Streetwise Professor

Short sellers have been hate objects since the earliest days of the U.S. stock market–witness the checkered lives of the likes of Daniel Drew or Jacob Little. It is therefore no surprise that the travails of their latter day descendants–hedge funds like Melvin Capital–that have resulted from the huge runups in the prices of stocks like GameStop ($GME) have been the source of considerable schadenfreude. I would suggest, however, that this will end in tears not just for the hedgies, but for those who contributed to their massive losses.

Long story short (no pun intended).  Small investors pile in a stock (GME, and some others like Blackberry), driving up its price.  Hedge funds think the stock is overpriced, so they go short.  A group of small investors thinks that this is an opportunity to punish the short sellers (a lot of mutual disdain/hate here), so via the reddit group WallStreetBets they coordinate to buy more, driving up the price further.  This imposes big losses on the shorts, who buy to cover, driving up the price further, imposing more losses on the remaining shorts, driving them to cover, etc., etc. 

It brings to mind an old doggerel poem from the Chicago Board of Trade in the 19th century:

He who buys what isn’t his’n, Must buy it back or go to prison.

In the case of GameStop, the price action went hyperbolic:

That chart ends at yesterday’s close. Things have been even more crazy overnight, with the price hitting $500/share. There have been gyrations caused by the shutdown of the chatrooms and some retail platforms stopping trading in this and other heavily shorted stocks. But the fundamental dynamic in play now–shorts slitting their own throats in panicked buying to cover–means that attempts to constrain the long herd will not have a lasting impact.

The short interest that had to (and has to) be covered is huge–short interest in GME was 140 percent of outstanding shares–and a larger share of the float. (How can there be more shorts than shares? The same share can be borrowed and lent multiple times!) The effects of the short covering are seen not only in the price, but in the stratospheric cost of borrowing shares. Earlier this week it was about 30 percent–juice loan territory. Now it is at 100 percent.

In many respects, this is reminiscent of some of the more storied episodes in Wall Street history, or more recently the 2008 VW corner which punished shorts severely. But there is a major difference. In some of the earlier episodes (including major corners of shorts in railroad stocks in the 19th century, or battles between shorts and stock pools in the 1920s, or the VW case), there was a single dominant long squeezing the overextended shorts. Here, it seems that the driving force is a relatively large group of small longs, acting with a common purpose.

How will it end? Well, the stock is obviously overvalued, and driven by “technical factors” (as is sometimes said euphemistically). It will crash to earth. When? Well, when the shorts get out. Who will lose? Well, the shorts are likely a big portion of the purchasers at these nosebleed levels, so they will be the biggest losers. But there will be some latecomers and trend followers who will have followed the Pied Piper of rising price, and will lose in the inevitable crash.

Should we really care? There is some possibility that the disruption in GME and other heavily shorted stocks could have knock-on effects. Hedge funds suffering large losses may have to dump other positions, causing those prices to decline. (The events surrounding the Northern Pacific corner, for example, sparked the Panic of 1901.)

One fascinating aspect of this is how it demonstrates the deep populist discontent that is in abroad in the land. The hedge fund laments have been met with a barrage of scorn and ridicule, with a major theme being “you a$$h0les got bailed out in 2008 while the little guy got hammered–how you likin’ it now?” Completely understandable. Revenge of the nerds, as it were.

But, alas, I do not think the visceral satisfaction will last. Things like this inevitably result in litigation. The WallStreetBets lot are in for major lawsuits filed by the losing hedge funds, and perhaps others (e.g., investors who had sold call options).

Following the trend and herd trading is not manipulation–as long as the herd doesn’t explicitly coordinate with the intent to move the price to uneconomic levels. However, many on WallStreetBets expressed an intent to drive up the price in order to impose losses on their bêtes noires, and apparently coordinated their buying activity to achieve this result. Intent and cooperation make the manipulation. Note that the explicit communication and coordination could also transform this into a Section 1 Sherman Act claim–with the attendant triple damages.

Now the hedge funds will never collect even a fraction of their losses. But for them, the process will be the punishment inflicted on their foes. Pour encourager les autres.

The SEC is not committing to any action right now. It merely says it is “monitoring” the situation. The DOJ has also been silent.

However, they will be under tremendous pressure to act. Ultimately, the decision will be political–precisely because of the political nature of the populist resentment. The hedge funds and Wall Street generally will be howling for the government to file cases. But if the government does so, there will be widespread popular outrage that the government is taking the side of the Wall Street elite. Again.

This will be the first thing on Gary Gensler’s plate at the SEC. He is in a no win situation. (Breaks me all up.)

In sum, the events of the past days have been fascinating from both an economic and a political perspective. They represent a back-to-the-future moment of colossal battles between longs and shorts, but with a major twist: whereas the historical battles tended to be between colossi, this one pits an army of Davids against a few colossal hedge funds. This in turn gives rise to a political narrative, which again has historic echoes–the little guy vs. Financial Capital. It’s like the 19th century, all over again.

The battle will play out for some time. For a few days or weeks in the markets, and in the courts for years after that.

The US military is the most highly respected institution in America today. It is also filled with many ardent supporters of Trump, and Trumpism. Therefore, in today’s febrile and vengeful political environment, it is being targeted.

Case in point. Politico reports that the “FBI is vetting [National] Guardsmen amid fears of an insider attack.” What an appalling slur–and another act in the Security Theater in the “Green Zone”. (Note: that appellation is not hyperbole: that’s how the government is labeling it.)

How much of a slur? This much:

Insider threats have been a persistent law enforcement priority in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But in most cases, the threats are from homegrown insurgents radicalized by al-Qaida, the Islamic State group or similar groups. In contrast, the threats against Biden’s inauguration have been fueled by supporters of President Donald Trump, far-right militants, white supremacists and other radical groups. 

The National Guard. Just like ISIS and al Qaida. Because Trump.

Utterly disgusting.

