Make Common Sense Great Again

On Moving Away from Nuance

Has there been a total breakdown of readiness in the West?  When we look at seemingly unrelated events we see that people in responsible positions in governments around the Western world have missed signs that are obvious – and not only after the fact.   The attempted Trump assassination just got me thinking how no one seems to react to the obvious anymore.   It seems that both the local police and the Secret Service knew that this young man was on a roof with a rifle and no one took the most elementary actions of delaying Trump’s appearance or trying to stop the shooter or even ascertain his motives all of which was obvious to everyone else. We are not talking about someone missing a shot at him or even forgetting to check a specific place, but an active decision was made – to do nothing.  

On October 6 and 7 the IDF Chief of Staff and his senior advisors on the General Staff heard of possible Hamas plans to attack, knew of previous intelligence that detailed the exact attack that happened and even refused a request of the head of the Southern Command to move 4 helicopters closer to Gaza.  Instead of doing even the minimum, they just did nothing.  They ignored the obvious and ruled purposely against common sense and in favor of their own preconceived notions.

As Russia was massing troops on the border and as Putin’s talk was becoming more and more belligerent the US administration did nothing that might have at least hinted to Putin that this could only lead to disaster.   Putting US troops on a higher alert, inviting the Ukrainian ambassador to the White House as a show of support – anything really, might have given Putin food for thought.  As Iran moves closer and closer to attaining a nuclear weapon and taking control of the middle east, the West just does nothing.  Destroying Houthi assets (as the Israelis have just done), sending B52’s into the sky for training missions to destroy Islamic Republic assets – all that might have made the Iranian rulers wonder what was in store for them and limiting the war to Gaza.  But again, against common sense, nothing was done because …. Wishful thinking.

If those responsible were  acting like boys in the school playground (are boys still allowed to play in the playground?) they would have done more than they did in all these cases. 

Since the end of the Cold War we have seen the abandonment of common sense in favor of sophisticated analyses where nuance trumps simplicity and bias dominates the analysis of data and where cliches overtake serious policy.  In classical Jewish biblical exegesis, there is one rule which nearly all (non-mystical) commentators hold and that is that the exegesis cannot contradict the simple meaning of the words of the Bible.  True enough, that is stretched to points of wonder sometimes – but they still cling to the rule. 

Common sense is underrated in policy analysis and often in business but those who ignore it now will be challenged later. Common sense means the acceptance of what people say and looking at data without bias.   Common sense means that you have to understand the person you are talking to and don’t assume they think like you. 

Back in my university days I read a lot of Hannah Arendt, who, in spite of the banality of her banality of evil theory had a lot to say.   In her book “The Human Condition” she speaks of common sense  - or as she often puts it “the sense of the common”.

I would like to quote her here, even though I tend to think she would not have thought that it was the rulers, the policy makers the writers who are those ignoring common sense.

The only character of the world by which to gauge its reality is its being common to us all, and common sense occupies such a high rank in the hierarchy of political qualities because it is the one sense that fits into reality as a whole our five strictly individual senses and the strictly particular data they perceive.  It is by virtue of common sense that the other sense perceptions are known to disclose reality …. A noticeable decrease in common sense in any given community and a noticeable increase in superstition and gullibility are therefore almost infallible signs of alienation from the world.

Arendt of course assumed that the lower or working classes were susceptible to superstition and gullibility but in these times it is the ruling classes that have abandoned common sense in favor of superstition and gullibility.  It is they who are alienated from the world.  Preconceived notions that contradict the plain meaning of the world is today’s superstition – and it is no less dangerous and irrational than the superstitions of times past.

Let’s take a brief look at these policy decisions by nearly all western countries, regardless of their geographical location or economic outlooks, their demographic trends or the overall culture of their people and their neighbors resulting directly or indirectly of the perilous situation the free world is now in. 

Defense Spending and Force Size

The post-cold war “peace dividend” became an idol of western policy makers.  Massive cuts in defense spending even in things that were very necessary to the maintenance of said “peace dividend”  - like naval power -  was the preferred way of dealing with the end of the Soviet Union.   The “End of History” was read simplistically instead of realizing that other ideologies and other powers might very soon challenge the victorious west.  Some thinkers, I think of a professor of mine (Elie Krakowski) who back in 1979-80, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, spoke of Islam as the third force which will challenge the West and the East.  I studied in a small university and if we were discussing it back then how are policy makers in Washington, London, Tel-Aviv and Paris not speaking of it today?

While Edward Said’s “Orientalism” was the talk of the town, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami were, despite their posts at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, not taken seriously enough.  If they were, the US Navy would not have gone from 594 ships in 1987 to 275 in 2016.  The British Navy  went from about 170 ships in 1970 to well under 50 in 2017.  The rest of Western Europe we all know about.    But at least countries like Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark don’t face hostile neighbors and were never meant to have forces that would do more than assist in minor operations.

Israel on the other hand has always faced neighbors who have desired to destroy it.  Even the countries with which it signed peace treaters, Jordan and Egypt, have never been able to translate these treaties into popular support and are always a coup away from belligerence.  The history of dictatorships in general and of the Middle East in particular ought to have given the Israeli high command at least a hint as to what they might be facing.   With the advent of Iran as a major regional power with the means and desire to spread its theo-revolutionary ideology, Israel ought to have realized that the era of wars was not over.  Yet, since 2000 Israel has cut 6 divisions and decommissioned 2,000 tanks from its forces.  It has cut military service for men from 36 to 32 months, even as it has not increased the mandatory service for woman from 24 months even though it has increased the amount of women in combat and combat support roles.   The ultra-orthodox still don’t serve (they are about 16% of the draft class)0 even after October 7 and the number of youth who have received exemptions due to “psychological” reasons has skyrocketed to nearly 13% of the draft class.  I don’t mean to belittle those with true psychological issues but rather the high numbers signify that many if not most are of a class that allows them to afford to pay psychologists for convenient diagnoses.

