Wikipedia defines “elegance” this way:

Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity.

“Beauty” is a word that most people do not think of when it comes to acts of war, but “simple” and “effective” certainly are, and there is a certain kind of beauty that arises from an act in any field that is truly simple and effective.  Mathematicians discuss “elegance” all the time.  If you know math, when you see an elegant proof, it takes your breath away.  “Elegance” is an interesting concept when applied in fields other than art and fashion and such.

Statistical modelling, the mathematics that underlie “climate science,” is not elegant math – it is brutish and complex and imprecise, rendered possible only be the rise of massive, and inexpensive computing capability.  It’s ugly.  Such is one of the reasons to suspect it – its accuracy is not apparent at a glance.  The correctness of elegant math is apparent on first reading.

“Elegant” was the first word that came to my mind when I caught news of yesterday’s pager explosions in Lebanon attacking the Hezbollah command structure.  Yes, it was deadly and created a significant casualty cost, but in the world of warfare it projected massive power with minimal kinetic effort and extremely precise targeting.  The precise bombing of a Hamas leader in Iran back in July was impressive, but this was an order of magnitude more so.

There are some that will call these attacks “terrorist acts.”  They defy such labeling in their very elegance.  Consider how brutish the airplane attacks of 9-11 are in comparison.  Those attacks, while attracting great attention killed indiscriminately and relied on borrowing the instruments of that destruction.  They were attacks born of being the weaker party in the confrontation.  But these carefully targeted, elegant attacks, presumably by Israel, are born of strength.  Can the acts of the stronger party really be considered “terrorism?”

After taking a minute to appreciate the elegance of yesterday’s attack, my second thought was how it contrasted the brutishness of our current presidential campaign.  Presidential campaigns are not war, but they are rhetorical battle, and this one is being conducted with a particular bluntness.  So brutish has it been that everyone suspects the violence aimed at one of the candidates has roots in that cudgel-like rhetoric.  The means by which Harris’ candidacy arose was particularly inelegant. There is no elegance in this campaign whatsoever.

We live in a brutish, technological time – a time defined by the inelegant math of massive computing on the internet, not the elegant math, arithmetic really, that landed men on the moon.  As such the inelegance of this campaign is predictable as politics always reflects the cultural moment.  But it is a shame.

As we said, Harris is the political equivalent of a shillelagh – a cudgel disguised as a walking stick.  She has smashed and beaten and cudgeled her way into this position and as a candidate is not only inelegant, but ineloquent.  Her word salads – massive in word count and devoid of content – are execrable.

Donald Trump’s “brand” is as a bull in a china shop – also brutish.  But he has four years in office that stand is stark contrast to the Harris campaign and her time in the Veep office. Rather than rule by pen-and-phone, he governed within the boundaries of the constitution and convention.  His rhetoric may have exceeded, in its bluntness, much that preceded it, but his governance was well within normal bounds and elegant in comparison to governance of Obama or Biden/Harris.  The turmoil that swirled around his administration was created by his opponents, not him.

After watching Israel’s (presumable) brilliance yesterday I wonder if Donald Trump would not be well served by rebranding a bit.  The results could well be breathtaking.