More evidence of what the ruling class thinks of the military, because it has a lot of white men who like Trump and don’t like Biden:

.@RepCohen on his concerns w/ the National Guard securing the Inauguration: “The [National] Guard is 90 some-odd percent male; and only about 20 percent of white males voted for Biden … there are probably not more than 25% of the people there protecting us that voted for Biden” pic.twitter.com/ofQfLuCw8I

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 18, 2021

In other words, political reliability is the criterion by which the military will be evaluated. The military has stayed out of politics, but the politicians will definitely not stay out of the military.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have seen a variety of articles in the last few weeks where government officials and journalists have expressed deep concern about extremist/insurrectionist/white supremacist networks and sympathies within the military.

The military–not so much the flag ranks, or even O6 types, because they have to have been politically tamed to make it that far, but lower grade officers, and senior and junior enlisted–is going to be intensely scrutinized for political reliability. I daresay that something resembling a purge may occur. Political officers, a la the Red Army during various periods? Not inconceivable.

It is very revealing that the FBI is in charge of the “vetting” of National Guardsmen. As we have seen in spades since 2016, they are the domestic enforcers of the ruling class. It is particularly apropos to be writing this on MLK day, because the FBI’s targeting of King provides a telling case study of its immense capacity for political hatchet jobs and witch hunts.

This is something one would expect to see in, say, Turkey, where Erdoğan targeted the military. And no, I’m not referring to the period after the 15 July, 2016 coup, but his actions to tame the military that culminated in the Sledgehammer trial in 2012. Tayyip may have had some justification for his actions. After all, the Turkish military had a well-established record of overthrowing governments–including the hanging of the leaders thereof (e.g., the hanging of Menderes in 1961, in the aftermath of the 27 May coup).

There is no such reason–not by the remotest stretch–to suspect the US military. The aspersions being cast on it and its members, and the clear hints of an impending cleansing, provide a chilling testament to the paranoia of the ruling class, and its bloody minded determination to subjugate anyone and anything that shows anything but abject fealty towards it.

In Baghdad, the US embassy complex is a massive fortified area hard on the Tigris called The Green Zone. It is to protect representatives of America’s government–and its governing class–from the barbarians beyond. In advance of Wednesday’s inauguration, Washington DC is being turned into the Green Zone on the Potomac. (H/T to @libertylynx for suggesting the analogy!)

So just who are the barbarians whom the governing class is attempting to exclude from the nation’s capital?

This could be a particularly grandiose exercise in security theater, meant to convey that the country is under threat from shadowy right-wing insurrectionists, and thereby provide a justification for sweeping “domestic terrorism” legislation, followed by early-21st equivalents to early-20th century “Palmer Raids” (Garland Raids?)–these directed at American “fascists” and “white supremacists,” rather than communists and anarchists as in 1919-1920. This would bode very ill for our freedom. It could be the death knell, in fact.

This could also reveal the governing class’s panicked realization that they are heartily hated by a large portion of the populace–and that they know that they are hated for good reason, due to their abject incompetence, irredeemable corruption, and sneering disdain for vast swathes of Americans. We have the worst governing class in the country’s history–and that includes the 1850s, during which the previous holder of this dubious distinction led the country to civil war.

These explanations are not mutually exclusive, of course. A hated “elite,” all too conscious of its failings and unpopularity (Congress ranks somewhere below tertiary syphilis in esteem, with the federal bureaucracy and the media hot on its heels), will out of self-preservation engineer crises that justify the employment of the government’s vast coercive apparatus to crush those who wish them gone.

It is extremely illuminating that actually burning things down, which occurred not just in DC but around the country in May and June, did not elicit such a hysterical response. Only when the precious denizens of DC feel personally threatened by the people they ostensibly govern do they go to Defcon 1.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let a stupid, but wildly exaggerated, rampage in the Capitol (that never would have happened had the most basic measures been taken–which should make you wonder why they weren’t) provide the pretext for purges and “domestic terrorism” legislation that deprives you of your rights, puts your liberty at risk, and threatens to bring the country to the brink of another break. Don’t fall for the security theater and the FBI’s alarums. These are a pretext to deprive you of your freedoms, most notably your freedom to heap scorn on a failed ruling class, and to hold them to account for their myriad failings.

In 1893, at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his soon to be famous article, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” The article has been extensively analyzed, and heavily criticized, over the years. Of course any grand theory of cause-and-effect regarding the history of an entire people over a period of centuries is going to oversimplify, omit other causal factors, and have some implications that are falsified by the historical record. Nonetheless, Turner’s tour de force does make many insightful observations and generalizations. Because of these, it provides a very useful analytical frame that sheds quite a bit of light on America’s current divided state, how it got here, and where it will go hence.

Most notably, Turner identified many character and behavioral traits that he identified with the frontier. Most notable of these are individualism, though it must be stressed that “individualism” is not a synonymous with social atomism, for as Toqueville noted at the time the frontier was very much a going concern, Americans had a mania for voluntary associations of various sorts, i.e., Americans exercised their individualism by gathering together in private (or at most quasi-public) organizations ranging from churches to charitable and social reform groups to militia companies.

Other characteristics noted by Turner include informality, democracy (of a particularly local variety), risk taking and initiative, and yes, violence. To which I would add another Toqueville observation–a passion for equality, in the sense of a resistance to a formal social hierarchy. (This is related to “informality.”). There was also an active scorn for ideas and norms and fashions originating in Europe.

Stated broadly, the frontier ethos was one of individual autonomy and liberty and freedom from authority.

These values can be seen on one side of the American political divide. They are, for example, highly correlated with support for Trump.

They are also the values that are most intensely scorned by those on the other side of the divide. Those people–painting with a broad brush, the progressive left–elevate the collective over the individual. They denigrate liberty, and emphasize equality, but not of the Toquevillian sort. They construct elaborate social hierarchies, which are at present organized around various attributes of “identity”–race, gender (pick one! hell, pick several!), ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof). They elevate security and safety over risk taking. They take Europe as a model.