In other words – the IDF, the Finance Ministry and the political class all found it convenient to reduce the size of the army -both manpower and equipment – and used the excuse that there will be no more ground wars to justify the move.

The Ukraine conflict revealed to the world that US arms production of even the most basic arms is not enough for the US itself to maintain minimal levels during wartime.   The current middle east conflict has magnified this disaster.

Common sense readiness has been ignored throughout the Western world due to sophisticated thinking more wishful than realistic.   This is nothing less than a messianic and superstitious belief in the end of wars.

Immigration and Assimilation

If there is one issue that common sense has missed it is immigration.   The reactions of average citizens to unlimited immigration in Western democratic countries has been uniform – NO!   In some countries the yelling is louder but in all western countries there is significant opposition, on common sense grounds often, to the establishment immigration policies.

I am an immigrant to Israel and my grandparents were immigrants to the United States.   Immigration, the movement of peoples from place to place has been going on since people left Africa – and before.    But there is no separating immigration from assimilation unless your immigration is due to imperialism and conquest.  The Romans, Greeks, Chinese  and Persians of ancient times, the Arabs of late antiquity were all imperialists.  There was of course the age of imperialism that ended in WWI. But 21^st century immigration is not of national conquest but of individual movement of people and families.   One by definition must adapt to the local cultures – in the widest sense of the word.   If a cotton farmer from Arizona wants to move to Iowa, he better adapt to the climate and figure out how to grow wheat or soybeans instead of cotton.   If an aristocrat from England decides to move to the United States, he needs to know that his family heritage and titles won’t get him much.  If a Spanish or Chinese speaker moves to Germany, the expectation is that he will learn to speak German.

An immigrant who does not respect the local culture in all its manifestations needs to get permission in order to stay in the new country.  That is the way of the nation-state that has protected freedom in the western world so well (if not always so well).  We can’t compare the 21^st century to the pre-WWI world where borders were porous and people that survived the trip across a continent or an ocean could settle in that new land.   Some more successfully than others. 

Common sense dictates that an immigrant that does not respect the laws of his new home has no right to live there.   Yet, time and again, immigration policy has been separated from the law and being law abiding has no bearing on future citizenship.  Therefore, there is no demand from the immigrant and no opportunity for the immigrant to assimilate and be part of the social fabric of his new country.  That being said, the mass Islamic immigration into Europe could be said to be imperialistic as the leaders of these communities have discouraged any type of rapprochement with Western values and law.  That, along with the demographic collapse of indigenous Europe has put Europe on the brink of either a civil war or a peaceful surrender to Islamic imperial forces.  

Free Trade and Social Peace

There is no doubting that free trade brings prosperity and that economic growth better than any other global trading system.   Free trade  is also the best way to lift the global poor out of poverty.  The US constitution understood the importance of free trade, as states were prohibited from starting trade wars with each other.   This has also been the “good” in the EU and has produced much prosperity in that Union.

Yet, free trade with allies needs to be differentiated between free trade with enemies  - meaning those that oppose our system.  Free trade that allows your enemies to defeat you militarily is not free trade but suicide.    So too, trade policies need to have social issues taken into consideration.  This is not a call for tariffs or against free trade pacts, especially with neighbors, but rather they need to be adjusted with common sense solutions to employment and other problems that will arise from any economic change. 

Social peace is the second half of this section because, besides immigration, the erosion, not to say destruction of physically intensive jobs can and often does lead to social violence for reasons obvious to those with common sense.

Energy and Food Supply

For the most part, you would think that after national defense, it is a government’s first responsibility to its citizens to guarantee the food and energy supply of its citizens.    Before we get to luxury and access to travel, the ready supply of food and energy seems to be the minimum that a government ought to do.  And yet, when we speak of issues related to climate change (and lets not get into the “is it or isn’t it real” argument) the solutions first mandated to the problem have to do with limiting both of these items without which we cannot live.    In California, farmer’s access to water is limited even after the drought due to concerns about some fish and climate and in the Netherlands they want to pay farmers to stop producing food so that the Earth will not suffer. 

What is the plan here?   Regarding energy supply, one would think that shoring up access to alternative energy would take priority over banning current ways of producing energy.   In California, they have been having rolling blackouts in the summer for years and they are looking to ban gas stoves and ovens and gasoline powered cars.    Private jets and yachts though are off limits for obvious reasons.   What is the plan there?  Is there any real preparation?

As for food supply, is the  plan to reduce population or to reduce calory intake?  To what levels?  Is there an expectation that people will starve themselves to “save the planet”?   Again – I am not arguing for or against human causes of climate change but rather, for the common sense understanding that securing the world’s food supply takes priority over closing farms or turning them into organic utopias.

A perfect example is Sri Lanka where those in power bought into the organic farming ideology of Western aristocrats and they ended all non-organic farming causing a famine and a depression. People who worked hard their whole lives lost all their savings as they were unwilling participants in a cruel experiment to see if organic farming can feed a small island nation.  

In sum – a bit less nuance and a bit more common sense – a bit more sensing what is “common to us all”  would be welcome in political and policy matters.   Maybe if we pursued more common sense policies and a lot less superstition and bias there would be less yelling and screaming in the public square.