The Wall Street Journal - 31.07.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, July 31, 2019 |A

A Room en Route to the Service

‘T

he room where we’ll
have breakfast is
down here?”
Two young men were talk-
ing near the elevator early one
evening. The one asking the
question appeared nervous.
“In the back,” said the sec-
ond young man. He held a
printed itinerary in his hand.
“In a little room behind
where the regular guests eat
breakfast.”
MEPS kids. That’s what
they are informally called by
the staffs of hotels in 65 cities
around the country.
MEPS: Military Entrance
Processing Station. The U.S.
military contracts with the ho-
tels to provide lodging for
young men and women who
have signed up to join the
armed services. Four or five
evenings each week the young
people show up at the ho-

tels—some dropped off by a

parent, some arriving alone—

and are given a single night’s

stay.

What you see in their eyes:

sometimes excitement, some-

times worry, sometimes confu-

sion, often jittery pride. They

are about to take the most

monumental step in their lives.

Their wake-up calls will come

at 4 a.m.; they will be given

breakfast, then transported

from the hotel to a processing

station. Shortly after 5 a.m.,

the litany of events will com-

mence: armed services voca-

tional aptitude testing, coun-

seling, physical examinations,

background screenings and—in

the final moments of the long

day—the oath of enlistment.

They arrive as civilians

and leave as members of the

U.S. military. The public is

mostly unaware of the MEPS

hotels. If you don’t know

about the program, you can

be a business traveler or a

summer vacationer staying at

one of those hotels, glancing

at politicians and cable pun-

dits bickering loudly on the

lobby TV screens about for-

eign policy and prospects of

warfare, and have no idea

who those young men and

women in the hallways are.

They stay for one night only;

by tomorrow evening, to-

night’s guests will have been

sworn in and preparing for

basic training while another

contingent of young, keyed-

up Americans are arriving at

the hotel.

A hesitant young man or

woman can walk away before

taking the oath; he can also

take the oath but delay enter-

ing basic training until a fu-

ture time. With no draft in

place, the armed services, of

necessity, offer more leeway

to young enlistees than past

generations were given.

It’s something that is hid-

ing in plain sight: all those

MEPS kids in all those MEPS-

contracted hotels. “After you,

sir,” a young man at the eleva-

tor door said one evening

when I had returned from a

walk. Already accustoming

himself to “sir” and “ma’am.”

I said, “No, sir, after you,” and

he got in first. His T-shirt—

store-bought, not issued by

the Army, not yet—bore words

that echoed a videogame or

motion-picture title: “Ameri-

can Fighter.”

Mr. Greene’s books include

“Duty: A Father, His Son, and

the Man Who Won the War.”

By Bob Greene

Your fellow hotel

guest may be planning

to enlist tomorrow.

OPINION

What should
you think of
last week’s
Justice De-
partment
settlement
to approve
the Sprint
and T-Mo-
bile merger?
Some are
calling it
Charlie Ergen’s crowning deal,
because the government
would help the Dish CEO turn
his unused spectrum hoard
into a new national wireless
network.
Wrong. Mr. Ergen’s real
crowning deal is probably yet
to come—it’s the one that will
enable him to evade or finesse
the thankless obligation even-
tually to build a new national
carrier. This requirement is
the one sore point in a pack-
age of benefits that otherwise
will reward him for helping
the T-Mobile deal fly with
regulators.
Let’s face it: If being the
nation’s No. 4 wireless carrier
were an attractive proposi-
tion, Sprint wouldn’t have
been for sale, with hardly any
buyers. The stock market
wouldn’t have spent a decade
trying relentlessly to reduce
the number of carriers from
four to three (multiple previ-
ous mergers were shot down
by government).
Right away, notice that Mr.
Ergen and T-Mobile won’t be
competitors. They will be
each other’s customers and
suppliers. Mr. Ergen will be
reselling T-Mobile’s service
under brands he’s acquiring
from Sprint. T-Mobile will be

Faster Wireless vs. the Swamp

leasing from Mr. Ergen some

of the unused spectrum he’s

been hoarding.

Down the road, Mr. Ergen

supposedly will build a new

fourth national wireless net-

work from scratch—but the

fine print allows him to walk

away with a “voluntary con-

tribution” to the U.S. Trea-

sury. In the meantime, the

deal leaves him plenty of

room to lease out his spec-

trum, join forces with a “stra-

tegic” investor, or even lobby

the government to waive or

adjust its requirements by

claiming market changes have

rendered them obsolete.