It must be noted that this fissure has always been present to some degree in the U.S., although its nature has changed dramatically over the years. Take for example the War of 1812, which was fervently supported by those on the frontier, and adamantly opposed by the urban and commercial elites in New England and the Middle States. A similar divide between Jacksonians on the frontier and anti-Jacksonians outside of it.

Since Turner wrote, the frontier values that Turner identified as central to the American identity at the time that he wrote have lost ground to their antithesis. The causes are too numerous to list, and are interrelated, but a few salient ones that come to mind include:

• Urbanization.
• The dominance of large scale enterprise, especially corporations but also government bureaucracies, which means that most people earn their income working in a large organization which inherently limits the scope for individuality and individual initiative, and conditions people to operating in highly collectivist environments (even if they are privately owned).
• The emergence and increasing prominence of women in the workplace, government (especially primary and secondary education), and politics. (Even in frontier days, women were at the forefront of reform movements, e.g., temperance, that were explicitly directed at sanding down the rough edges of (male) frontier behavior.) The impact of women is profound, not just directly, but indirectly, primarily through public education and the socialization of men.

(Immigration is somewhat interesting, and cuts many ways. Many immigrants self-selected precisely because they were individualists at heart. Even those who emigrated from relatively collectivist societies (e.g., Scandinavia) tended to be the more adventurous and individualistic. But immigration also brought strains of collectivist thought and identity. )

All of these trends show no sign of abating.

Indeed, the Covid hysteria is arguably accelerating these trends, and greatly so.

The experience of the last year illustrates the divide, and also gives an idea of where the balance now lies, especially among the alleged “elite” in business, media, government, and politics. The safetyism and collectivism of the advocates of mask mandates and lockdowns (in the face of much evidence of their inefficacy, and irrefutable evidence of their costs) is pitted against those who bridle at restrictions on individual choice.

But Covidianism is more than a mirror on social changes that have taken place and existing fissures: it is driving further changes away from the frontier Americanism ethos. The lockdowns, and the self-limiting behavior promoted by the endless drumbeat of doom-and-gloom emanating from government and media, are gutting one of the major bulwarks of Jacksonian America–small business–while at the same time greatly empowering large enterprises and governments. Indeed, every time it looks like there may be some respite, the lockdowns and restrictions are slammed down again, and yet again–despite the lack of evidence of their efficacy in fighting Covid and the palpable evidence of their baleful economic consequences.

Those on the collectivist side–in the US, but especially outside the US–see this as a golden opportunity to throttle their individualist enemies. Call it “The Great Reset” or “Build Back Better” or whatever other Orwellian phrase du jour they choose, the collectivists see Covid as an opportunity to reorganize society on collectivist lines, and to quash “selfish” individualism. It has proved so much more powerful a bludgeon than “climate change” to achieve their agenda, so they are wielding it with a relish.

I say “opportunity”, which suggests that seizing on the Covid hammer is merely opportunism–letting no good crisis go to waste. But the utility of Covidianism in the advance of collectivism has raised questions in some minds as to whether this is more than mere opportunism.

I would say that in this century, and through much of the late years of the last, the frontier ethos was fighting a rear guard action. The Trump years have been, to a considerable degree, a particularly intense battle in that fighting retreat. This is why the 2020 election was so pivotal–if it had gone the other way (and it is defensible based on evidence to say if it had not been stolen) the collectivist surge might have suffered a serious setback. But in the event, it was the individualists who suffered the reverse.

The battle is not over yet. The inherent flaws in collectivism, and the very real potential that the 2020 winners may succumb to Victory Disease and overreach, could lead to an individualist comeback, a la the late-1970s/early-1980s. But even then, there is a ratchet effect at work. Each rebound starts from a lower level, and seldom is able to restore things to the way they were before the previous decline.

A rather bleak prognosis, I’m afraid. But there is honor–and sometimes profit–in fighting against heavy odds. That’s a frontier value too. That is what I will strive to do. I hope you do as well. Perhaps we can seize victory from the jaws of defeat. But only if we fight, and never if we submit.

Among other things, annus horribilis 2020 will evidently mark the final eclipse of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson as Virginia icons. Lee-Jackson Day (commemorated under various names since 1889) was eliminated as a state holiday. The statue of Lee was removed from the U.S. Capitol, and his statue on Memorial Avenue in Richmond was defaced by massive graffiti during the George Floyd protests, and Virginia’s governor ordered its removal a month later: its fate now hangs by a thin legal thread. This month, Jackson’s statue was removed from the Virginia Military Institute, where he taught before achieving fame in the Civil War.

Even more than erecting them, the removal of monuments is a statement of political power. Thus, the monument controversy is a testament to political realignment. The controversies have been particularly intense in Virginia because the realignment has been so pronounced. This is directly attributable to the vast expansion of the Federal government since the 1960s, which has resulted in the dramatic growth of the northern Virginia suburbs, with the burgeoning population consisting disproportionately of non-Virginians, most of whom have direct or indirect ties to the national government, and hence have an antipathy towards, or at most an indifference to the most renowned rebels against that government. Similar things are happening in other Southern states with burgeoning urban populations, e.g., Georgia. In many respects, the Yankee invasion of the Sunbelt that started in earnest in the 1970s is doing what Yankee Reconstruction in the 1870s could not.

As I have written many times in the past four years or so, this iconoclasm disturbs me. It disturbs me in part because I dislike the naked assertion of political power and the marking of political territory. Waving the bloody shirt 155 years after the fact seems particularly unseemly. It is largely presentist bigotry which refuses to countenance context. And as I discuss in the closing, it will have baleful political effects.

Moreover, I dislike the erasing of history. We need to understand our past better–including understanding how previous generations understood their past. ISIS wants to destroy everything that predated Mohammed. The topplers of monuments in Richmond or Portland or Madison (and I could go on) what to destroy everything American that predates The Woke. What they have in common is a deep antipathy of anything that angers their gods.

