Oh, please. Really?

Two major business reform groups have planned protests of Apple Stores in six cities, urging the company to ensure the safety of workers who manufacture its devices. On Thursday morning, representatives of Change.org and SumOfUs will deliver petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people, many of them Apple fans and iPhone owners, and carry signs and leaflets protesting the company.

I’m all in favor of nearly every take-to-the-street protest, including for causes I don’t support, but this is just silly:

• Nearly anyone who uses any electronics or computers manufactured in the last ten years or longer has exploited a Chinese worker. Apple is taking the lion’s share of the heat for goings-on at FoxConn only because it’s the most media-friendly way to frame the story.
• When FoxConn holds an open hire, this is what it looks like. FoxConn conditions are horrid by American standards, and better than many alternatives in China.
• Meanwhile, anyone who votes Republican is probably supporting stripping away the rights that got us to the 8-hour day, 40-hour workweek, weekend, and overtime standard that we have today. Vote GOP if you want American semi-skilled workers to lead lives more like the Chinese.
• Finally, if you use any electronics, then you’re also supporting a hellacious industry in the Congo that we require to get us those rare earth minerals they’re built with.

There are legitimate ways to pressure China and the DRC to improve the working conditions of all its workers, not just the ones who build photogenic products under decidedly nonphotogenic conditions. Apple may have a role in this. But pretty much the only people who have the moral standing to protest in front of an Apple store are the Amish.

Krugman posts some numbers on inequality. I’m interested in what he says about the rise of the 1% in terms of zero-sum game theory: namely, that the rise of the 1% has been enough that it genuinely has choked off gains for the rest of the economy. (And masked losses for the middle-class and lower during boom times.)

But the bigger question in my mind is historical: radical political movements and revolutionary fervor tend to start in nations where a comfortable middle-class, or an upwardly-mobile lower class, are suddenly cut off from future avenues of prosperity. It’s not the downtrodden who become radicalized; constant societal beat-downs also tamp down the ability to visualize something better. It’s when a large community is promised something better and has it taken away that folks form the Weathermen.

It’s been 50 years since we had that kind of political movement in the US. We tend to have less radical political movements than many other countries, which is generally attributed to societal and political safety valves, such as the dominant two-party system providing a moderating effect on the extremes of both parties. I think it’s fairly clear that these safety valves are breaking down.

Add to that the gasoline that’s being added to the fire by overzealous law enforcement. For some reason, Tea Party activists can bring guns to their rallies, but when populists break out the bongo drums, the police break out the econosized pepper spray. The use of violence against demonstrators who perceive themselves as law-abiding (regardless of whether they actually are) is the fastest way to make protesters think, “hey, maybe there’s something to this violence thing.”

Personally, the only thing that surprised me about Occupy Wall Street is how long it took to show up. I’m expecting to see more of the same throughout 2012–with the really interesting fireworks starting in 2013 after Obama is re-elected, if they still feel like they’re not being listened to. And the tinder won’t be set alight by the protesters: look for the opening salvos to be fired by law enforcement and federal agencies, who won’t realize that they’re attempting to put out smoldering coals with Molotov cocktails.

So I’m sitting at SFO waiting for my flight, using the public wifi, and cleaning out my downloads folder, when I came across this document I snagged earlier today: FBI Bureau of Justice Assistance: Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Internet Café.

Hmm. I wonder if reading an FBI document at an airport counts as suspicious activity. Or if the fact that my monitor currently has “Warning: I may be a dangerous person” written across it in a large font while I compose this post might be an issue. (Which I post to a blog named The Vast Jeff Wing Conspiracy….)

In any case… seems like 13 out of 15 listed potentially suspicious techniques are things that I might do, especially if I happen to be researching terrorism at the time. Or troubleshooting a client’s AOL email, which is also considered suspicious.

In any case, if you’re curious about what the FBI considers potentially suspicious at places like electronic stores, airports, and hotels, the list is here. I think I’m going to put off downloading the rest of them until I get home.

Much hay is being made on recent Romney gaffes, at the risk of overwhelming the true stories being told here. The following seems transparently obvious to me, but since few other people are saying the same things, perhaps they’re worth enumerating.

Romney talks about the poor because no one believes they are. Ask nearly any American, and very few of them believe they are “poor” or “very poor”. Just about every American calls themselves middle-class of one stripe or another, and that includes the guy who hasn’t had a job for two years, and the guy who makes $200,000 but has friends and colleagues who make millions. Of the people who do self-identify as poor, only a handful pay attention to politics. Appealing to the middle-class at the expense of the poor is a standing American meme, and it’s been 50 years since there was any mainstream political discussion of this.

Romney genuinely doesn’t get it, and that’s part of why people can’t stand him. You can tell a lot about how a person thinks by the words they use. This isn’t “gotcha” journalism, this is basic psychology.

The chattering class instantly dismissed discussion of whether W was a sociopath when analysis showed that he became very fluent with words when talking about punishment and retribution, but only made “putting food on your family” flubs when it came to expressions of empathy. This dismissal occurred because some things that are true are still considered impolite in political society. You unconsciously pick up on people’s speech patterns and cadences all the time when you’re building your mental model of what these people are like; it’s part of the 90% of communication that we all use without words. It’s also the hardest thing about ourselves to fake; cover up all you like when you want to present a facade, but your microexpressions and speech hesitations are going to show your true self.

There’s a storyline about Romney that he’s made too much money to understand what it’s like to not have any. This is persistent because it’s true. A man who can spontaneously offer to make a $10,000 bet, or refer to a $370,000 income as “not much”, has simply moved to a realm where money means something different to him than it does to the people he wants to vote for him. This in and of itself is not a problem — Americans don’t hate rich people — but the dissonance it causes when he tries to pretend otherwise is exactly why he comes across as phony.

No one cares about sociopathy in politics because the GOP is built on it. The core of Republican philosophy is “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”, and is encapsulated in Herman Cain’s “if you aren’t rich, it’s your own fault”. Republican voters love to hear this, because it tells them two stories about themselves that they want to hear: that they’re personally responsible for their own success, and that the American Dream means that they don’t need to responsible for others in general, just members of their own tribes.

This philosophy completely ignores the obvious truth: bad things happen to good people, and these bad things can seriously affect one’s financial health. In an economic downturn, the proportion of people who get shafted goes up, and by definition many of these people are not responsible for having a giant target painted on their asses.

This is why Obama is going to win in a cakewalk in 2012, although few people seem to understand this yet. The bad economy isn’t going to pull voters away from him, because the GOP is pitching their standard message of “I got mine, fuck you.” Meanwhile, huge swathes of swing voters who once had theirs are now wondering whether they’re personally going to be screwed by a “fuck them” philosophy. They’re going to swing back to the GOP when they’re financially safe enough to do so, or when the GOP figures out that its message is so poorly timed. (And when the GOP stops nominating candidates that make Dukakis look like Mr. Charisma.) Obama’s message is “I’ll do my best to have your back.” That’s the sale pitch to have in 2012.