Streetwise Professor

Post-911, the idea of the “Anglosphere” gained some traction. The English speaking nations, the UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, were held out as the last bulwarks of liberty in the world.

This idea has not aged well. In the Age of Covid, the Anglosphere is now the cutting edge of repression and fascism and active hostility to the ideals of individual freedom that were allegedly its hallmark.

Look at them.

Australia: entire states are locked down–hard–in response to single digit “case” numbers. People who protest are set upon by truncheon and club wielding police.

Canada: adopting a panoply of highly restrictive policies and restrictions on free speech.

New Zealand: locked down hard for months. And recently, the Skeletor-resembling PM instructed the proles that the government was the “sole source of truth.” Oh thank you so much Big Sister! Governments have been so so so omniscient in the past 20 months!

UK. Locked down until just recently. The “Freedom Day” (19 July) is a simulacrum of real freedom because numerous restrictions remain, and even that has freaked out the establishment, including most notably the Orwellian-named “SAGE.” Even though case numbers have declined since the lockdown was eased, SAGE is issuing dire warnings. No doubt because they have been wrong so often that they need to cover their sorry asses by keeping up the scare.

US. There are some bright spots, including Florida and Texas, but the “elite” is panting to reimpose mask mandates (to make us pant) and forced vaccination and lockdowns because Delta variant. Or something.

I’m not anti-vax. I’m vaccinated. But the externality argument is so abused. The costs and benefits of vaccination are almost completely internalized.

(Although ironically I bet dimes to donuts that Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels (a neighbor for several years) would love to mandate vaccines.)

Australia is particularly sad, and almost inexplicable to me. It used to be a bad ass, fuck-it-all kind of place. A similar ethos to Texas. But not now. Incredibly authoritarian, with a largely craven and submissive populace. Crocodile Dundee? Watching that is like Charlton Heston finding an almost completely buried Statue of Liberty. A relic of a dead era.

Continental Europe–the supposed antithesis of the Anglosphere–has actually demonstrated more of the spirit of liberty than any English-speaking country. Check out today’s protests in Paris.

Large crowd in Paris against the
*#HEALTHPASS*#PassSanitaire. #NoAuPassSanitaire pic.twitter.com/VnmVkX3Fa0

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) July 24, 2021

A la Bastille! (And note that in Louis XVI fashion, Macron is doubling down. I hope the past is prophecy.)

No. The vaunted Anglosphere has proved to be ruled by authoritarians and populated by submissive and insanely risk averse cattle. It would be wrong to say that the ideal of freedom is dead. It is more accurate to say that the ideal of freedom is reviled, at least by the elites–and far too many of the non-elite have proved to be ovine in their submissiveness to their soi disant (but not really) betters.

Speaking of things that did not age well. This from a decade ago is a (sick) laugh:

I do not mean that English speakers act any less extravagantly than speakers of other tongues, but rather that English generally acts to tether thought to the empirical world. This is something Bishop Thomas Sprat dilated on in his History of the Royal Society (1667): “The general constitution of the minds of the English,” he wrote, embraces frankness and simplicity of diction, “the middle qualities, between the reserv’d subtle southern, and the rough unhewn Northern people.”

English, Bishop Sprat thought, is conspicuously the friend of empirical truth. It is also conspicuously the friend of liberty. 

If there is one thing that is conspicuous about the events of the past 19 months it is that for all of the strident commands to “follow the science!” public policy has been completely untethered from “the empirical world.” Instead, an arrogant priesthood has imposed a cultish, unscientific, evidence-free orthodoxy and branded as heresy any skepticism–even after the skeptics have been proved right time and again. Empirical reality is not just ignored–it is anathematized.

Perhaps you can explain the collapse of the Anglosphere to its infection by Continental ideas (Derrida, Foucault, etc.). But that is merely by way of a post mortem. The fact is that practically speaking, the Anglosphere is as dead as Hector. Perhaps “palimpsests of freedom” (to use Paul Johnson’s chapter title from Modern Times) still exist in the English speaking world, but they are under siege and definitely not in command. Enemies of freedom–the antitheses of traditional “English liberties”–are in the saddle and wielding the whip.

The Babylon Bee, as usual, nails the idiocy and absurdity of the FBI:

Based On LEGO Evidence, FBI Believes Capitol Rioter Was Also Planning Attack On Hogwarts Castle https://t.co/J4hhl9EN1d

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 7, 2021

This refers, of course, to the FBI’s and DOJ’s weighty pronouncement that one of the 1/6 arrestees was in possession of–wait for it!–an assembled Lego model of the Capitol. Except it wasn’t actually assembled. It was still in the box. But still! Obviously he was planning dastardly deeds with Legos! It’s amazing the Republic survived. Thank God the FBI is there to protect us!

The FBI has of course been going all out to apprehend the trespassers, gapers, gawkers, and other assorted invaders of the Capitol. They announced with pride some weeks back that they had made 535 arrests. (Gee. Why that number?) (And none for sedition. Why is that, if this was a greater threat to “our democracy”–which it ain’t–than the Army of Northern Virginia?)