The removal of the Jackson statue is particularly ridiculous. VMI is, after all, a military school. It trains officers. Jackson, although an indifferent teacher at VMI, was a living embodiment of many military virtues, and a general of some genius. For those reasons, he is a good example for cadets to contemplate. And as for the cause in which he employed that genius and virtues, cadets are also better off understanding it and what brought it into existence than having it extirpated from memory. The statue’s removal will also remove a reminder to strive for such an understanding.

There is also an element of cheap virtue signaling, and in fact cowardice, in removing Jackson’s monument. Truth be told, if Jackson’s legacy is a blot on Virginia that must be removed, so is VMI itself. Twenty-one of its graduates served as Confederate generals: many more as colonels (including George Patton’s grandfather) or in lower ranks: approximately 1,800 VMI graduates served in the Civil War–all but 19 for the Confederacy. The Corps of Cadets delivered a decisive charge at the Battle of New Market on 15 May, 1864.

VMI is therefore inextricably linked to the Civil War, and on the “wrong” side. If such historical bonds require removal from public space, intellectual consistency would require VMI to be burned more thoroughly than David Hunter’s Union troops did on 12 June, 1864. Getting rid of Jackson’s statue is a cheap and cowardly way of reckoning with the past.

We are now entering a period in which the subject of relations between states, and the relations between the states and the Federal government is being questioned as it has not been since 1865. The topic of secession has been broached, especially in the aftermath of the fiasco that is the 2020 presidential election. There is greater distrust and alienation between different regions of the US today than there has been since the era of Reconstruction, and by a large margin. What was universally considered settled is no longer so.

In such a febrile environment, a better understanding of how sectional distrust and alienation (North-South then, Red-Blue today) can lead to disastrous rupture is imperative. “No more Munichs” informed post-War US foreign policy: this was an attempt to learn from past mistakes in order to avoid their repetition. “No more Civil Wars” is equally important, if not more so, and we should think seriously and deeply about the period 1820-1860, in order to learn from the mistakes of that era–mistakes that culminated in a bloody war and bitter Reconstruction.

Sadly, erasing visible traces of this era does not encourage such consideration: it prevents it. Much the worse, the intensely partisan and triumphalist way it is being done actually widens the fissures in American political and social life that are becoming more apparent by the day. Again, it is an assertion of political power by one faction that is deliberately intended to demonstrate to other factions who is in charge, and that they don’t matter. That will only intensify the already manifest centrifugal forces at work in the United States. That is the last thing we want to do now, for reasons that a better understanding of the Civil War Era should make more than plain.

Saturday evening I watched Hillbilly Elegy, a Netflix original. I watched because I had read the J. D. Vance book by the same title, and it resonated deeply–for reasons I will detail below. I also watched because of the hailstorm of negative reactions directed at the film (as had been directed at the book and at Vance personally)–I wanted to see what triggered these adverse reactions.

The book and film resonate because there are strong parallels between Vance’s experiences, and those of my grandfather, in place particularly, although not so much in time. My grandfather’s story occurs in southeastern Ohio in the first two decades of the 20th century (he was born 8 months before the Wright Brothers’ first flight), and Vance’s in central Ohio and Kentucky in the 1980s-2000s. But in some ways, the difference in time makes the other similarities all the more remarkable. La plus ca change.

Most notably, the central character in Elegy, J.D.’s grandmother Mamaw (played by Glen Close) is eerily reminiscent of my grandfather’s mother, Laura D. Hatfield. (Mark the last name.) Both were fiery hellcats, with checkered and often tragic lives.

One scene made my jaw drop. Early in the movie, J.D.’s mother Becky is in a hurry to drive home from a family reunion in Kentucky. She yells at her mother to hurry up, and Mamaw responds by flipping her the bird and uttering a vulgar retort.

My grandfather was an avid amateur photographer, and was making home movies from nearly the time that hand-held cameras first became available. Blessedly, my uncle still has the movies, and we put them on DVD. In one clip, my grandfather impishly waited outside the outhouse at my grandmother’s farm (note that this was in the 1930s, and there was no running water). When she emerged from the privy, she saw him filming, and flipped him the bird. Just like Mamaw flipping off her daughter, right down to the same bad ass look on their faces. They even looked somewhat alike–there is an Appalachian look, you know.

Like Mamaw, my GGM had man issues and kid issues. No, she wasn’t knocked up at 13, but hers was not a romantic story. She worked as a waitress at a diner at a railroad depot (in Gloucester, Ohio, if memory serves), and was swept off her feet by a railroad man. They married–and then he promptly abandoned her.

He came back a year later for her father’s funeral. W. H. Hatfield had died from a ruptured spleen suffered at a 4th of July picnic held by his employer, the New Straitsville Coal Company, for which he cut roofing timbers. In a strength contest at the picnic, the 55 year old man successfully lifted a 6′ long green roofing timber (about as thick as a railroad tie) over his head–and then his spleen ruptured. (Try lifting a railroad tie sometime.)

In any event Laura and her husband reconnected after the funeral, my grandfather was conceived–and then Laura’s husband split again, never to return. My grandfather never even saw him until one of his cousins pointed him out on the street when my grandfather was 11 or 12. So like J.D., my grandfather was fatherless.

Single motherhood not being a thing at the time, out of desperation Laura married an older man (Bill Wilcox) who was financially secure (owning a farm and a business “shooting” oil wells with nitroglycerine)–but who was also a raging alcoholic. My grandfather suffered the fate of many stepchildren of that era–a life of beatings. (So although drugs weren’t a thing in 1910s Ohio as in 1990s Ohio, alcohol was. BTW, Bill ran moonshine in his “shooting wagon,” knowing people weren’t too anxious to go poking around a wagon full of nitro.) (J.D.’s mother also entered horrible marriages in attempts to provide a home for her children.)

