indeed change strongly-held beliefs, and if so, how. The Washington Post's article "White flight of Derek Black" is one such example of changing minds. 

2. Along the lines of the above: CNN's Van Jones visited Trump supporters leading up to the elections. 

3.. In a tweet expressing his discomfort with the "Not My President" movement, Shadi Hasid referenced a piece he wrote for The Atlantic back in May, discussing the possibility of a Trump presidency and the issue of respecting the democratic process even when it seems to have self-defeating aims. (Shadi's Twitter is a good feed to follow for more thoughts on liberal vs. illiberal thought.) 

4.  Cracked.com has put out an article discussing the rise of Trump in terms of the 48% and the dominating red states (or, as was pointed out by David Wong, red counties).  

5. Malak Chabkoun wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera discussing the entitlement issue of wanting to flee the United States over a disliked president. 

6. There was another womanizing businessman who all but crotch-grabbed his way to office in recent history: enter Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy for nearly two  decades. Is Italy's recent history America's future? 

7. Maine voted to incorporate Ranked Choice Voting, a voting system that allows voters to rank candidates instead of voting for just one. As people make sense of the fact that a highly polarizing candidate, even among his own party, has lost the popular vote and won the presidency, RCV offers a potential solution.

8. What should political journalists do differently? The Economist has an introspective piece, written by their North American editor, which states that: "Next time I want to read more about non-voters. They, not the 60m who voted for Mr Trump, are the silent majority." This is an interesting thought; the idea that, while there were more votes for Trump than many predicted, there were even more people who never showed up to vote at all. What do they think about elections and why aren't they motivated to get to the polls?

In many cases, to be a journalist, and even to be a politician, is to attempt soothesaying; it is to determine what is right by looking back and forecasting into the less known. When it comes to politicians, we discuss with derision how they "change with the times" and waffle depending on polled opinion. But are politicians meant to lead public opinion or be a barometer of it? The most fair answer probably lies between both: they lead a constituency while simultaneously representing it. 

The same could be said of journalists and pundits: to test the waters of public opinion and report on it, while simultaneously treading carefully on the responsibility that is presenting information to and about the masses, is the height of why journalism exists. If journalists truly believe their job is to report, then their job equally is to attempt to understand that which they report on. This is not to agree with all the issues brought up, and this is to not force the issues brought up to agree with themselves, stifling debate and suffocating perceived wayward opinion. And, we can hope, people who write about opinion or attempt to shape public discourse use deductive and inductive reasoning to come to conclusions and stand their ground. This leads, inevitably, to those who get it wrong. The best we can do is learn to critically think and reason through not only our own ideas, but others'. 

These articles are a good place to start.

A driverless economy, powered by riding apps

Around 200 Uber drivers in Cape Town, South Africa went on strike in April of this year.

The reason for the drivers’ disgruntlement was their bottom line: Uber temporarily dropped riding costs by 20% in an attempt to lure more customers, a tactic the company said has paid off in other cities around the globe. But the direct hit to drivers’ payouts felt substantial. Many drivers I spoke to during that time attested to working more hours to make up for the loss of income (some drivers told me that Uber later agreed to compensate them for the difference, subsidizing their incomes up to a certain value depending on hours worked).

The drivers aren’t Uber’s only source of rancor. Privately-held taxi corporations have historically been annoyed when Uber rolls into town, and South Africa is no exception. Some cities, like Eugene, Oregon, and Berlin have issued bans on rider apps, citing local interests.

Even in places where rider apps flourish freely there is a sense of diminishment. Speaking to Uber drivers in Denver, Colorado last November, many spoke of nights when they could make upwards of several hundred dollars for a few hours of driving as the "golden days" of years gone by, citing an uptick in new drivers (and more riding apps) spreading the customer base more thinly.

