[FRIAM] Where are you Gary Kasparov?

[Marcus Daniels]

One idea would be to convert organizations like the CDC into organizations that function under federated state control, or are even autonomous corporations that just accept federal funding.    Organizations like the Helmholtz Association or Fraunhofer come to mind.  PBS, USPS, too.    Create a situation where one crazy executive just doesn't have the authority to stop essential functions.   Make the state not only deep but distributed, and having more complex membranes.  

In the spirit the best defense is a good offense, I still think it makes sense to take as many Trump people off the board as possible.  Bury them in indictments, at least.  It may be that political coordination at the federal level isn't really needed to do this, and that the Biden administration can keep up appearances as a unifying force.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2021 8:24 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Where are you Gary Kasparov?

I can't name people. AOC seems to have that capability. But she's too high profile. What you're looking for are people who are good at, happy with, and perhaps even proud of being cogs in a machine, even if they're more like a universal belt than a localized cog. Elizabeth Warren seems like a dork. But that she ran for President at all makes me wonder if she's an authentic dork.

And, anyway, I'm worried that looking for the solutions in *people* instead of institutions simply encourages the gaming, encourages attempts to collapse the diversity and "win". I think what we need are delegates from pools like these:

https://constitutioncenter.org/debate/special-projects/constitution-drafting-project
https://reason.com/volokh/

... people who seem to target the core principle of balanced power. Although the Volokh group is starkly libertarian, their saving grace seems to be a fairly strong commitment against partisan hegemony, against a collapse in diversity, against cults of personality.

I suppose if I had to choose a single fairly high profile person, I'd pick James Mattis. Yeah, he's a bit of a hawk. But my guess is he would understand both sides of the "bold moves" blade.

On 1/6/21 5:06 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> So let’s suppose Georgia goes through the way it is looking likely to do.
> 
> The Ds have two years.  In addition to the overwhelming bulk of practical work that needs doing, which they can now keep McConnel from blocking out entirely as an act of sabotage, they have one other equally urgent priority: to put up firewalls against the next round of fascist cheating.
> 
> We can see what the Rs are doing: they are taking measurements.  Venezuela was a good model, and they know it.  Also the Philippines under Marcos and then post-Aquino.  It doesn’t matter what is written in the law if you can fill the political offices with people who refuse to follow it, and the legal offices with others who refuse to enforce it.  So the Rs are taking stock of who they need to replace to get to that threshold locally in 2022, and country-wide for 2024.  It’s all Darwinian.  The people in these offices don’t fundamentally change.  If you are trying to build up corruption, you sieve the society to find corrupt people to fill positions.  Then they will go on being who they are.
> 
> This is the time I want to find somebody whose strategic and tactical sense is what I have as an image of Kasparov.  Yes, hardness in place is needed to defend positions under attack.  But one needs to understand when it is time to move, and to do it on the necessary scale.  There is no winning chess play that consists only of defense.  Such people can be difficult.  They are not always the right people for every moment, and too much boldness carries risks.  But for the times when boldness is the only path to good play, we need to elevate the ones who know how to do it.
> 
> Who are those in the US political arena right now?


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