My grandfather had to work both on the farm and off from a young age, including working in coal mines as early as 12 years old. To give you an idea of how tough things were, he suffered abuse at the hands of one of the miners. He complained to his uncle Frank (Laura’s brother) who was a foreman at the mine. Frank told him he had to take care of himself. Frank said he had a pick and an acetylene lamp on his helmet, didn’t he? So use them. So when next beset by his tormenter, my grandfather turned the flame on his helmet into a torch, pointed it right in the guy’s face, and while he screamed in pain, hit him in the kneecap with the pick handle.

Problem solved. But he had to solve it himself. (He told me this story years later to illustrate a point, which I will return to below.)

In another parallel with the J.D. Vance story, my grandfather escaped this dysfunctional family life by joining the military. The Navy, in my grandfather’s case, the Marines in Vance’s. He was trained as an electrician, and served on subs (back when subs were scary AF). After leaving the service he tried to work his way through Marietta College by selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door and working in a shoe store. But there were no student loans in those days, and he couldn’t make it work, so he set out first to Detroit, where he worked for Ford Motor–and hated it. He then went to Chicago, got a job with Illinois Bell, where he worked for 40 years, eventually becoming the head of North Division in Chicago (i.e., he managed Illinois Bell’s operations north of Madison Street). After retiring from Bell, he became the president of a rural telephone company (DeKalb-Ogle Telephone: he arranged the sale of the company to Continental Telephone, and eventually it was absorbed into what is now Verizon.)

So J.D. Vance’s story and my grandfather’s stories aren’t the same, but they rhyme. Similarly, Mamaw and Laura D. lives were not identical, but bore strong parallels, as did their characters and personalities. So I have deep empathy for the characters and the stories.

But it is beyond obvious that many people don’t. In particular, our better-thans on the coasts and in particular in the media loathe the book, the movie, and J.D. Vance personally. So to my second issue: why this hatred?

I think the answer is overdetermined, but in a nutshell, it is a testament to modern American culture, and political culture in particular.

One part of the story that is deeply dangerous to our better-thans is that it is an utter refutation of the narrative du jour–white privilege. This is an organizing principle, and a fixed belief, on the left today.

Yeah. Watch Hillbilly Elegy, and you’ll just be amazed at all that white privilege. Similarly, look at my grandfather’s family’s life. Dang but whitey got it made, even in 1990s Middletown or 1910s Burr Oak! (My grandfather’s family’s farm is now many feet under the waters of Burr Oak Lake, by the way.)

Such an in-your-face refutation of a cultural “elite’s” treasured myth is a sure-fire trigger to its deepest antipathy.

Relatedly, Vance’s story–like my grandfather’s–is about how it is possible to escape hellish situations in America, and achieve a good life. J.D.’s and my grandfather’s lives were American Hells, but in the end illustrated the American Dream. In both cases, the military and crucially family–even dysfunctional ones–provided a way out. Mamaw impressed on J.D. the importance of family and helped him straighten out and escape. My great-grandmother also gave my grandfather a chance, first by marrying at great cost to herself, but then by telling my grandfather to run away and join the Navy–even accompanying him to the recruiting office to swear that he was 18 (he was barely 17). (He had no birth certificate, but that’s a story for another day. His grave marker, provided by the US government, dates his birth to 1902, not 1903, based on his service record.) And J.D. and my grandfather both repaid their debt, by helping out their families to the extent of their abilities.

Although they had help, J.D. and my grandfather also had to have the self–reliance and grit to want to escape, and put in the effort to escape. The torch and the pick handle are an extreme example: you have to look out for yourself, and never let yourself be a victim. That’s why my grandfather told me the story, although I am sure that it was deeply disturbing to him on some level, even 60 years after the fact.

The refusal to be a victim is also deeply threatening to the prevailing culture. Today, there seems to be a competition to be a victim. “I’m a victim! NOOOO! I’m a bigger victim than you!!! Uh-uh!” We live in a culture that celebrates victimhood. J.D. Vance rejected it. Hillbilly Elegy rejects it. My grandfather rejected it. These are deeply transgressive offenses against the culture.

Then there is the current political environment. The characters of Elegy–and my remaining family members in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia–and millions like them are one of the main bedrocks of Trump support. The Ohio steel industry died. The coal mines died. A hollow shell has been left. When it wasn’t ignoring it, the political elite in the US was sneering at it. Those people have pride–something that comes through in Elegy–and they resent the disdain and condescension.

Trump did not sneer at them. He did not dismiss them as bitter clingers. He embraced them, treated them as valuable individuals, and they love him for it.

And those who hate Trump therefore hate them, and everything that tries to portray them in an even moderately sympathetic light–like Hillbilly Elegy.

In sum, Hillbilly Elegy is a Rorschach Test. Show it to me, and it evokes the attributes and deep flaws and great struggles of my family–struggles that made it possible for me to have an unbelievable blessed life that has been able to grab the boundless opportunities America offers. Show it to the coastal “elite” and it triggers all they hate about America, and many who live in it.

Want to understand the deep fault lines in America today? Watch the movie, and mark the reactions. They speak volumes.

My post on the depravity of the Deep State fell rather short of the mark, I fear. In the sense that it underestimated that depravity.

Case in point, “retiring diplomat James Jeffrey” admits that “his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria”:

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019. 

. . . .

Officially, Trump last year agreed to keep several hundred U.S. troops — somewhere between 200 and 400, according to varying reports at the time — stationed in northeast Syria to “secure” oil fields held by the United States’ Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS. It is generally accepted that the actual number is now higher than that — anonymous officials put the number at about 900 today — but the precise figure is classified and remains unknown even, it appears, to members of Trump’s administration keen to end the so-called “forever wars.” 

Jeffrey justifies his deception (and that of every deceiver) as “ultimately a success story” because it denied Assad a victory.

Remind me again why Americans should care about what murderer rules Syria. Because only murderers are on offer, and Assad may actually be the best of the lot.

