During Mardi Gras in New Orleans normal is weird. If you’re not dressed up in an elaborate costume, more often than not cleverly, you stand out. It was our first Mardi Gras (we once visited Nola earlier in Carnival Season and once arrived on Mardi Gras night) and we learned a lot. It is better to watch the parades out in the neighborhoods than in the grandstands downtown. Out in the streets of the neighborhoods locals are like your favorite teachers ever, happily explaining the traditions, which Krewes’ have the best throws, which have the most beautiful floats and a host of other helpful and interesting information.
The Krewe of Orpheus, founded by the musician and actor Harry Connick Jr, and his father, was as advertised: organizer of the parade with the most beautiful, stunning floats, including a train as long as a block. But the best throws for us were from Bacchus. Of course, throws—the beads and baubles, decorated shoes and hats—accumulate in the streets, sidewalks and oaks lining the streets. We imagine Greta Thunberg, if she ever dared come to Mardi Gras and saw all this plastic waste, would wrap herself in the heaviest beads possible and throw herself into the Mississippi. While the rest of the country was going about their normal business last week, New Orleans was awash in celebrations.
Like a strange Christmas season we got used to people saying Happy Mardi Gras as greeting or goodbye when entering or leaving a store, restaurant or meeting. And please store away your clichéd view of Mardi Gras as people exposing themselves for beads. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a family affair, full of children, parents and grandparents watching parades, hosting dinners, marching in high school and college bands. Near as we can tell, the one way the Big Easy works hard is to prepare for and have fun during Mardi Gras. So Greta and others, not every city should be like New Orleans but every world needs a New Orleans. We returned from the warm, friendly Crescent City to cold, wintery Seattle to find Ukraine abandoned, too few democracies in the world and a mass shooting in China. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the Mister Mao of spicy global data, the Commander’s Palace of hospitable international information.
Harry, 610 Stompers, Orpheus train, Great Dane in a Tutu, folks dressed up as birds and Louis float in Krewe of Zulu parade
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Europe Does Need to Step Up
As the world reacts to the murder of Alexei Navalny by the serial killer Vladimir Putin, we continue to worry about the resoluteness of support for Ukraine. It retreated from Avdiivka essentially because it did not have enough ammunition. And that’s because the U.S. has stopped supplying such ammunition because one of its two political parties is devoid of policy and controlled by a narcissist. But note that Ukraine is reliant on the U.S. for military help not on Europe. There is no defense of Trump’s recent comments encouraging Putin to invade Europe unless they contribute a certain percentage of funding to NATO. But Europe, and other countries do need to build up their military capabilities so as to better support Ukraine and other countries under threat from attack, including themselves. We wrote a few weeks ago in Ukraine is Essential, “we need to think of how to maintain an anti-authoritarian, pro-liberalization coalition around the world that is not driven by the U.S.” Those of us who understand how important political liberalization is to the well-being and safety of our world, need to step up, and that includes Europe, including by building up its defense capabilities. It’s been clear for nearly a decade that the U.S. is no longer a reliable backstop and partner. It is a bit like, to act a nerd, Saruman in the Lord of the Rings becoming corrupted. This is a bad and dangerous development for the world, but one that we must surmount. As you will see in the below article, there aren’t nearly enough democracies in the world and even the current list contains some fragile ones. We need not a fellowship of the ring but a fellowship of democracies.
You Got To Fight For Your Right to Political Party
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is out with its annual Democracy Index which ranks 167 countries on their levels of democracy. Just like the EIU’s category of “Flawed Democracies” we sense the index is flawed in how it judges countries’ levels of democracy. Nonetheless, it’s a good ballpark figure for how our world’s doing in democracy. Overall as you can see in the first chart below from the EIU there are 74 democracies in the world with only 24 of them being “full democracies” (Note: these 24 are flawed too, as are all institutions devised by humans—except for Café de Monde beignets which are perfect). The EIU states that democracy continues an ongoing downward trend in the world with only 32 improving their index score (and only barely) and 68 declining. The biggest declines regionally were Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa, the latter grouping is the lowest-ranked region in the world. Check out the top ten below and you’ll note that only two are non-European, including Taiwan at number 10. Check out the bottom 10, all in the “Authoritarian” category and you’ll find 10 places to eliminate from your retirement location list.
Top Ten
Bottom Ten
China Corner: Irony’s Soft Polish
Like us, you’re probably horrified by the news of the mass shooting that took place in Shandong Province earlier this month…what? You don’t know about the murder of at least ten people on the first day of the Lunar New Year in a relatively small town on the east coast of China? Well that’s because China censors most bad news, from economic to murder. And Western media is too busy covering America’s multitude of mass shootings. Ironically, by China’s government clamping down on coverage of the mass shooting in Shandong they are inadvertently discouraging other mass shootings. That’s because there is a well known copycat effect from media blanketing coverage of mass shootings. Of course, that is not the reason China censored coverage of this tragedy. Irony is the sweet and sour polish of the world’s high heeled policy shoes, as F. Scott Fitzgerald did not write.