But of course the FBI had advanced warning. So why didn’t they stop it?

Why do I say that they had advanced warning? Because I guarantee that every remotely open access organization or ad hoc grouping is penetrated by the FBI. FFS, the FBI has surveilled the “Concerned Women of America,” as if it’s the ISIS Women’s Auxiliary. What next? Red state sewing circles?

A necessary–but not sufficient–condition to prevent being infiltrated by the FBI is a classic cell structure. But take-all-comers groups like Proud Boys or Oath Keepers or Concerned Women of America or a bunch of idiots bragging on Twitter will attract FBI agents and/or assets like a dog attracts fleas.

Oh. And not joining any organization won’t help. The FBI is also deeply concerned about “lone wolf” white extremists. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. (I’m sure I’m already damned, so this post won’t make any difference.)

So was the FB I complicit in 1/6, or just incompetent in not stopping it?

One cannot rule out the latter. After all, the FBI had advanced warnings about the Pulse nightclub shooter, the Parkland HS shooter, the Fort Hood shooter, and the San Bernardino shooters. Yet they all blazed away unmolested by our vigilant Federal dicks. (I also wonder about the Las Vegas shooter, whom the FBI cannot even figure out ex post. Or supposedly can’t. Maybe their ex post befuddlement is an attempt to conceal ex ante knowledge.)

Although I do not rule out incompetence, I lean towards complicity. Why? This sick-making statement by the current FBI Douchenozzle*, Christopher Wray:

FBI Dir. Wray: ‘Any time there’s an attack, our standard at the FBI is we aim to bat 1.000 … you can be darn tootin’ that we are focused very, very hard on how can we get better sources, better information, better analysis’ pic.twitter.com/2TaVd1oflN

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) March 2, 2021

“Darn tootin'”? Are you effing kidding me? “Golly gee willikers Mr. G-man! I’m sure glad we have you to protect us!” “Aw shucks, Jimmy. Just doin’ my job.”

That performance was so transparently phony that Wray would have earned an F in any community college acting class. But our “elite” eats it up.

And that’s the point, exactly. The FBI operates as the elite’s political police. Not the president’s–as demonstrated by its concerted campaign to get Trump. The elite’s/oligarchy’s/ruling class’/administrative state’s political police.

(The FBI also shanked Nixon, BTW. Cf. Mark Felt.)

What is the FBI good at? Setting up mouth breathers to commit crimes, whom it can then arrest and then claim with great fanfare to have protected us from. If you look at most of the high profile terrorism cases the FBI prosecuted post-911, they were low-IQ losers cajoled by FBI informants (operating, of course, at the direction or at least strong suggestion of FBI agents) into committing crimes.

Most recently, the hair-on-fire claims about the allegedly dastardly plot to assassinate Wretched Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, appear to be less than a real threat than another prêt-à-porter FBI setup, with 12–12!–FBI informants/provocateurs outnumbering the actual dim bulb alleged conspirators.

But this is just one part of the bill of particulars against the FBI. It has also proved shockingly inept (to give it the benefit of the doubt) or complicit in some horrible crimes.

For example, in addition to the terrorism fails mentioned above, it let serial sex offender Larry Nasser operate with impunity for years. Its response to the revelations by the DOJ IG? Not even a “whoops, my bad.” It had copious information on Jeffrey Epstein whom it also allowed to continue his romps for years. (Given Bill Clinton’s and others’ involvement with Epstein, this may have been part of its political police function.) And just recently, FBI agent David Harris was arrested by Louisiana authorities–n.b. state authorities, not the FBI itself–for a sickening trail of child sexual abuse.

Again, in each case: incompetent, or complicit?

In the Nasser case (and others) an FBI agent lied when being questioned. If you or I lie when the FBI questions us–hard Federal time. They lie? No biggie!

Some on the right have called for the “reform” of the FBI. Spare me your naivete. The FBI is unreformable because of its deep internal rot, and the fact that anyone who would be in a position to “reform” it no doubt quakes in terror at the prospect of FBI blackmail or slanderous leaks. (Cf. MLK.)

No. The only peace we could obtain from the FBI is a Carthaginian one. But there’s no Cato or Scipio in sight.

*Four years ago I referred to James Comey as a douchenozzle, for which I apologized profusely, for having insulted douchenozzles. But “Douchenozzle” is clearly a much more descriptive title than “Director.”

Vladimir Putin penned–or at least posted–a long disquisition about how Russia and Ukraine really, really, really belong together. They are meant for each other. They are one soul ripped apart in a great historical injustice.

The most charitable way I could characterize it is that it reminds me of Pepe LePew (Putin LePew?) trying to sweet talk a reluctant female feline into falling for his historical charms. But that would trivialize what is really a weird and creepy and threatening missive. More Travis Bickle than Pepe LePew.

Putin portrays Russia and Ukraine as being spiritually connected and wrongly separated by malign Western actors (the Lithuanians, Poles, and Austrians at one time, the EU and US today), and misguided Bolsheviks who dismembered Holy Russia. Thus, they belong together. They need to be together. They are a single soul separated by cruel fate, who need to be reunited. And Putin is just the man for the mission.