But this end does not justify the means, even if you think Assad is the worst of a bad lot. Not by a long shot. It contravenes the chain of command. It rationalizes lying to the commander in chief in order to substitute subordinates’ judgment to his. It undermines trust within the government. It is a totally poisonous precedent.

For Syria. The bunghole of the Middle East. We have much bigger fish to fry than that, and a national security establishment that is so corrupt that it believes that such duplicity is justified, and presidents who know that they believe that, will be much less able to deal with such greater threats and issues than one in which honesty and trust were honored in the performance, rather than the promise.

When I was in the Naval Academy, the Honor Code was drilled into our heads. Although a lot of the drilling was just peremptory–thou shalt not lie!–there were attempts to explain why it is so important. The one thing that stuck with me was a constant refrain of one of my Plebe Summer firsties, Midshipman Dubberly. Over and over he would go through scenarios–some admittedly corny–in which people died because somebody lied.

Commanders who must make decisions on which lives hang must know the truth. Lies are corrosive directly and indirectly. A commander who is told falsehoods may make decisions that he wouldn’t if he knew the truth. Indirectly, a commander who knows that his subordinates may well be lying routinely will distrust everyone, and will as a result often discount truthful information–and again make misinformed decisions that cost lives.

Yes. You may think that your superior is an idiot, and will not use the information properly. But that is not your call to make. Because you may be the idiot.

I’m not naive. I know lying and dissembling occur. Hell, at the Academy (all Academies, actually) Honor Code violations happen all the time. But that’s no excuse for doing it, let alone for doing it and bragging about it.

Everyone involved in this should be subject to stern discipline. (Yes: I’m not naive: I know that is and ought are different.) Jeffreys is retiring. Fine. Yank his pension.

Those in the military who participated in this deception should be subjected to UCMJ proceedings.

In many ways, this episode (and others that have occurred in recent years) emphasizes the endemic corruption in the upper ranks of the military. It has become an increasingly acute problem, starting (roughly) about 30 years ago and accelerating in particular under Obama. Many current flag officers (who were promoted or primed for such ranks under Obama) clearly believe that they can substitute their judgment for the CinC.

Some of this rot is rooted in politics. But it is also directly traceable to the decades of futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the absence of victories, lies became the substitute. There is no substitute for victory? As if: lies do in a pinch.

Everyone in the military knew and knows about the lies. The fact that they were, and are propagated from the highest ranks validates lying right down the chain of command, and produces cynicism. It also causes a sort of Gresham’s Law effect–the bad/corrupt officers drive out the good.

Something similar happened in Vietnam. Then too lies replaced truth in order to camouflage an inconclusive conflict and the inability–likely due to incompetence–of the leadership to devise a winning strategy. And the lies corrupted the entire military, which was only restored (to a large degree) after painstaking efforts in the 1980s.

And the rock has rolled back down the hill. Further than it was in 1973.

Truth be told, one of the reasons I decided to leave the Navy in 1979 was precisely because I saw a dispirited and dysfunctional service.

It could well be the case that the situation is worse now than it was in say, 1973, when the US left Vietnam. We have been involved in Afghanistan and Iraq for far longer. The strategic rationales are far thinner now than they were in the 60s and 70s. The military has been even more politicized.

So when the likes of James Jeffrey is proud of lying, and brags about it because in his unelected, unaccountable mind the ends justify the means, you know that we are in dire straits.

But some people think it’s hilarious. Better than N20!:

US officials have been lying to Trump – and the American people – about the true number of US troops in Syria in order to deter him from withdrawing them, according to the outgoing Syria envoy. Trump thinks it’s 200 ??. By @KatieBoWill https://t.co/P6W9s3Qwvs

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) November 13, 2020

Oh yeah. I’m just doubled over with laughter.

The egregious Mz. Shy–not even an American, mind you–later backtracked, claiming it was all a big misunderstanding!, and besides, anyways, it’s Trump’s fault (of course!):

To be clear, I am not implying this is actually funny. I used the weeping laugh because it is tragicomic. The joke is on Trump, who told so many lies, for being so easily lied to by his officials. It’s a tragedy that they think it’s OK to lie to Americans….

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) November 13, 2020

I called bullshit. She got caught, but won’t own it.

But that’s apropos. She’s lying. She thinks lying is great–as long as they own Trump.

I don’t think it’s great. It’s a sign of how degraded the entire establishment–the worst elite ever, civilian and military–has become.

Although Edmund Burke was initially favorably disposed to the French Revolution, the seizure of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette by a crowd of Parisian women (a wall of moms?) in October, 1789 turned him into an ardent foe. After reading a pamphlet by an English divine, Richard Price, which compared the events in France to the English “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–an event that Burke revered–Burke was spurred to action, and in 1790 penned Reflections on the Revolution in France.

The book was a sensation, and effectively defined, intellectually anyways, the divide between contending view of the Revolution. Burke’s book resulted in immediate retorts, notably by Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine.

In some ways, Burke and his opponents were in complete agreement. Both believed that the Revolution was freeing France from the shackles of the past. The difference was that Burke viewed this with horror, whereas the Wollstonecrafts and Paines (and even some of Burke’s Whig colleagues, like Edward Fox) greeted it with enthusiasm, rapture even.

At the time, Burke’s interpretation was attacked as exaggeration, but events proved that he had a better, and far more realistic, understanding of the revolutionary dynamic, and the consequences of shattering the shackles. Insofar as exaggeration is concerned, yes, Louis and Marie were knocked about a bit, and humiliated, and the scenes between Versailles and Paris were chaotic and shocking to someone of Burke’s sensibilities. But they remained royalty, and remained alive.

But Burke saw that the forces of anarchy and what we now call nihilism (the word was not coined until the mid-19th century, and then in Russia) had been unleashed. He saw that there was no limiting principle in the revolutionary rhetoric. He took seriously the vaulting ambitions of some to revolutionize society root and branch. He had a tragic view of humanity: he referred to “the causes of evil which are permanent,” and believed that the complete dissolution of the institutions that kept these evils in check (perhaps with their own attendant evils) would result in disaster.