The latter is not the least

likely outcome. The real prob-

lem here is the presumption

that Justice antitrust chief

Makan Delrahim felt obliged

to bring to the deal—the un-

supported, decade-old claim

that four national carriers are

needed for adequate competi-

tion. He should have junked

this false axiom and approved

the merger as a win-win, but

he lacked the credibility.

All indicators say the four-

carriers fetish is a treasure

map to nowhere—or at least

woefully obsolete. Already

75% of the data downloaded

to mobile devices is provided

not by cellular, but by Wi-Fi.

Two the of the biggest Wi-Fi

carriers, cable giants Comcast

and Charter, now offer their

own wireless brands with Ver-

izon as a backup.

This convergence of fixed

and wireless will continue,

posing one of many threats to

the big wireless operators be-

cause their large overhead

must be paid for in a market

that’s no longer growing (who

doesn’t have a cellphone?). It

also makes it increasingly

necessary for them to cooper-

ate on facilities, a trend des-

tined to accelerate under 5G

with its reliance on millime-

ter-wave bandwidth. The re-

sulting “small cells” will be-

come absurdly duplicative

unless carriers find ways to

share.

Justice’s thinking seems

even more unworldly when

you consider the ease with

which the big cloud operators

(Google, Amazon, etc.) might

one day just annex the wire-

less scrum entirely.

Why is Mr. Ergen partici-

pating in the Justice Depart-

ment’s dog’s breakfast? Be-

cause his spectrum hoard is a

wasting asset, ready to be re-

claimed by the government if

he doesn’t spend a fortune to

build out some kind of net-

work. By serving as Justice’s

fourth carrier manqué, he

gets a four-year extension

plus multiple new potential

loopholes to exploit while

waiting to score an ultimate

payday by selling his spec-

trum hoard.

Why are Sprint and T-Mo-

bile playing along when out-

side analysts suggest doing so

all but negates the value of

their merger? They may not

think Mr. Ergen’s 20-balls-in-

the-air bet on a fourth carrier

will come off or is even meant

to. They perhaps also mean

everything they say about

their need for scale to com-

pete with Verizon and AT&T.

The good news is that their

merger would facilitate the

rollout of faster wireless. Al-

ready nearly 20% of U.S.

adults use mobile exclusively

for their broadband connec-

tion. With each new genera-

tion of wireless technology,

the artificial and costly dis-

tinction between fixed and

mobile is deservedly going

away.

Mr. Delrahim, as Justice’s

antitrust chief, has labored

under a handicap thanks to

being named by Donald

Trump. (We won’t rehearse

his AT&T lawsuit debacle.)

The real question is, can he

deliver?

The Sprint and T-Mobile

merger is still opposed by

New York and California. A

court date is looming. Every

news report includes a quote

from an antitrust professor

mocking a settlement that

would extinguish Sprint as

the nation’s fourth carrier,

then try to fix the alleged

problem by conjuring a new

fourth carrier from the noto-

riously slippery Mr. Ergen.

That’s a hard argument to

answer if you have to insist

simultaneously that the four-

carriers fetish is a real objec-

tion to the merger, and that

Dish is a real solution.

This is a price we pay for

the Washington swamp. We

can only hope the Sprint and

T-Mobile deal proves worth it.

Industrial nose-

clamps will be needed

to make the T-Mobile

settlement palatable.

BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.

Two enduring
verities gov-
ern presiden-
tial politics:
You can’t win
the presi-
dency with-
out receiving
your party’s
nomination,
but you can’t
win the gen-
eral election if the stances
you adopt to win the prima-
ries make you unacceptable
to most Americans. Winning
means finding the sweet
spot, the overlap between
these two imperatives.
As this column goes to
press, just before the second
round of Democratic debates,
many candidates seem to
have forgotten the second
half of the equation. They are
taking positions that Demo-
crats like but the American
people don’t, making it more
likely that President Trump
will be re-elected.
The most recent NPR/Mar-
ist survey provides detailed
insight into this dynamic. For
example, a Medicare for All
plan that replaces private in-
surance is supported by 64%
of Democrats but only 41% of
the electorate. Sixty percent
of Democrats back opening a
national health-insurance pro-
gram to illegal immigrants,
compared with only 33% of all
voters. Only 27% of Ameri-
cans support decriminalizing
unauthorized border cross-
ings; the same small percent-
age favors reparations for
slavery. Abolishing the death
penalty wins a majority of
Democrats but barely more

The Democratic Victory Playbook

than a third of the country.