But this begs the question: why don’t Ukrainians feel the same way? If the historical and spiritual ties are so deep, so mystical, why aren’t most Ukrainians equally desperate to be reunited with their Russian soulmate?

Putin’s answer, such as it is, is that malign forces–again Western–are conspiring to keep them apart. They have bewitched Ukrainians, or somehow fascistically intimidated them (which seems like a clear case of projection). Moreover, the underlying Western purpose of separating Ukraine from its spiritual kin is to attack Russia itself. And thus, Russia is justified in using force to unite Ukraine and Russia–it is an act of self-defense!

Yes, Putin and Travis Bickle have a lot in common. The paranoia and obsessions and delusions in particular. Except Travis only had Smith & Wessons and Walthers, not tanks, Buks, and nukes.

Putin goes on and on about how history, over a thousand years of it, means that Ukraine and Russia are destined to be as one. This argument is apparently quite persuasive to him, but not to most Ukrainians. Nor is anyone else in the world likely to be persuaded. Such historical arguments–especially ones stretching back to well before the First Millennium–are almost never persuasive or even plausible to those not steeped in that history. What seems self-evident to Putin seems bizarre to anyone who does not already believe in the Third Rome view of history. And especially so to anyone who views Russia as a historically predatory, imperial power.

Which would include Poland. Yes, Poland attempted to exploit Russian (Muscovite, actually) weakness during the Time of Troubles, but examining the sweep of history one must conclude that Poland has been far more the victim of Russia than the victimizer thereof.

Poland comes in for much criticism from Putin, but look at the benign way that he characterizes Russian connivance at the dismemberment of Poland:

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire regained the western Old Russian lands, with the exception of Galicia and Transcarpathia, which became part of the Austrian – and later Austro-Hungarian – Empire.

The partitions just happened, I guess. And for someone who emphasizes the importance of language and religion, it is striking how Putin somehow happens to overlook that the partitions brought in Polish-speaking Catholics into the Russian Empire when it “regained the western Old Russian lands.” I would love to hear historian Putin’s explanation of say the January 1863 insurrection in the Polish parts of “Old Russian lands.” Somehow he left that out. Huh.

Indeed, reading this, I would say that not only Ukrainians should be put on notice as to Putin’s ill intent: Poles should be as well.

Another example of Putin’s selective history:

I would like to dwell on the destiny of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Czechoslovakia following the breakup of Austria-Hungary. Rusins made up a considerable share of local population. While this is hardly mentioned any longer, after the liberation of Transcarpathia by Soviet troops the congress of the Orthodox population of the region voted for the inclusion of Carpathian Ruthenia in the RSFSR or, as a separate Carpathian republic, in the USSR proper. Yet the choice of people was ignored. In summer 1945, the historical act of the reunification of Carpathian Ukraine ”with its ancient motherland, Ukraine“ – as The Pravda newspaper put it – was announced.

Yes, elections held in the presence of Soviet tanks and bayonets and NKVD executioners are clearly an expression of the will of the people.

And if we want to go all historical, it is also sickly amusing that Putin’s tract was published 550 years to the month after Muscovy won a decisive victory that culminated it its subjugation of Novgorod the Great, which sort of harshes the entire image of the deep fraternal, linguistic, historical, and spiritual bonds between Russian peoples.

The question is whether Putin intends to reprise Ivan III, this time in Ukraine. The threatening tone surely suggests this. He gives the impression of trying to persuade Ukraine to embrace Russia willingly. But he is abundantly clear that should his advance be rejected, it is due to the fact that the country is ruled by local stooges of malign Western powers who threaten Russia, hence reunification may only be accomplished by force, which is (according to him) fully justified and which he is willing to use.

Empty threat or real? It would be unwise to discount it. Operationally and logistically, it would be difficult, and would likely result in a stalemate and vicious guerrilla warfare (as occurred in the aftermath of World War I during the Russian Civil War, and in the aftermath of WWII) that could well stop any Russian drive well before it reached Kiev/Kyiv. It would sharply increase tensions between Russia and the West, far more than the Crimean anschluss did. Poland and the Baltics–Nato members–would clearly consider such an invasion a mortal threat. This sharply raises the odds of a Russia-Nato confrontation.

But despite these obstacles and risks, Putin is clearly obsessed with Ukraine. He has been throughout his presidency. He clearly views the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan as devastating personal defeats. Megalomania and the knowledge that he is aging and thus doesn’t have long to achieve what he believes to be a historical mission may push him to act, sooner rather than later.

Ukraine is hard to love. It is the most Sovok of the Soviet successor states–a painful illustration of how decades of Soviet oppression wreaked havoc on psyches and institutions. Some of Putin’s criticisms of it have more than a grain of truth. But that does not mean that it should be consigned to Putin’s tender mercies. Especially since there is no guarantee that Putin’s pining for Russian lands will stop in Ukraine.