But if drivers are getting irked over depreciating funds and consumer bases, and local taxi companies are fed up with shifting loyalties, the bad news is that the world’s driver economy has no light at the end of the tunnel: Uber’s research and development, along with that of Lyft (Uber’s main U.S.-based competitor), is going towards driverless vehicles.

The evolution of the global economy is one that is rife with stories of padded industries and cobbled attempts to increase jobs--look no further than fuel station attendants, once a mainstay and now mostly a relic, with such service provided by law in only two remaining U.S. states and countries such as South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia. New economies have laid waste to many previously-important jobs, replacing grocery tills with automated machines (automated grocery checkouts have started arriving in South Africa) and bankers with ATMs. For those who are money conscious, jobs that used to be billed to professionals are often taken care of by people themselves or by students on the prowl for summer or part-time jobs (gardening, house cleaning and nannying). Eventually, an economy morphs to accept the fact that as things become more automated and free time proliferates (thanks to shorter commutes and machinery), most of us can now also be our own cooks and cleaners, drivers and photographers--and in the future, technology might eliminate our need to do even these.

Some would consider a driverless world a dismal future, though it’s hard to justify the demise of one profession when we happily replace others (no one complains that they can now take their family photos with their phones instead of trucking the kids and the matching turtlenecks to a department store studio every Christmas). Economists argue that where one industry collapses, another rises up in its stead--the kids of taxi drivers can study to be app developers and driverless car programmers--and that we’re all better for it, eventually.

While it is hard to prove that new industries will continue to create new jobs indefinitely, history thus far has aligned with this belief. More than jobs, however, the lack of taxi drivers will be a loss for journalists everywhere, quipped The Economist several years ago. Where will we get the information to write our stories and form our opinions? After three years of carless living I now have a vehicle at my disposal, but I lament that I take taxis and Ubers with increasing infrequency precisely because of the interesting drivers I encountered on my routes. Their reputation for giving striking insight into society is well merited, and will perhaps be the greatest intangible loss.


But maybe no industry is perfectly safe from technology's arm; soon enough even the journalists may be replaced.

Dealing with Trumpian truths

There's a lot to take away from The New Yorker's recent inside look of Trump, as told to Jane Mayer mostly by Trump's one-time ghost-writer Tony Schwartz. In particular, there are two lessons that should especially not escape a discerning soul.

The first is the admonition to read more. It is true, of course, that the world of journalism extolls the virtues of reading perhaps above all else. That those who have "made it" in an industry that relies on readership and cultivates high-brow thoughts should be disproportionately made up of people who like to read, and that they snub their nose at those who do not, should come as no surprise. But it is still a damning judgement. Trump ostensibly doesn't read books, and those whom we may love more do. Whom would we rather emulate? 

The second chilling moment comes at the revelation that, at the time Schwartz was following Trump to write The Art of the Deal, he discovered that Trump ended most calls with people by telling them that they're "the greatest!". This deceptive and generously-spread superlative reeks of insincerity and ego-stroking. But it is most chilling because it's an easy pit to fall into. Recently I had been thinking about my own over-use of all-too-easy superlatives, the casual conversations with friends that inevitably left me falsely flattering them, or the feeling I got when I was ingenuously lauded with such titles. (Am I REALLY the greatest? Or...do you say that to everyone?)

In a world that increasingly leaves us feeling helpless, if making the world less Trumpian is desired, perhaps we should all read a little more and flatter a little less.

We have our work cut out for us. 

Dining with North Korea (almost): a trip to Dubai's Pyongyang Okryu-gwan restaurant

I have yet to set foot in North Korea (although I've seen it). 

Perhaps even closer than seeing it, though, was eating at it--or at least, eating at an establishment run by it. 

The Pyongyang Okryu-gwan restaurant is located in Dubai's Deira City Center neighborhood, walking distance from the metro, nestled in a neighborhood of Dubai municipal buildings and apartment blocks. The Pyongyang chain of North Korean restaurants number as many as 130, according to Wikipedia, and although most are located in China, there are some sprinkled elsewhere in Russia, Asia and the Middle East. 

