By Marvin Zonis

The belief systems that justify the ways things are and the way they ought to be – the “Veil of Legitimacy” – are increasingly failing to convince more and more Americans and are more and more under attack. The result is the possibility of an opening to substantial change in this country. This is a “pre-revolutionary” moment.

By Marvin Zonis

Bill Gates recently told me (and millions of other subscribers to his www.gatesnotes.com) that he would recommend Bob Iger’s book, The Ride of a Lifetime, “whether they’re looking for business insights or just want a good read…” But, Bill Gates continued, “It’s still the case that the best business book I have ever read is Business Adventures, a little-known collection of articles by a reporter named John Brooks.”

By Marvin Zonis

Joseph A. Morris (mdlrusk@aol.com) reminds us that Adam Smith was born on this day in 1723. Morris restates perhaps the most famous (and, I find, thrilling) lines from Smith’s The Wealth of Nations:

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.

I have received notes from certain readers acknowledging that many charges against China for its handling of the Covid-19 are false, as Roach and Shan have argued in my most recent mailing. But some of these same readers have suggested that China needs to be held to account for allowing international flights from Wuhan to continue after January 23, when the government shut down internal flights. Below is a message I have received suggesting the baselessness of that charge.
—— Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Sigmund Freud used the concept of overdetermination to mean that a single emotion or event could be caused by more than one factor. Certainly, overdetermination applies to the shocking and appalling events of the last few days in the United States.

At least five “causes” have combined to produce these days of rage.

The attempt to hold China responsible for its failure to alert the WHO of the novel new Corona virus requires ignoring the evidence that it did. The attempt to hold China culpable for punishing an early whistleblower also turns out to be false. The attempt to blame China for not shutting down Wuhan once the virus appeared ignores the fact that it took the U.S. twice as long to do so once the virus appeared in the U.S. In fact, the entire blame China game is a desperate attempt by the administration to escape its own culpability to prevent the deaths off now more than 100,000 Americans — about the same number of total U.S. deaths in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghan War and the Iraqi War, combined.
——Marvin Zonis

The U.S. editor for the "Financial Times” writes a devastating critique of the President’s Covid-19 performance.
——Marvin Zonis

The Middle East has now suffered two devastating blows — the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse in oil prices. Further instability seems inevitable.
——Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Arundhati Roy, the controversial Indian born novelist and essayist, recently wrote:

“And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”[i]

The pandemic will have major consequences on people, governments, countries and their relationships. But those consequences will be less the result of “imagination” and more to do with forces unleashed by Covid19.

Three such forces stand out: Petroleum, Population and Protectionism.

This study shows the conditions under which mid-term elections can predict the outcome of the next presidential election.
——Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Senior U.S. officials are advancing policies to deal with Iran that will not succeed in accomplishing American goals.