Rejecting these proposals

wouldn’t commit Democratic

candidates to the status quo.

Take health care. Adding a

public option—Medicare,

Medicaid or something new—

to ObamaCare is supported

by 91% of Democrats and a

70% supermajority of the

electorate. Government regu-

lation of drug prices is

backed by 80% of Democrats

as well as two-thirds of all

voters.

Or consider immigration.

For many years, surveys have

shown overwhelming support

for providing legal status and

a path to citizenship to the

Dreamers, young people

brought illegally to this coun-

try as children. The NPR/

Marist survey is the latest in

a long line to find strong

support for offering illegal

immigrants who meet a strin-

gent list of requirements a

chance to move out of the

shadows and become citi-

zens.

Democrats can move be-

yond the status quo in other

areas as well. Eighty-nine

percent of Americans favor

extending mandatory back-

ground checks to weapons

purchased at gun shows and

private sales. Nearly three-

fourths of Democrats, and

two-thirds of all Americans,

support legalizing marijuana

nationwide.

Despite a decadelong re-

covery from the Great Reces-

sion, voters remain con-

cerned about the economic

struggles of working- and

middle-class families, and

about the accumulation of

wealth at the top. This ex-

plains why a national mini-

mum wage of $15 an hour is

favored by 56% of Americans,

and a wealth tax by 61%.

(Whether either of these pro-

posals represents sound pol-

icy is another matter.)

Some Democratic strate-

gists reject my concerns as

obsolete. Swing voters have

disappeared, they claim, re-

placed by polarized partisans.

The party that best mobilizes

its base will win, and that

means running on issues that

excite the base.

Yet the evidence contra-

dicts that argument. Recent

surveys show that although

most Americans are bound by

their party affiliation in their

choice of president, as many

as 1 in 5 are not. Many of

these swing voters identify

as independent or moderate.

Their decision to support or

oppose Mr. Trump’s re-elec-

tion, which is likely to deter-

mine the outcome in 2020,

depends on the alternative

Democrats offer.

Although it’s still early,

these voters have reached

some tentative judgments. In

a head-to-head contest, the

latest NBC/WSJ poll finds,

swing voters prefer former

Vice President Joe Biden to

Mr. Trump by 32 percentage

points. At the other end of

the continuum, Mr. Trump

edges Sen. Kamala Harris by

4 points, with Sens. Bernie

Sanders and Elizabeth War-

ren in between.

In an article that deserves

a wide readership, veteran

Democratic analyst Ruy Teix-

eira shows that base mobili-

zation has not been the

source of past Democratic

defeats and won’t be the key

to victory in 2020. Even if

African-American turnout in

2016 had matched the level

of 2012, he finds, Hillary

Clinton would have lost. By

contrast, if she had managed

to reduce by one quarter

(from 39 to 30 points) Mr.

Trump’s margin of victory

among whites without college

degrees, she’d be well into

her third year as president.

This isn’t mission impossible.

In 2012 Barack Obama held

the Republican margin among

noncollege whites to 25

points.

In the old days, candidates

could head left (or right) to

their party’s base during the

primaries and then tack back

to the center before the gen-

eral election. This strategy is

far less effective now, be-

cause modern means of re-

cording and disseminating in-

formation guarantee that

candidates will be held re-

sponsible for what they say

and do, no matter when they

say or do it, whether events

are private or public.

The Democratic debates

are much more than an intra-

mural scrimmage. It’s already

the regular season, and every

play counts.

Swing voters find left-

of-center policies

congenial, provided

they’re not too far left.

POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston

Big Brains,

Big Ideas

Out of Our Minds

By Felipe Fernández-Armesto

(California, 464 pages, $32.95)

BOOKSHELF| By Andrew Stark

N

ovelists, Margaret Atwood once said, spend their

time imagining that nonexistent people are real.

Bureaucrats, she continued, do the reverse: As they

construct rules and procedures to make normal life

impossible, they pass their days imagining that real people

don’t exist.

The historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto would heartily

endorse her sense of our strangely divided mental prowess.

He believes that it’s the strength of our imaginative

capacity—whether to see what is absent or to doubt what

is present—that defines our species and sets it apart from

all others. In “Out of Our Minds”—the title is both a nod to

the mind’s edgier qualities and a reference to the wonders

it produces—Mr. Fernández-Armesto traces the career of

human imagination from prehistory through the modern

period. While other broad intellectual histories focus on the

ideas themselves, he seeks

to answer the question of

“why we have ideas in the

first place.”