Ostensibly, these restaurants are run by an extension of the Korean government, and are purported to serve as money-laundering bases. Due to sanctions, eating at these restaurants pose an international moral dilemma for some: South Korea recently asked their citizens to not eat at North Korean-run restaurants abroad. South Koreans make up a strong contingency of people eager to share in the food and culture of North Korea, making a point to frequent the Pyongyang chain in many places around the world. 

The chance to interact with the people working in these restaurants, who are from North Korea and maintain tight seclusion from the countries in which they work and reside, is, for most people, the only interaction they will get with citizens of the world's most closed-off country. 

On the day that my friend and I went, the restaurant was filled with female waitresses (no male employee in sight). They were picture-perfect models of North Korean femininity--from their well-make-upped faces and conservatively styled hair to their girl-like above-the-knee dresses. Their limited English did not stop them from engaging with guests, and they were very attune to our request to keep some of the dishes vegetarian. Hospitality, it would seem, is their forte. 

The biggest revelation that separated these women from the people who came to dine there occurred when we asked them to take our photo. One woman was proffered for the job by the others, but her experience with cellphones seemed practically null. It took a great while and a lot of coaxing before we were able to show her how it worked and press the correct button for the photo. The irony that their South Korean counterparts had made the phone was probably lost on her.

A trip to the restroom revealed what would appear to be a part of their living space: the bathroom, open to guests, apparently doubled as the women's private toilet and laundry facility, with all personal affects hidden away, except for a clothes drying rack folded neatly in the corner. 

Although they were keen to talk about basic things (the women offered compliments and conversation starters of their own accord, such as asking where we were from), they seemed not at liberty to discuss details of their own lives, or else were able to avoid most questions by reason of their language skills. Even by how they carried themselves, it was obvious that these were not just any North Koreans, applying for an opportunity to live and work overseas. They had an air of the elite. They were meticulous, educated, and carrying a lot of responsibility on their shoulders to represent not only their country but presumably their well-connected families. An article in Foreign Policy reveals the same, stating that, "Permission to work abroad is an honor and a lucrative opportunity for North Koreans."

This month, South Korea revealed the defection of 13 North Korean restaurant employees. The majority of annual defections to South Korea are primarily the poor; to have such a large contingency of defectors from North Korea's elite is unusual. 

It remains to be seen if this defection poses a threat to the restaurant employees who remain abroad, living and working in seclusion but still able to encounter the rest of the world in a way most of their home-bound counterparts cannot. Diplomacy was once defined to me as "people to people interactions." Where talking heads of state fall short, individuals are still able to break down barriers. Even if laundering money is their aim, perhaps these restaurants fulfill other needs: enabling North Koreans to encounter those they have only otherwise known through the eyes of their state. 

Tunisia and the Nobel Prize

Coast of Tunis, Tunisia

Coast of Tunis, Tunisia

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire to protest the seemingly impossible odds facing the working class. 

So sparked the Jasmine Revolution, which ultimately toppled the government, opened democratic elections, and led to one of the few true success stories of the Arab Spring (perhaps one could argue this depends on how success is ultimately measured; but as a matter of debate, that's another topic). 

On October 10, Oslo announced that the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was the winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. It was an award that rightly put the spotlight on a country and the independent actors therein who have turned the tide of a history too often tainted. 

There are, of course, many details missing from this timeline. Tunisia's recent story has been one of assassination, terrorist activity, soaring unemployment, and general unrest. A visit to the country last year during Ramadan left me with an impression of a disenchanted populace. The fact that things inevitably get worse before they get better is little consolation when you are having difficulties feeding your family, when on the surface people are becoming more extremist and not less so, when the promises of a better future seem much further than  a past seen through pink-tinted glasses. 