The situation is fraught. A man obsessed with a messianic mission, be he Travis Bickle or Vladimir Putin, is not easily deterred.

A few posts back I said that the America Founding is a political Rorschach test. Yesterday–4 July 2021–proved that beyond cavil: the haters were out in force. The NYT claimed that flying the American flag is divisive–reading between the lines, what they meant was only knuckle dragging right wingers do it. NPR–your tax dollars at woke!–makes the banal point that people were not equal under the law–some were indeed enslaved–at the time that Jefferson penned “all men are created equal.” It adds that the Declaration includes a racist slur–“Indian Savages.” (I guess I will have to take a sledgehammer to may GGGGGF’s tombstone, which reads: “Here Lies the Body of ABEL SHERMAN Who Fell By The Hand of the Savage,” said Abel being ambushed and scalped by Silverheels on 15 August, 1794.)

The likes of NPR were joined by some of our illustrious solons, including Rep. Cori Bush:

When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.

This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) July 4, 2021

(Pssst. Cori. You’re living on stolen land! Please move!)

And Maxine Waters:

July 4th… & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. Equal to what? What men? Only white men? Isn't it something that they wrote this in 1776 when African Americans were enslaved? They weren't thinking about us then, but we're thinking about us now!

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) July 4, 2021

As I said before, this point is so banal. FFS, people (including especially the British) were pointing this out about, oh I dunno, 5 July, 1776.

But it completely misses the truly subversive effect of the Declaration. Accepting it as a statement of founding principle made the reality of slavery untenable. These things could not coexist. The logical tension was too great–one would have to give way. In the end, slavery did. Not easily, but it did.

This was a point Lincoln pounded on in speech after speech, starting from the Lyceum address in 1838, and especially in his debates with Douglas in 1858. If you believe in the Declaration, you must believe slavery is wrong. You cannot have both. Pick one.

That is, the Declaration started two revolutions, one immediate, against the British, and one that took generations to ripen, culminating in the Civil War four score and five years after the first. The very contradiction between ideal and reality that so exercises midwits (feeling generous today) like Bush and Waters and NPR sparked a dialectic that culminated in emancipation. (Leaving, of course, other contradictions, meaning that the dialectic continues to operate.)

The language of the Declaration–“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”–reveals plainly its natural rights roots. And this is another thing that drives leftists mad–although they are more circumspect in criticizing this aspect of it. The modern left in particular finds natural rights an anathema. (Not all conservatives embrace natural rights, but the modern left loathes the idea.)

Those of you who are old enough might remember Joe Biden’s weird questioning of Clarence Thomas about natural rights at the latter’s confirmation hearing, back when Joe was a compos mentis Senator idiot rather than a non compos mentis President idiot (not feeling that generous). To Biden and his ilk, the idea that rights exist independently of the government is dangerous crazy talk.

Relatedly, the Declaration is subversive because it asserts that the people have the right to revolt against a government that deprives them of their natural rights. It’s that subversive thinking that leads Joe to threaten nuking anyone who dares act upon it.

Lincoln’s treatment of the Declaration–which he venerated, over the Constitution, in fact–represents a far more sophisticated and lucid approach than the simplistic screeds of the NPRs, the Cori Bushes, and the Maxine Waters of the world. (I could expand that list greatly.) Lincoln venerated the principles the Declaration espoused, and dedicated his life to making those principles reality–and eventually gave his life in the attempt. The haters can’t get past the fact that the principles weren’t the reality instantaneously. And many of the haters don’t actually venerate the real principles–the natural rights principles–of the Declaration. In fact, they loathe them.

And that’s the nub of the real division in America today. The Declaration, though a statement of universal principles, is not universally embraced. Not just because the principles were not reality in 1776. But because some venerate the Declaration’s principles of liberty and natural rights–including the right to resist a tyrannical government–and some don’t. What’s happened progressively over the years (pun not intended) is that the ranks of the don’ts have swelled, and the ranks of the dos have thinned. The Fourth of July has therefore become a national Rorschach test that reveals the shift in that balance.

In his swan song at Glencore, the soon to retire Ivan Glasenberg doubled down on coal:

In what’s likely to be the final deal announced by outgoing Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore agreed to buy stakes owned by BHP Group and Anglo American Plc in the Cerrejon thermal coal mine for about $588 million, subject to purchase price adjustments.

Glencore is filling a void left by two mining giants:

The sale completes Anglo’s retreat from thermal coal and extends similar efforts by BHP, amid investor pressure. However, Glencore has committed to run its coal mines for another 30 years, potentially allowing it to profit as rivals retreat. It’s already the biggest shipper of the fuel, and gaining full control of Cerrejon gives the company even more exposure just as prices trade at the highest level in years, buoyed by strong demand as the global economy rebounds.

In my opinion, this is a very canny contrarian bet. The panicked flight from coal by the Anglos and BHPs and others of the world is directly attributable to political and policy pressure. Hydrocarbons bad. Renewables good. Hydrocarbon companies are evil. You will be punished you carbon spewing bastards! Your CEOs will be snubbed by righteous people. Oh Noes!

