Monday, March 07, 2022

Today's News: Return of the Red Phone

Our son asked me yesterday what it was like to live in the time of the Cold War.
That's when I realized that for him, the threat of nuclear annihilation was ancient history. 
Our children didn't have to grow up like we did, in a world undergirded by terror, one where everyone's life and future were predicated on the hope that neither the American President nor the Russian Premier would go crazy and take the world with them.
They had a Red Phone, you see. 
It was for the leaders of US and Russia to talk to each other directly, whenever there was such high international tension that it risked nuclear war, so tempers could cool down and wiser heads prevail. They set up the Red Phone after the Cuban Missile Crisis with the idea that Cold War should never again get so hot   And apparently the next 30 years were less risky, though there were other close calls that we knew little or nothing about at the time. 
For more than 45 years, from 1945 to 1991, just about every element of world international relations was based on the Cold War -- your country's "side" was the single factor that determined just about everything else that happened to you in the world. 
Anyone under the age of 40 really has no idea what it was like. Profoundly discouraging, really, to realize how easily it might start up again. 
So hey, everybody, as if the 2020s couldn't get any worse -- welcome to the Spring 2022 semester of Return To Ancient History 101: Let's Find The Red Phone Again!
Come to think of it, I really really HOPE there is still a Red Phone tucked away in a drawer in the White House and another in the Kremlin, so Putin and Biden can talk to each other and maybe figure out how we can save Ukraine while still ratchetting down the NFZ hyperbole and the WW3 hysteria. 
As I recall, one of the ways we used to do that was to figure out some mutual work-around that would make it look like each side had "won" something, so everybody could walk away with their heads held high. 
So maybe that will be the next step here -- can Biden figure out how both Putin and the Ukraine can "win" in this conflict? I'm not sure.
Getting back to today, from my reading of tweets, it appears Russia is divided internally over this war too -- thousands of Russians are protesting even though they are getting arrested, but many other Russians are showing support for the war, and the large white "Z" symbol has become their version of the MAGA hat or the "Q" symbol.
Here is a fascinating though very lengthy thread about what Russians are thinking and experiencing: And more history here: The No Fly Zone discussion continues here: One critical question about how this war will progress may now be this: where does China fit? Will they end up supporting Putin's aggression or will they remain somewhat neutral? 
Here is some discussion about this: Finally, on the lighter side: I hope David Frum's wife Danielle Crittenden is right: On other topics, I saw some interesting tweets about "living with" COVID and what this could mean -- here's a good thread: Here's an interesting though discouraging VOX article about the two-century-old roots of "anti-vaxxers":
 Whether in the 19th century or today, it should be no surprise that vaccines, more than other medical advances, require trust and conversation, and sometimes inspire intense resistance. 
 “People are healthy when you give it to them, and it’s asking them to accept this to protect them from a danger that may or may not happen to them,” Colgrove said. In some ways, communication around vaccines encapsulates the problem of public health as a field: “The benefits that it promises are invisible,” Colgrove said. “When it succeeds, you’re not aware of it.” 
 The challenge, then, is to convince people to trust the public health system enough that they will accept a treatment whose benefits they may not see right away — or ever. History shows such trust is possible, but it has to be earned. And when that trust is broken, it may take generations to repair. 
  And if your vocabulary needs a boost:
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