Evolution, Mr. Fernández-

Armesto says, endowed our

ancestors with the twin

needs to look backward and

forward in time. Recalling

whether a particular beast

was the kind that provided

meat last winter, or predicting

whether a meaty quarry

would run if attacked, were

matters of life and death. But

because our minds would

become unbearably cluttered if we

remembered everything in detail, they

learned to winnow past images, storing them up selectively

and inevitably leaving gaps. The result is that we

sometimes supplement remembered experience with faulty

impressions. Meanwhile, because our powers of

anticipation are so keen and overdeveloped, they routinely

fashion scenarios that will never happen. “Blend bad

memory and good anticipation together,” Mr. Fernández-

Armesto writes, and “imagination results.”

Starting from this outline of its parentage, Mr.

Fernández-Armesto offers a stimulating history of how the

imagination interacted with its sibling psychological

faculties—emotion, perception and reason—to shape the

history of human mental life. Early on, for example, our

forebears used their budding powers to extend their

emotional reach. If an early hominid felt pain at being

stabbed by a spear, his imaginative capacities allowed him

to grasp that others might experience something similar,

making for the rudiments of sympathy and empathy.

Even Neanderthals, Mr. Fernández-Armesto says, cared

for the disabled among their populations. The discovery 25

years ago of mirror neurons—“particles in the brains of

some species, including our own, that respond similarly”

when the same thing happens to others as it does to us—

testify, he believes, to an atavistic mix of feeling and

imagination that underlies everything from Christian

charity to modern human-rights theory.

Relatedly, our imaginations, when allied with the

faculties of sense perception, have given us a deep vein of

psychic riches. Early animists, perceiving the motion of

rivers and winds, imagined that sprites and spirits were

responsible, spawning primitive religions. Scientists have

always drawn on their imaginations to devise experiments

that might confirm, through perceivable results, the

existence of entities in the material world that are

unobservable directly. Isaac Newton did so with gravity, as

Benjamin Franklin did with lightning’s electrical properties.

When entwined with our capacity to reason, imagination

opened up yet another world—the immaterial world of pure

concepts. This advance is most obvious in the development

of mathematics, which, Mr. Fernández-Armesto says, offers

“a key to an otherwise inaccessible world,” one glimpsed

only “in thought.” Reason, extended by imagination,

underlies everything from Plato’s theory of forms to the

20th-century mathematician Kurt Gödel’s belief that

mathematical entities are as real as chairs or tables.

“Out of Our Minds” falls into the same genre of sweeping

narrative as Yuval Noah Harari’s recent blockbuster

“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” But while Mr.

Harari tells a story of ever accelerating change heading

toward the obsolescence of our species, Mr. Fernández-

Armesto doesn’t think much has changed at all. Despite

“the technical and material progress of the last two

thousand years,” he writes, “we still depend on the thought

of a distant era, to which we have added surprisingly

little”—even if, as he adds, we will inevitably “go on having

new thoughts.”

This conclusion may be broadly right, but it could be

argued that we are in the midst of a rather dramatic shift

in our strategies of understanding. While the imaginative

products of scientific reasoning, from Galileo to Einstein,

could be tested against data, many theories that now enjoy

a vogue—most notably the “multiverse” claim, meant to

help explain the origin of our cosmos by proposing an

infinite number of universes—can’t be proved even

indirectly by sense perception. Such theories are, as the

science writer John Horgan has written, “works of the

imagination unconstrained by evidence.”

Meanwhile, the mystery of the mind and its emotions is

being plumbed in the opposite way. Here we are moving

away from imaginative engagement and turning toward the

raw material of the brain’s wiring. The actions of neurons

and synapses, perceived experimentally, are being used to

predict criminal behavior, control consumer behavior and

even engage in romantic behavior. Mr. Fernández-Armesto

grumbles mildly about this trend. But it’s hard to see it as

anything other than one more sign of a major break in the

continuity of the human mental life he so deftly recounts.

Contrary to what he says about our species in general, Mr.

Fernández-Armesto himself possesses an exquisite sense of

the past. Whether his powers of anticipation are as

accurate remains an open question.

Mr. Stark is the author, most recently, of “The

Consolations of Mortality: Making Sense of Death.”

Humans are unique in being able to mix

experience with imagination. Our heads are

full of pictures of things that are yet to be.