But these policies are predicated on a collective delusion about renewables. Bloomberg can preach all it wants about how renewables are as efficient as conventional generation, but the fact is and will remain that dispatchable, reliable, continuous conventional generation, producing power from cheaply stored chemical energy, will remain much cheaper that non-dispatchable, intermittent, unreliable renewables that will have to rely on expensive battery storage. Bloomberg’s “levelized cost” metric is total bullshit because it leaves out all of the costs associated with reliability, transmission, and intermittency–details, details!

Renewables will never be able to handle current electricity demand at reasonable cost, but policymakers in the grip of the delusion are adding to electricity demand by forcing the electrification of other energy consumption, including transportation and home heating and cooking.

And it is almost certain that Glasenberg recognizes these delusions for what they are, and knows that in five to ten years time reality will rear its ugly head–recognition of reality can be postponed, but not forever. And Glasenberg recognizes when that reckoning comes, and electricity costs spike and reliability plunges, countries around the world will come begging for dependable electricity sources. And thus, they will come begging to Glencore for its coal.

The payoff will be all the bigger because Anglo, BHP, and others will not invest, leaving a capacity void. Price will rise to ration the limited supply.

Current government energy policies around the world are not time consistent. Political coercion to achieve a utopian outcome will result in more costly and less reliable energy that will not be politically sustainable. Ivan Glasenberg recognizes that time inconsistency, and as his parting gift to Glencore’s shareholders–and the world, frankly, when it comes to his senses–is an investment that will pay off handsomely when reality intrudes on renewables reveries.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, apparently studied Medieval fortification quite closely, as he implemented a classic motte-and-bailey stratagem in defense of the military’s program of Critical Race Theory indoctrination.

Expressing outrage, Milley dishonestly replied to Republican questioning about CRT thus:

I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military general officers, our commissioned [and] noncommissioned officers, of being “woke” or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.

Why do I say dishonest? For an ambitious officer rising through the ranks during the Cold War, or shortly thereafter, studying Lenin, Marx, and Mao was a way to “know thine enemies.” To know how they thought. To know what motivated them. That is valuable knowledge in trying to counter them. Reading communists provides part of a good foundation for devising strategies to confound communists. As the movie Patton said while watching the Germans retreat at the Battle of El Gattar: “”Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book.” 

Mandatory indoctrination in CRT at the academies, and in the ranks and officer corps, is nothing of the sort. It is not about educating servicemen and -women about a foreign enemy to be able to defeat them. It is about coercively reshaping the minds and hearts of those who have volunteered for armed service to force them to pay obeisance to beliefs most of them find inimical. Indeed, puts an official imprimatur on the view that the majority of those who serve are irredeemably racist, and in need of reeducation of the type that Marx, Mao, and Lenin enthusiastically advocated. (No word on whether Milley also studied Pol Pot.)

No, Milley didn’t read Marx to become a Marxist. He read Marx to understand Marxists to fight them better. By forcing CRT on the armed forces, he and others in the military establishment, e.g., CNO Admiral Gilday, are waging war on the values, beliefs, and characters of a large majority of those whom they command.

Put differently: you read Marx et al to learn about the enemy; you force Americans who have volunteered for military service to read Ibrahim X. Kendri (aka Ibram Henry Rogers) et al because you believe they (the American volunteers) are the enemy.

And Milley said so, in not so many words:

I want to understand white rage, and I’m white. So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it.

Kendri and his CRT ilk identify white people and “whiteness” as the enemy. If you are reading Kendri to understand white people, and their alleged rage, you are doing so because you have already bought into the idea that they are the enemy.

And about this “white rage” thing. Is it really a thing? I don’t think so. It is basically a standard epithet that leftists drag out when their political opponents don’t conform like good sheep. My first recollection of a variant on this is when Peter Jennings said that voters had thrown a “temper tantrum” when they voted out the Democrats from control of Congress in 1994. The real rage here is expressed by leftists (ironically, largely white) who cannot countenance opposition: the charge is just another example of psychological projection. “Mommy! No Fair!!! Johnny hit me back!!!!”

And it’s interesting that when it comes from the left, rage is considered a sign of authenticity, of righteous reaction to injustice. (“Days of Rage” in Chicago in 1968 was a label the leftists chose, not one that was applied to them.) This is particularly true of “black rage.”

So apparently the virtuousness (or not) of rage is politically situational and ideologically contingent. Go figure.

Another element of the motte-and-bailey strategy regarding CRT in the military is to claim that there are racial tensions in the military, and that such tensions degrade morale and military effectiveness. Therefore, proactive measures to improve racial understanding are imperative.

Well, there are such tensions, and not for the first time. I guarantee things were infinitely worse in the late-Vietnam and early-post-Vietnam era. The Navy had severe racial problems: that’s one of the biggest challenges Elmo Zumwalt faced as CNO: as I recall there is a chapter in his autobiography where he discusses his struggles to deal with racial conflict in the service in detail. Things had come a long way a short handful of years later when I was at USNA: they have improved substantially in the decades since.

