OUR PICKSThe All-Volunteer Force Is in Crisis | Invading Mexico Is an Insane Idea | How to Survive a Devastating Earthquake, and more
· The All-Volunteer Force Is in Crisis
A half century after the induction of the last draftee, America’s military faces tough choices
· The New Republican Litmus Test Is Very Dangerous
Candidates who do not speculate about war with Mexico may be perceived as weak
· Invading Mexico Is an Insane Idea
It would be costly and it would fail
· U.S. Recommends Americans Reconsider Traveling to China Due to Arbitrary Law Enforcement, Exit Bans
New law threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China’s interests
· Fixing the Stored Communications Act’s Secret Search Problem
Government can access vast quantities of digital information in secret, without the target ever realizing it
· A Rare Domestic Resurgence of Malaria Is Circulating in the US
Malaria hasn’t been persistently present in the US since it was eliminated here in 1951
· How to Survive a Devastating Earthquake—and Firestorm
The importance of making the right decisions quickly
The All-Volunteer Force Is in Crisis (Jason Dempsey and Gil Barndollar, The Atlantic)
As it turns 50 this week, the all-volunteer force appears unsustainable. It is threatened on three fronts: cost, capacity, and continued ability to find enough Americans willing and able to serve.
The New Republican Litmus Test Is Very Dangerous (David Frum, The Atlantic)
Synthetic opioids are inflicting death and suffering across the United States: 70,000-plus Americans died of overdose in 2021. The Republican brand is to sound tough, to promise decisive action. In the past, that impulse led Republicans to vow a war on drugs inside the United States: harsher penalties for users and dealers, more powers for police to search and seize. But this time, the users are Americans whom Republicans regard as their own. Five out of every eight victims of opioid overdose are non-Hispanic white people. Whereas historically, fatal overdoses have been an urban problem, synthetic opioids have been taking lives almost exactly equally between urban and rural areas. In deep-blue states such as California and New York, the death rates from synthetic opioids are even worse in rural areas than in the cities.
Republican lawmakers have little appetite for a domestic crackdown that would criminalize so many of their own constituents and their constituents’ relatives. At the retail level, many a “dealer” is also a user, a member of the community seeking to finance his or her own addiction by spreading addiction to others. Contemporary conservatism tells a fable about virtuous middle-Americans beset by alien villains. Apply that fable to the fentanyl crisis, and you arrive where Fox’s Greg Gutfeld did at the conclusion of his December monologue: “So that’s my plan, bomb the supply, reduce harm among the demand by availing safer, clean alternatives.” Compassion for us. Violence for them. (Cont.)
