War and Peace and the Global South

 This early morning blog is inspired by a couple of Fareed Zakaria analogies posted on X.

Spoiler: It's the Females and Youths, Stupid.

This one with General David Petraeus explains why Israel's Generals are splitting with Netanyahu.  If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. Fareed and Petraeus describe America's success in uniting Sunnis and Shia Muslims in Iraq to counter the tribalist ISIS fear and threat-based war on "western civilization" / imposed democracy.

What America represents, at its best, is an alternative to tribalism. Melting iron and zinc together makes a stronger metal (steel) than either iron or zinc. The America "Melting Pot" analogy of the strength of immigration may well be over-plugged and can certainly be criticized for historical injustices, but it's not "wrong". The resentments of European tribes lasted far longer in Europe than their immigrants to the USA posted "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply". 

As this 2015 NYT article explains, in a review of classified ads from 1855 (ten years before the US Civil War, and during Bleeding Kansas), the employment discrimination was not just ethnic, but was also religious.  "Catholic" was interchangeable with "Irish" in job discrimination.  

Where the "Global South" has succeeded, an element of voluntary melting pot has been necessary, and where the north has waged economy-ruining wars - like Russia v. Ukraine - involuntary efforts to end tribes has been bad for everybody.

What brings hope is a future generation of 15 to 25 year olds who can envision post-tribal, post-lingual, post-religious, post-melanin (skin pigmentation) melting. And I am optimistic that the number of interracial, interreligious, intersectual, interlinguist, intertribal marriages are increasing the number of future 25 year olds able to see the potential wealth in places like Brazil and Nigeria.

Game Theory 5: Yankee Ingenuity changes to Soukous Ingenuity

Time to tweek the English Vocabulary.


This post is about "aid" or "nurture" versus strategy for growth and self-sustaining economies.  It's not the proverb "teach a man to fish".  It's "Dudes!  Don't even you see this guy is fishing successfully?  Give him back his dang fishing pole.  Like, primum non nocere already!"

for some reason this depicts strategy by wiki

"Yankee Ingenuity" was a term recognized virtually worldwide after World War II, though it harkened back the a period much earlier, when New England's industrialization began making "good enough" product  in competition with English and European manufacturing.   Paper mills, weavers, cotton gins, and printing presses (like the used one purchased by teenaged Ben Franklin from London prior to the Revolutionary War) were often erected with "tinkered" parts.   Reuse, repair, and upgrade were recognized as a talent associated with poverty and a "can do" attitude.

My generation of schoolchildren in the 1960s saw "yankee ingenuity" in our history textbooks, it was so promoted that Wikipedia's editor is within h/h rights to label it a "stereotype".  

But what we really need is a term that African and Asian and South American Tinkerers can be proud of.  The "tinkerer's blessing", as I've dubbed it refers to can-do/make-do in contrast to the "Resource Curse".   But 'blessing' is a description of an effect, whereas "Yankee Ingenuity" gave respect to the people performing the repairs and upgrades.   Tinkerer's Blessing refers to the effects the Geeks of Color have on their own emerging city or country.   What do we label the drive within the African, the Joe Benson, the Hamdy Moussa?  How do we regionalize Acer's Simon Lin or Terry Gou's adaptation of "semi-knockdown" and "elective upgrade" in a way that signifies a "tip of the hat?"