But CRT indoctrination will not ameliorate racial tensions–it will exacerbate them, and substantiallynso. Tell me how, exactly, preaching that one skin color is inherently evil and oppressive, and other skin colors are inherently saintly and oppressed is going to promote a sense of camaraderie among a racially diverse group of individuals. It does the exact opposite. R. Lee Ermey’s way was much more effective.

The motte-and-bailey response to criticism of CRT is not limited to Milley and the military. It is particularly pronounced in public schools, where it is (dishonestly) argued that preventing teaching CRT prevents teaching about slavery: as MSNBC’s Joy Reid put it, if you don’t teach Critical Race Theory you are teaching Confederate Race Theory. This is obviously illogical bollocks: CRT emphasizes the evils of slavery, but not all curriculum that deals honestly with slavery is CRT. Another motte is to deny that such a thing as Critical Race Theory even exists: it’s just a figment of fervid (raging?) right wing/white wing imaginations dontcha know.

Wrong. CRT is a thing. It is a dishonest, pseudoscientific, divisive, coercive thing, and essentially a mask for the will to power. Cancerous Race Theory is a more accurate description. And it is now a cancer in the military.

One last thing about Milley. The left is in a rage (more irony!) about criticism of Milley’s remarks before Congress. Tucker Carlson’s trenchant description of the general (“He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid!”) has brought down howls demanding his cancelation (yes, it was a day ending in “y”).

Leftists defending the military “leadership.” The world turned upside down. But this isn’t because the leftists have changed: it’s because the military “leadership” has become leftist. It will become only more so in the next three and a half years as the purges work through the ranks. The military was once the sole institution the leftists hadn’t marched through: but now they’re doing so, like Sherman marched through Georgia.

Virtually everyone in the Founding generation had one fear: Tyranny. They did not want to replace one tyrannical government with another. On this Federalists and Anti-Federalists agreed. The difference was that the Federalists believed that the Constitution had adequate safeguards against tyranny, but the Anti-Federalists did not.

One manifestation of the dread of tyranny was a deep suspicion of standing armies, which were viewed as the enforcers of tyranny. Another was a veneration of an armed citizenry, not least because it was a check on tyranny, via the threat of armed resistance. Indeed, these two things went together: a large standing army could overawe even a well-armed citizenry.

Yesterday Gibbering Joe Biden expressed the sum of all the Founders’ fears:

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1407809806287704064

In other words, the armed citizenry is powerless against America’s massive standing military. Meaning that there is no check on tyranny. To which the Anti-Federalists would say: told you so.

Biden’s remarks, delivered in a drugged out way that wouldn’t be shocking if Hunter Biden had uttered them but is still disconcerting when Joe does, were revealing on many dimensions.

One of these–remarked upon by many–is his apparent willingness to use, or at least to threaten to use, nuclear weapons on Americans. Rather staggering, no?

Another is his apparent belief that F-15 pilots, and other members of the US military, would be willing to carry out orders to use massive force against Americans. I wouldn’t be so sure. Although an intent to ensure it may well explain the ideological offensive being waged against alleged “extremists” within the military at present.

Another, sickly ironic one, is the complete disconnect between this rhetoric and the rhetoric regarding January 6. The Babylon Bee says it better than I could:

'You'll Never Beat The Government With Just Guns,' Says Party That Also Believes Government Was Almost Toppled By Unarmed Mob On January 6https://t.co/NX4eJCfVe3

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 23, 2021

No, really, it is just too much. On the one hand, Biden and the Democrats say that armed resistance against the government is futile, but on the other hand, they say that unarmed resistance by a motley group at the Capitol was the greatest assault on American democracy since Pearl Harbor, and amounted to an insurrection that threatened “our democracy,” i.e., to overthrow the government.

Pick one. They both can’t be true.

There is a broader lesson here. The Founders and their 18th century vision–including their fear of state tyranny, their desire to center as much government as possible at the lowest level possible, and their belief that a revolutionary public is the last check against tyranny–is a 21st century Rorschach Test. A large number of Americans embrace it fervently. A large number of Americans loathe it. Indeed, that divide is a succinct way of summarizing the current American political fault line.

Clearly, most of the ruling class and the “elite” fall in the loathers camp. Most of the embracers are non-ruling-class “deplorables” whom the elite despises and wants to crush.

The ruling class and the “elite” sacralize the state, and especially the federal government. Unlike the Founders, who saw government as a necessary evil to be constrained, limited, and checked by a watchful–and if need be, revolutionary–citizenry, the ruling class and the “elite” have effectively adopted Mussolini’s credo: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

And this is understandable, because l’etat, c’est eux. They control the state. They utilize the state to amass power and riches. A threat to the state is a threat to them. And as Biden indicates, they are willing to use all means necessary–including nuclear weapons, apparently–to defend that position.

