Knowing world hunger's declined doesn't fill your hungry belly

Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time

Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Five, Issue 18

Yes, here we go again, give you more, nothing lesser
Back on the mic, it’s the anti-depressor
Ad-Rock, no pressure, yes, we need this
The best is yet to come and, yes, believe this

Make some noise if you’re with me
A party on the left, a party on the right
Make some noise if you’re with me

Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time

Here are two things that are true:

• Sixty years ago half the world was starving; that’s been driven down below 10 percent, by far the greatest reduction in history of poverty, misery and starvation

• Three-quarters of a million people are starving while you read this

On the one hand the reduction of hunger and poverty is a triumph. On the other, someone starving in sub-Saharan Africa does not have their belly filled by the knowledge that some dude in the Philippines has plenty to eat.

Cancer mortality has declined just over 30 percent since 1996, according to the American Cancer Society. That’s no help to my sister Cathy and my friend Bill Southerland, who died of cancer that year, and little comfort to the loved ones they left behind.

That tension between overall progess and individual needs is what was on Steve Ross’s mind reading America’s 2.5 Century Political Fight Club: Back in the early 1990s when you were helping me teach one of the first new media courses in any journalism school, we were under no illusion that accuracy or balance would be the norm. But we held to the idea that -- faced with a babble of online news outlets -- the public would be able to discern the quality or truthfulness of what they collided with because it would be so easy to compare facts, tone and comprehensiveness. We vastly underestimated the laziness/lack of time factor, the advent of “free” social media driven by algorithms that essentially give every viewer a unique, tailored view that reinforces the lies they love, and the decay of traditional mainstream media.

We could have re-read the novel 1984, Stalin and McCarthy nonsense, or accounts of 1930s Nazi propaganda, but we did not think it relevant. We knew that the most difficult source of “bias” to overcome was in media selection of what stories to highlight, not in lying or selective misquoting or disregard of data. We could have paid more attention in all journalism courses to systematic state-government corruption, municipal corruption, occasional wicked or dumb presidents such as Andrew Jackson, Warren G. Harding and a string of dumb or bad presidents before and after the Civil war.

But are we now in a different time, watching our government irretrievably die under simultaneous attack by a corrupt White House, a Supreme Court that has given that White House a “get out of jail free” card and ignored the various Constitutional safeguards against favoring or denigrating specific religions, and a Congress with first-hand experience unsuccessfully fighting billionaires now allowed to make unlimited donations (thanks, I might add, to the ACLU)?

I share your confidence that we shall overcome, in time -- in the past, we always have. But what do we say to folks NOW who won’t be saved by new drugs, who are being sickened or dying from old diseases, who are being deported or have lost jobs on a whim, who can’t find affordable housing or educational opportunities, or who think we can pay for all the goodies by taxing billionaires? Why not just confiscate all their assets (about $8 trillion)? It would run the federal government for a year. Whoopie.

It often ranges from difficult to impossible to balance individual needs with the greater good. And there’s no denying that much of the machinery of government is currently being torn down. But I think that will make things better, faster. Let me pull in our great friend JT. Tom Johnson, and then answer you both.

Here’s Tom’s take on Out: Deepstate. In: Spoils System-SCOTUS Resets Federal Government to 1913: Yeah, I really want guys like Trump appointing people at all levels to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

There’s a theory that we gather with the like-minded in a bubble and stay there, never venturing out to see what they are talking about in all those other bubbles. Feola gonna Feola, so of course I’m in all the bubbles: active and retired military; active and retired academics; active and retired journalists.

And so I can report that there are many good people like Tom are horrified at the prospect of the type of people President Donald Trump might appoint. And I can also report that there many equally good people who are horrified that this decision gives, say, President Barack Obama the power to appoint William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

So who is right? Here’s what I know:

It doesn’t matter.

I do know the stakes for every election have suddenly gone way up. Politics are about to get nastier and more desperate with the entire federal apparatus in play.

And that’s good for Political Fight Club! The harder all the bad guys fight each other, the better for the system America’s founders built 237 years ago.

On a lighter note, the great Lynn W Gardner wants to know if all this SCOTUS bruhaha is sticking to my knitting: Chris, Humphrey Executioner, gee, and analysis of and forecasting of potential consequences of Supreme Court decisions. We are venturing beyond our area of expertise (photography, software development, and grandchildren entertainment) are we not? That is great we should never be siloed and be open to new analysis. Now for tomorrow’s episode can you educate your readers on the continued growth of data centers because we have a lot riding on the magnificent seven and would not like to be caught without a chair when the music stops.

Thanks Lynn! Yes, I prefer to write about that stuff, but I was an investigative reporter for a hot minute or two back in the day, and taught Computer-Assisted Reporting and Research techniques to journalists at a little school in Morningside Heights at 116th Street and Broadway. But you are right: I have little interest in politics. What interests me is systems, their architecture, and how they are modified. Most of the data center stuff is currently NIMBY nonsense; I am, however, thinking about a piece on data centers in space. And you’ve reminded me of a story you might like about the time Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker was caught talking about me on a hot mic: Feola is a scum reporter from a scum newspaper. Look for it later this summer.

Finally, kind words from the great John Cole on America’s 2.5 Century Political Fight Club: Chris, beautifully said, as usual! I love what Churchill said about democracy (the worst possible system of government...excepting all the other ones).

Thank you, my friend. Back in my younger days I would carefully attribute quotes so people wouldn’t think I was arrogantly appropriating great words. Then a friend took me aside and chastised me-seems everyone thought I was arrogantly showing off my education by citing people like Churchill and von Clausewitz. I was annoyed. How was I supposed to know that a college dropout like me (yes, I went back later and finished) was the only one of a bunch of soldiers who knew it was von Clausewitz who said No battle plan survives enemy contact?

So instead I now leave these quotes as Easter Eggs, little presents for my readers to find.

Which you do.

The Perfecting Equilibrium Digest, July 1, 2026

Perfecting Equilibrium Stories

Easter Eggs

My brain is a peculiar place; it likes to play word association, and then play back songs with those words. Here are the songs playing in my mind as I wrote these articles.