Within a few years, events would vindicate him. The execution of Louis and Marie. The Terror. And ultimately, something that Burke had predicted–the emergence of a military strongman who would restore order.

Burke, in other words, was a Cassandra. A seer who accurately foretold doom, but was dismissed and abused by those who were doomed.

Burke was not a reactionary. He had supported the American Revolution, and as I noted already, revered the Glorious Revolution. He was also famous for his prosecution of Warren Hastings for corruption in India and–critics of colonialism take note–accused the East India Company of doing untold damage in India.

But he believed that society required institutions, rules, and morals to restrain ugly human impulses. And he believed that attempts to revolutionize society root and branch would result in chaos and mass human misery.

Burke came to mind in watching the events in Portland–and copycat anarchy in other cities like Seattle and Oakland. The rioters there–I will not dignify them with the moniker “protestors”–avowedly desire the complete eradication of the United States and its institutions. Like the most radical of the French revolutionaries of 1789-1796, they believe that the entire system has to be overturned and replaced by an entirely new, utopian one.

Don’t believe me? Just ask them.

Like Burke’s critics, you might dismiss my attention to the radicals. They are just a fringe, you might say. Hell, if you are of the mind of Jerry Nadler (if so, you have my pity), you will dismiss the above as a “myth” deserving of no attention whatsoever: indeed, you will attribute my attention to partisan malice.

But what Burke perceived is that the radicals, the hard men–and today, hard women–have a decided advantage. Indeed, their hardness is their advantage. In war and politics, will matters. Those of iron will exert influence and power far beyond their numbers.

No major revolutionary movement–not just in France, but in Russia in 1917, or in China in the 1940s, or in Cuba in the 1950s-60s, or in Cambodia in the 1970, and on and on–has been remotely in the majority. Indeed, the defining idea of Leninism is that a small, dedicated elite cadre, not a mass of the people, is the driving force in revolution.

We are already seeing that the ruling class in the United States is largely deferential to the radicals. The Democratic Party defends them: as I write, the spittle-spewing morons on the House Judiciary Committee are hectoring AG William Barr for daring to defend federal property against the New Jacobins.

Fools. Do they not realize that they would be sent to the guillotine if the black-clad “scrawny, pasty white booger-eating communist shitheads” prevail?

Societies that have self-confidence crush such anti-social, radical, extremist thugs. Societies that don’t crumble before them, and pay the price in blood and treasure.

In the US today, many of the elite believe that standing up to anti-social, radical, extremist thugs is supposedly authoritarian. If those voices prevail, the rest of us will reap what the elite have sown.

This isn’t about George Floyd, or any particular episode of injustice. Those on the streets in Portland and elsewhere believe this is about the fundamental, irredeemable injustice–and evil–of America. An original sin for which there is no salvation, and which can be redeemed only by destruction. George Floyd is just a pretext (a concept that Burke explored in detail in Reflections).

Burke said other things that resonate today, in particular the assault on history, and the assessment of guilt on the descendants of alleged sinners of generations past:

They find themselves obliged to rake into the histories of former ages (which they have ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous, because very illogical principles of retaliation, their own persecutions, and their own cruelties.

And

It is not very just to chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age.

It’s almost as if Burke foretold not just The Terror, but White Privilege and the Six Degrees From Slavery frenzy.

Those things, like many other things he wrote in Reflections, rhyme in America despite the passage of 230 years and the distance of thousands of miles.

So go ahead, and dismiss Portland (and its echoes in other cities) if you will–just as the “enlightened” of 1790 dismissed Burke. But before doing so, read Burke in the light of what happened almost immediately afterwards.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seems hell-bent on making enemies. Indeed, other than Qatar, it’s hard to point to any nation that is allied with Turkey. Turkey doesn’t even seem to have frenemies, only real enemies.

The FT had a long piece detailing how Erdoğan is using force and threats of force to prevent other nations, notably Cyprus, from drilling for gas in the eastern Mediterranean. He has also entered into a deal for what passes for a government in Libya to develop its offshore gas, and to build pipelines that deny that Crete is part of Greece. (Hey, it was Ottoman once, right?)

Speaking of Libya, Erdo has intervened in the conflict there. Turkey has supplied advisors, drones (including armed UAVs), anti-air defenses, and electronic warfare systems to support the “government.” Further, Turkey haas shipped in thousands of Syrian jihadi-types to provide the ground forces to fight against the force led by warlord Khalifa Haftar, who is trying to overthrow the UN-recognized government.

This has led to a confrontation between French and Turkish ships off the Libyan coast. Turkey has demanded an apology, and Macron trumpeted a call with Trump during which Libya was discussed–a clear indication to Turkey that the US was leaning towards France and against Turkey.

To make things even more complicated, Egypt supports Haftar and is threatening to intervene with its ground forces to combat the Turkish-supported troops. Turkey has made stern warnings to Egypt to stay on its side of the border.

To make things even more complicated, Russia is Haftar’s biggest backer. Russian mercenaries operate there. So in Libya Erdoğan is risking conflict with Russia, France (and hence the rest of the EU–yeah, I know), and Egypt.

The correlation of forces here is definitely not in Turkey’s favor, especially if Egypt intervenes on the ground. Egypt shares a border with Libya, and as the Desert Campaigns of 1940-41 showed, an armored force can race across Libya and achieve operational dominance. Egypt’s logistics would also be relatively simple, and it would be operating well within range of its air forces. Turkey, on the other hand, has no direct land route to Libya, and would have to reinforce and supply by sea. If shit gets real, it is highly doubtful that such a supply line would be sustainable. It would certainly be highly vulnerable to attack from air and sea.