This elite sacralization of the state is another way in which the US is converging to Putin’s Russia. The only difference–for now–is that Putin and the Russian elite explicitly express their veneration of the state above the people, and explicitly say that the people exist to serve the state. The American ruling class does not say this in so many words. But the idea is implicit in their rhetoric–like Biden’s rhetoric yesterday, and the unceasing rhetoric flogging January 6. More importantly, it is implicit in their deeds.

The 21st century ruling class has rejected the vision of the 18th century ruling class–which happens to be the vision of the 21st century ruled class. That is the real divide in today’s America, and why the country is in a pre-revolutionary condition. The visions of the ruling and the ruled are completely incompatible. That can only end in the submission of one side, or the failure to submit by either culminating in armed conflict.

And if it comes to conflict, the ruling class shouldn’t be so sure that military might is sufficient to prevail. Hasn’t worked magic in Iraq or Afghanistan, has it? Nor did it in Southeast Asia decades ago.

At the end of the Civil War, a great fear in the North was that Southerners would resort to guerrilla warfare. Some Confederates (e.g., Edward Porter Alexander) advocated it but Lee demurred. But if the current house divided does not stand, that’s exactly the kind of conflict that would occur. And although the military might not lose such a war (assuming it agrees to fight it), it has never proved able to win one.

Pray that it doesn’t come to that. But such an outcome cannot be precluded, given the ruling class’s sacralization of the state and its corollary: growing tyranny.

I grew up in the 70s. I never did acid then (or ever!), but man am I experiencing flashbacks. Feckless progressive Democrat presidents. (Though Carter, while an idiot, was at least compos mentis, which is more than can be said of Señor Senile Joe Biden.) Crime. (I’m betting on a comeback of the Charles Bronson revenge and Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry genres.) All in all, the 70s sucked, and I am not nostalgically hoping for a reprise–I’m dreading it actually.

One of the things that sucked worst was inflation. The 1970s were the inflation decade (although it peaked in 1980-1981). In recent months, the price level measured by the CPI, PPI, and GDP deflator has been up substantially. CPI, for example, is up about 4.5 percent on a year-on-year basis. This has raised concerns about a return of 70s-style inflation. Are these concerns justified?

The jury is out, but there is reason for concern.

First, it is important to distinguish between one time changes in the price level and inflation. Inflation is a long term upward trend in the price level, rather than a single stair-step jump in the price level.

The impact of the pandemic (or, more accurately, the draconian policy response to the pandemic) has created the conditions for a one-time step up in the price level. The economic recovery from the pandemic is a positive aggregate demand shock. Moreover, it has occurred against the backdrop of constrained supply conditions that resulted from the pandemic. Upward shifts in supply and demand lead to a higher price level, ceteris paribus.

One would think that these are effectively one-time shocks–hopefully the pandemic is a one-time thing, and therefore the recovery from it is too. Furthermore, supply conditions should ease. (We are already seeing that in some sectors, such as lumber, though not in others, such as semiconductors. Policy, namely paying people not to work in some states, may impede the easing of supply conditions). Thus, one would expect that this is one time, and at least partially transitory, jump in the price level rather than inflation qua inflation.

That said, there are reasons for concern. Most notably, the fiscal diarrhea in the US, and the willingness of the Fed to finance (i.e., monetize) that spending is freighted with inflationary potential.

In the post-Financial Crisis era, the Fed mitigated the inflationary impact of QE and other expansive monetary policies by paying interest on reserves. So the inflationary threat that I worried about in 2009 (and asked Ben Bernanke about) never materialized. But that’s no reason for complacency. We dodged a bullet once, but that doesn’t mean we will always do so. Massive deficit spending accommodated by the monetary authority is highly likely to result in inflation, sooner or later. (I am inclined to favor Thomas Sargent’s fiscal theory of the price level.).

Part of the reason that inflation didn’t occur post-2008 was that money velocity plunged. Part of this was due to the Fed paying interest on reserves, which led banks to hold them (lend them to the Fed in effect) rather than lend them to private individuals and firms. But expectations, and the self-fulfilling nature thereof with respect to inflation, likely played a role too. In the gloomy aftermath of 2008 people expected low inflation (or even deflation), which made them more willing to hold rather than spend money balances–which results in low inflation, thereby validating the expectations and perpetuating the equilibrium.

But expectations are fickle things, and as a result there can be multiple equilibria. Fed board members have strenuously argued that the recent spurt in prices is a one-time stair step phenomenon, not the harbinger of inflation. But if the spurt results in an upward shift in inflationary expectations by the hoi polloi, people will be less willing to hold money balances at the existing price level, so they will try to reduce (i.e., spend) them, which leads to inflation–thereby validating the expectations.

Thus, it’s not so much what the Fed believe that matters. It’s about what you and me and other individuals and firms believe. Combine a negative fiscal picture with a surge in prices and it’s quite possible that inflation expectations soon will no longer be “anchored” at low levels, but will surge to higher levels, which would result in inflation no longer being anchored at low levels.

So although I think that the recent surge in the price level is of the one-time variety, that doesn’t mean everyone will think the same way. And if everyone doesn’t think the same way we may see a 70s rerun. The dire fiscal picture contributes to such worries.