The Economist's assertion that the Arab region "deserves encouragement" is accurate, to say the least. Nearly five years after the initial flashpoint of the Arab Spring, 2015 was seemingly on record to be the bloodiest yet in a region that has had little respite through the years. Many of the conflicts fomented in the years following Bouazizi's self-immolation have either been squashed, squandered, or are continuing to escalate. But the Nobel Prize turns our attention squarely on a country that has continued to push forward, in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, and the story is indeed a bright spot to which we must return. I spoke with a Tunisian businessman based in Dubai recently about the positive changes emanating from Tunisia. His face lit up as he told me that some years ago, he was wanted in his own country, blacklisted for political reasons. This year his whole family was together in Tunisia at his mother's house for the first time in many years. There was no denying his belief that things were improving rapidly; the worst seemed behind them, the best seemed yet to come.

People killed by police in U.S.

Statistics can be damning. 

They can equally be misleading, more so when the parameters of gathering the statistics are not clear. 

With the aim of clarifying numbers and further understanding results, I crunched some numbers. 

Two separate news organizations (from two countries), the Washington Post and The Guardian, are running concurrent tallies on deaths caused by law enforcement in the United States. Their results are slightly different--the Post's current tally (as of August 18th, 2015) is 616, while The Guardian's tally as of the same date sits over 100 people higher, at 729. Some of these discrepancies may be due to methods of categorization and preliminary assertions. Additionally, although both list the deaths in subcategories of gender, race, age, and cause, The Guardian stats are able to be sorted according to subsets such as race and whether the victim was armed vs unharmed, while the Washington Post does not currently have that feature. 

Using the data mined by these sites (who have gleaned their data via online resources, police records, and reporting), I have crunched some of the numbers further to come out with percentages that give a more succinct summary. Separately, I researched law enforcement deaths and have included them below to see at what rates police officers being killed and if the stats of police officer deaths warrant the reactions of officers in taking down armed and unarmed suspects during confrontation. 

From a logical imperative it is important to note two things: simply because a victim is armed does not inherently mean he/she is a threat; additionally, to be unarmed does not indicate innocence. However, being armed does increase the odds of an escalating violence, and to be unarmed and facing an armed police officer is a tactical disadvantage that deserves a de-escalation of reaction on the part of the officer in question. This is where the statistics of armed vs unarmed deaths by police can become so persuasive: they speak to the reactions of police officers and the level to which they get it wrong.

To further understand these statistics, they would have to be taken as a percentage of a whole. These are strictly deaths as measured against all deaths. They are not deaths as measured against all police responses. IF, for fictitious example, 0.02% of all police responses to whites resulted in drawn weapons, whereas 0.05% of all police responses to blacks resulted in drawn weapons, we would have a more clear picture of reactions on the basis of the whole. As it stands, these statistics are isolated against themselves: they are deaths as a percentage of all deaths total, not to all responses total. This still leaves gaps in an understanding of bias, but we can still glean some understanding of the statistics as they stand.

Percentage of total killed by U.S. law enforcement, 2015 to date:

 

Via the Washington Post (616 total): 

 

48% White; .00015% of population

26% Black; .00042% of population

16% Hispanic; .0002% of population

(Asian specifics not given)

 

Via The Guardian (729 total): 

 

49% White; .00017% of population

26% Black; .0005% of population

15% Hispanic/Latino; .0002% of population

2% Asian; .00009% of population

(Population totals calculated against most recent census data)

 

Armed vs unarmed deaths by law enforcement, via The Guardian:

 

White:

283 -- Armed

63 -- Unarmed

Total: 346

18% of whites killed by police are unarmed

 

Black:

127 -- Armed

58 -- Unarmed

Total: 190

30% of blacks killed by police are unarmed

 

Hispanic/Latino:

84 -- Armed

20 -- Unarmed 

Total: 107

18% of Hispanics killed by police are unarmed 

 

Asian/Pacific Islander:

11 -- Armed

3 -- Unarmed

Total: 14

21% of Asians killed by police are unarmed 

 

Photo essay: touristing the Demilitarized Zone, part II

 

David Guttenfelder knows what it is to see and appreciate small glimpses of North Korea. The images he's both taken and helped curate from others showcases life inside the DPRK like never before seen. 