Turkey has some submarines, some frigates (including some old US Perry Class ships) and corvettes, and some small landing craft. Egypt’s forces are comparable, with the big difference being the French-built (originally for Russia) Mistral assault ship, for which Turkey has no counterpart.

So Turkey would be in a very weak position if it indeed attempted to challenge an Egyptian incursion.

Libya is not the only country where Turkey and Russia are at loggerheads. They are also on opposite sides in Syria, and Russian-supported forces have killed well over 100 Turks. There is an uneasy coexistence between Russian and Turkey in Syria, nothing more.

But there’s more! The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan (which has been going on since 1988 or thereabouts) is heating up again. Armenia is close to Russia, but Erdo is rallying behind Azerbaijan.

It’s not surprising, then, that Russian helicopters flew along the Turkish border soon after the initial Armenian-Azeri clash in mid-June, and Turkey’s condemnation of Armenia for that fighting.

Erdoğan also has a very strained, and strange, relationship with the US generally, and Donald Trump in particular. Given Trump’s mercurial nature, Erdoğan would be a fool to expect Trump to pull his irons out of the fire in a Turkish dust up with Russia. Or France. Or Greece. Or Egypt.

The Turkish economy is also in a parlous state, meaning that the country is extremely vulnerable to economic pressure. The lira has depreciated badly in recent years, is near all time lows against the dollar, and could easily tip–or be tipped-off a cliff. Turks of a certain age remember the extreme privations that followed US sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Younger generations don’t have that experience, and have (at least in the big cities) attained a degree of affluence that could be gone in a trice. It is an open question whether they would, in a fit of nationalist pride, forgive Erdoğan for that.

Erdoğan also outraged much of the Christian world with his conversion (on extremely dubious legal grounds) of the venerated Aya Sophia/Hagia Sofia from a museum (established by Ataturk) back to a mosque.

Erdoğan’s political situation is shaky–which may be why he is engaged in so much adventurism. He lost the big cities–Istanbul and Ankara notably–to the opposition CHP. He still has very strong support in the Anatolian heartland, especially among devout Muslims there (and in the cities as well). But the country is divided and Erdoğan has a lot of domestic enemies, and is making more by the day.

In sum, Erdoğan has picked a fight with pretty much everyone with a stake in the eastern Mediterranean. Why he’s doing so is not completely clear. In part, it’s delusions of grandeur: he envisions himself as the emerging dominant power in that region. But he can be so only at the sufferance of the US and Russia in particular. He is appealing to a highly chauvinistic populace–Turks are arguably the most chauvinistic nation in the world–in order to bolster his political situation.

But strategically his actions appear to be incredibly foolhardy and shortsighted. It is hard to see the upside, especially in Syria and Libya. The downsides are huge. He must be counting that the big boys in the neighborhood are willing to put up with his bumptiousness. But if he’s wrong, Turkey will be in a world of hurt.

He needs to be most careful about the Russians. After Turkey shot down a Russian jet over Syria, the furious Russian reaction forced Erdoğan to back down. Now he is risking confrontation with them not only in Syria, but in Libya and Armenia/Azerbaijan. With Putin too perhaps needing a wag the dog moment again (given the uninspiring results of his constitutional referendum, growing discontent as illustrated by open protests in the east, and chronic economic difficulties), Erdoğan could be made to order.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Erdoğan is rushing in where angels avoid, and doing so very likely because he is a fool.

I regret to have forgotten an episode during Lincoln’s visit to Richmond in the immediate aftermath of the Confederate capital’s fall in April, 1865. It provides the backstory for the Emancipation Memorial which points out yet again that those who call for the Memorial’s destruction or removal are ignorant fools unfit to render judgment on the Memorial, the towering historical figure it depicts, or the events that it memorializes.

Specifically, on 4 April, 1865, a group of freed slaves, shouting “Glory Hallelujah!” mobbed Lincoln when he disembarked from the USS Malvern and strode the streets of the captured capital, still smoking from the fires set by the retreating Confederates the day before. Several of them knelt before him, some trying to kiss his feet, or the cuff of his pants. Lincoln replied:

“Don’t kneel to me.  You must kneel to God only and thank Him for your liberty.”*

That is is the scene depicted in the Memorial. A slave rising at Lincoln’s injunction not to kneel before him, or any man.

Thus, the Memorial does not symbolize subjugation of black people before the benevolent white father, as the iconoclasts claim. It depicts the exact opposite.

The Memorial therefore does what good public art should do–dramatize an historical event or personage (or, in this case, both) to make a powerful statement about time and place. And in this case, the statement is about liberation and the ending of a great historical “scourge,” which continued “until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

It is an event that black artists of an earlier generation thought worthy of commemoration. In 1963, at the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the State of Illinois commissioned black artist Gus Nall to create a commemorative painting. What did he paint? Not anything related directly to the Proclamation itself: he painted the meeting between the freed slaves and Lincoln on the streets of Richmond, 98 years before, not 100. This was not a moment of humiliation. It was a moment at which a promise was realized, and at which the promisor disclaimed fealty, rather than demanded it.

About these events, and the direct connection between them and the statue in Washington, the iconoclasts are both ignorant and apathetic–they don’t know, and they don’t care. Yet they are swollen with self-righteous belief in their unerring and forever unchallengeable judgment. In their relentless narcissistic presentism they denigrate not just Lincoln, but newly freed people of color. They think they know everything, and can judge everything and everyone, but they know nothing and are fit to judge nothing and no one.

Lincoln’s words, “with malice towards none, with charity towards all” fall on uncomprehending ears today. What we witness today is people seething with malice towards people and events for whom and about which they not have the slightest understanding, nor the smallest speck of human charity. They deserve no respect, and their demands deserve only scorn and rebuke. The nation should not kneel before this mob. I for one will not.

*The NYT described this event on its sesquicentennial in its “Disunion” series that recounted the events of the Civil War day by day. Will they ever do so in an uncritical (let alone laudatory) way in the future? I seriously doubt it.