Syria strike adds awkward twist to high-stakes China-U.S. summit

China does not want the U.S. military taking unilateral action in Syria. Beijing has long said it prefers a multilateral approach, though over the course of six brutal years of war it has repeatedly used its veto power to vote with Russia against United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria .. 

.. a call for sanctions over the use of chemical weapons.

.. Xi does not like surprises. Top Chinese leaders exist in a world where public appearances are tightly choreographed, the press is controlled and protocol is paramount. During the weeks of planning and negotiation that went into the Mar-a-Lago summit, every interaction and angle would have been discussed — from the handshake, to media availability, to the possibility of a rogue Trump tweet.

.. On Thursday night, conservative U.S. media painted the Syria hit as a bold but calculated warning. “He’s sending a message to the Chinese,”

.. Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone, also saw the move as a projection of strength. In an editorial, the paper said Trump launched the strike “to establish his authority as the U.S. president.”

Ask HN: Is Facebook dying?

it seems that, an ad and investor supported CMS for social, that becomes a public company, and applies a similar editorial algorithm to diverse cultures and demographics, needs must optimize for its most significant stakeholders. Investors want advertisers, advertisers want eyeballs, eyeballs can god damned be force-fed whatever content makes them click most. If Facebook news feed has become a rage-filled bubble-chamber that’s because powerful forces demand it become that: human psychology, the zeitgeist, demographics and economics.

.. outrage engages because outrage has become the main currency you can trade in for being right.

.. In a world that has exchanged old authority values for new authority values, there’s a transition period of authority looting which is where we are now. The crowd naturally gets a little mad and scared when the values that used to lead the crowd suddenly dematerialize, and in the age of authority looting everybody runs around trying to get as much authority for themselves as they can. And it turns out that the way individuals can loot authority for themselves in these troubled times is by taking it from others. So outrage engages because outrage let’s you pretend others are wrong so you can pretend you are right, thereby lootin some sweet authority for yourself. And social CMS systems are obviously an efficient arena for this.

.. It might be ugly, but Facebook is a reflection of us. It’s the interactive mirror. Some people don’t like looking in the mirror. It’s not surprising. It can be uncomfortable. To see your true Face.

The Republican Health Care Crackup

By 2010, however, both the Obama administration and the Tea Party opposition were out of step with the times. They both still thought the big political issues in American life were universal health care and the size of government.

.. In fact, another set of problems had magnified and come to overshadow the old set. This new set included:

First, the crisis of opportunity. People with fewer skills were seeing their wages stagnate, the labor markets evaporate. Second, the crisis of solidarity. The social fabric, especially for those without a college degree, was disintegrating — marriage rates plummeting, opiate abuse rates rising. Third, the crisis of authority. Distrust in major institutions crossed some sort of threshold. People had so lost trust in government, the media, the leadership class in general, that they were willing to abandon truth and decorum and embrace authoritarian thuggery to blow it all up.

.. If President Obama had made these crises the center of his administration, instead of the A.C.A., Democrats wouldn’t have lost Congress and the White House. If the Tea Party had understood the first two of these crises, there would have been no opening for Donald Trump.

.. he has no positive agenda for addressing them. He can tap into working class anxiety negatively, by harnessing hostility toward immigrants, foreigners and the poor. But he can’t come up with a positive agenda to make working class life more secure.

.. a group of Freedom Caucus Republicans who still think the major problems in the country today can be cured with tax and spending cuts. We have a Trump administration that has populist impulses but no actual populist safety net policies. And we’ve got a Republican leadership in Congress mired in Reagan-era thinking

.. The Republican plan will fuel cynicism. It’s being pushed through in an elitist, anti-democratic, middle of the night rush. It seems purposely designed to fail. The penalties for those who don’t purchase insurance are so low they seem sure to guarantee Republican-caused death spirals in the weaker markets.

.. But now you’ve got millions of people growing up in social and cultural chaos and not getting the skills they need to thrive in a technological society. This is not a problem you can solve with tax cuts.

.. voters around the world have demonstrated that they’re quite willing to destroy market mechanisms to get the security they crave. They will trash free trade, cut legal skilled immigration, attack modern finance and choose state-run corporatism over dynamic free market capitalism.

.. If you are pro-market, you have to be pro-state. You can come up with innovative ways to deliver state services, like affordable health care, but you can’t just leave people on their own.