His are the type of details that are clearly lost by simply looking out a pair of binoculars toward the horizon. Still, the pictures shown in this post, of North Korea as seen from the Demilitarized Zone looking out from South Korea, stand as embodiment of a heavily curated North Korean image--and speak to the interest of Koreans and foreigners alike to catch a glimpse of life on the other side. 

(Pictures taken last fall from the observation deck of the DMZ.)


Photo essay: touristing the Demilitarized Zone, part I

DMZ tour bus driver, South Korea

DMZ tour bus driver, South Korea

"When only the exceptional is publicized, the everyday details become the most intriguing," reads the text on a New York Times photo and video piece by David Guttenfelder on North Korea. "The stories of 25 million lives, unabstracted by politics. They are the mysteries most worth revealing." 

Perhaps it is a search for this revelation that makes trekking to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea so appealing to the masses, who descend on it and the many tourist attractions that exist in its surroundings.

It feels like both an attempt at touching the Hermit Kingdom and an unabashed voyeurism of the plight of a nation, the 25 million people who exist and live beyond the reach of an increasingly interconnected world. 

Following are some of the photos taken on a trip to DMZ in the fall of 2014. 

Tourist buses arriving in the morning, DMZ observation park 

Tourist buses arriving in the morning, DMZ observation park 

Amusement park near DMZ observation zone

Amusement park near DMZ observation zone

Looking out towards North Korea

Looking out towards North Korea


"8 Hours Labor, 8 Hours Recreation, 8 Hours Rest": the case for an 8 hour day

"...extending the working day...not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself." - Karl Marx, Das Kapital

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company made a radical change, to the amusement of their competitors: in one fell swoop, they both doubled the pay and decreased the mandated working hours for their employees, from 9 hours to 8. 

Within two years, they had increased their production and doubled their profits. Their competitors soon followed suit. 

Today, in most industrialized countries, the 8-hour work day is standard. In fact, in a shift toward less menial labor and more stimulating and enjoyable jobs, the hours per day worked by those in the upper divisions of education and wealth are on the rise: we all know stories and have seen in movies the workaholic wealthy businessmen who practically sleep in their offices and brag about the 80 hours a week put in at their high-rises. But there is a difference between working long hours at a job you enjoy, whose remunerative and personal benefits are tied directly to the hours you spend at it even when you're salaried, and the 12-hour 6-to-7 day a week shifts put in by many who sign up to be the labor force of emerging markets and developing-world economies, who are not so much a slave to financial gains as they are a slave to their survival. 

An article in the Economist discusses the shift: "Back in 1899 Thorstein Veblen, an American economist who dabbled in sociology, offered his take on things. He argued that leisure was a 'badge of honour'. Rich people could get others to do the dirty, repetitive work—what Veblen called 'industry'. Yet Veblen’s leisure class was not idle. Rather they engaged in 'exploit': challenging and creative activities such as writing, philanthropy and debating. Veblen’s theory needs updating, according to a recent paper from researchers at Oxford University. Work in advanced economies has become more knowledge-intensive and intellectual. There are fewer really dull jobs, like lift-operating, and more glamorous ones, like fashion design. That means more people than ever can enjoy 'exploit' at the office."

So what about those who do not enjoy "exploit" at the office? Who, mostly in developing economies, still hold "really dull jobs" by the droves? How do you persuade companies that take advantage of systemic loopholes in labor laws, that enable them to turn a blind eye to small disregards in hours-per-day worked, to adopt "radical" change on their books? 

The answer, of course, is not so simple. 

In discussing labor laws at a friend's house in Geneva recently, a Scandinavian businessman told this story. The company he works for, which has a factory in Siberia, discovered that their contractors were overworking the Eastern European laborers who formed the factory's migrant workforce. They company demanded the men have their hours cut to 10 per day and that they have 1 1/2 days off a week. The result was that the men began to seek out extra work on their days and hours off, putting in time at other factories in order to accrue more money to send home to their families. In short, without the incentive of personal investment in one's free time, when the only investment being sought is the betterment of the lives of families abroad, more down time was simply more opportunity to work. 

In gulf countries, many people in menial but mentally-taxing jobs, such as construction and taxi driving, work 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, a danger both to themselves and to others. Even when this labor force works for reputable companies, many of those on the lower rungs of the labor workforce, especially when hidden by clever contracts with third-party labor suppliers, end up with 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week. These hours leave little time for rest and recreation, forcing grocery shopping, cooking, laundry and general errands to be slotted inbetween long hours and crammed into single days off. On the one hand, a small price to pay for the "right to work"; on the other, an almost inhumane act considering the health and emotional side effects of such hours: depression, high-blood pressure, obesity, to name a few. 

There is no easy solution for what to do about an over-worked workforce; certainly statistics that point to a rise in voluntary working hours becomes anecdotal evidence that extra work is a boon, and that people even desire to spend their time on the clock. But these anecdotes do little to better the lives of those who have been given few choices in life, who are not equipped to make the decision of bettering their personal lives verses bettering the lives of the families on the receiving end of remittances. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, no matter how disputed, does possess at least a modicum of merit: when survival needs have not been met, it is difficult to achieve self-actualization, and self-actualization is a motivation in economies all its own. It behooves employers to not wait for heavy labor laws to remand the loopholes in emerging markets. Ford's profit margins speak for itself: when people no longer have to scrape for survival, the profits they produce more than compensate for the time given over to leisure and personal fulfillment. 

B is for Boy: a review

There are times you watch a story unfold that is far from the reality of your own, and yet, in the process of being consumed by it, you understand that by virtue of your existence you take part. We are all implicit, somehow, in the crime of being human. 

The acclaimed 2013 Nigerian drama B is for Boy is one of those stories. It chronicles the last trimester of pregnant Amaka as she deals with the realities and consequences of a community that places preeminence on male heirs and the production thereof. In one scene, a friend tells Nonso, her husband: "A son is important in every family, to carry on the family name, to have a say in things, to inherit." 

It is a modern tale, but not a new one. In refusing to spare the characters their sins and shortcomings, the movie also refuses to spare us, its audience and the world at large. The plight of women, from many backgrounds and standings in the community, plays out in front of us, and there are moments where it is understood how we have all gone along with things in our own lives that are outmoded at best and cowardly at worst. The cinematography is simple and the camera hand-held but the story is poignant. Apart from a poetic brilliance, the themes it brings in are important ones, applicable to all genders and walks of life. 

B for Boy is a contemporary drama set in Nigeria about one woman's desperate need for a male child. It explores the discrimination of women in the names of culture and religion. Written and Directed by Chika Anadu

 

Sabeen Mahmud

"You can't let fear control you, you'll never get anything done." - Sabeen Mahmud

~~~

On April 24th, 2015, on a day when international headlines spoke of riots in Baltimore, Maryland and shortly before the earthquake in Nepal would eclipse most other headlines, a murder occurred in Karachi, Pakistan that effaced a bright light. 

The death of Sabeen Mahmud has now been recounted in several publications, although stories of her life work leading up to her death were not nearly as ubiquitous as would've been fitting. 

In the aftermath of her death, those, like me, who know only of her, are left to consider a legacy that speaks of bravery, determination, and the "abandonment of a comfort zone" that transcended fear in the face of odds seemingly insurmountable. We can hope that whatever of Sabeen's goals were not achievable in her lifetime may be achievable in her death. The bright light that was her life may be out, but her work will be rekindled.