When the subject of inflation comes up, as Dr. Commodities I’m often asked whether commodities are a good hedge. Intuitively it makes sense that they should be, but historically, they have not been. Commodity prices are much more volatile than the price level, and not that highly correlated. That is, relative prices move around a lot even when the price level trends upwards.

I think that availability bias is a big reason why people focus on commodity prices–they are readily observable, on a second-by-second basis, because they are actively traded on liquid markets. Other goods and services, not so much. But just because we can see them easily doesn’t mean that they are reliable beacons for the price level overall, or changes therein.

This brings to mind why we should really fear a return of 70s-style inflation (or worse, heaven forfend).

When sitting in (the great) Sherwin Rosen’s Econ 302 course at Chicago on a cold morning in February, 1982, I was startled when Sherwin’s normal rather droning delivery was interrupted by him shouting and pounding his right fist into his left palm: “And that’s the problem with inflation. IT FUCKS UP RELATIVE PRICES!!!!”

Some prices are stickier than others, meaning that inflation pressures can impact some goods and services more and sooner than others–thereby causing changes in relative prices.

This is a bad thing–and why Sherwin dropped the F-bomb about it–because relative prices guide resource allocation. If you fuck up relative prices, as inflation does, you interfere with resource allocation, leading to lower incomes and growth. Inflation has adverse real consequences.

So we should definitely fear an acid flashback to 70s inflation. And although I do not believe the recent surge in prices is a harbinger thereof, I think that there is a material risk that we may all experience such a flashback–even if you didn’t grow up in the 70s.

There has been something of a kerfuffle recently over the large scale purchases of single family homes by the likes of BlackRock and other institutional investors like pension funds. The criticism is somewhat redolent of the Occupy days, because it unites many on the left with some on the populist right, like J.D. Vance:

Blackrock is pursuing an investment strategy that will make it harder for young Americans to own homes. The Left will ignore this, because Blackrock has committed to "racial audits" and other diversity BS. https://t.co/lgtb3xSlO9

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) June 9, 2021

Understanding should come before judgment. So let’s try to figure out what is going on here. I don’t have a definitive answer, but my strong sense is that this phenomenon is ultimately a consequence of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, and the various policy responses to it.

One thing is clear is that the initial foray of institutional investors was a response to the Crisis. And no wonder. Massive amounts of single family homes were in foreclosure, and the biggest fire sale in American real estate history was underway. And in fire sales, those with “dry powder”–cash rich investors relatively undamaged by the crisis that sparks the sales–go bargain hunting. In 2009-2010, the bargains were in residential real estate, especially single family houses. And the “real money” investors like BlackRock and pension funds were best positioned to grab those bargains.

Here it is almost certain that the activities of BlackRock et al did elevate real estate prices. And a good thing, too, for the problem at the time was not that housing prices were too high, but too low. Without bargain hunters (or vultures, if you wish) housing prices would have been even lower, more homeowners would have been underwater, more of them would have been foreclosed, etc. Of course BlackRock et al were not doing this out of charity, but to make a buck. But they were responding to price signals and their actions almost certainly mitigated a horrible situation.

But as the WSJ article linked above notes, institutional investment in the housing sector has persisted after the fire sales ended–especially in places like Houston, Atlanta, and Nashville. This is characterized as a reach for yield strategy on the part of the institutional investors. The yield on rental property is apparently attractive relative to alternative investments. And no surprise: have you looked at bond yields recently? Like in the last 12 years? Is it any wonder that investors like pension funds (especially government funds that are hugely under water) are desperate for assets that generate a stream of cash flows at attractive rates?

But high yield suggests that prices are low in some sense, rather than high. (Price is in the denominator of the return calculation.) “Bubble” real estate markets are characterized by extremely low rental yields, not high ones.

Look at this another way. People are choosing to pay rent, rather than buy and make mortgage payments and forego income on the investment of a down payment amount. Why? Why are they paying rents that generate a high return for the housing owner, rather than buying homes and capturing that return themselves?

My answers will be somewhat speculative, but now the question is the important thing. Many individuals are choosing not to buy, and to pay rent instead. The rents that they are willing to pay are driven by the stream of benefits that they get from living in a single family home. Why don’t they outbid BlackRock or some state pension fund and pay a price that capitalizes that stream of benefits?

Note that there are clear advantages to occupiers owning. The Atlantic article linked earlier discusses the frictions associated with renting. Well, renter-landlord relations have been fraught always and everywhere. Rental contracts are not “complete”–they leave a lot of grey areas that give rise to conflict between owner and renter, and to opportunism by both. Those wasteful activities can be eliminated by having those who live in a home own it. That in and of itself should give individuals a bidding advantage over institutions when buying homes. Cut out the middleman and you cut out the transaction costs inherent in the landlord-tenant relationship.

So then what gives? Now for the speculation, which again revolves around the fallout from the Financial Crisis.

First, the leading diagnosis of the cause of the Financial Crisis was that it was too easy to get a mortgage. In response to this, post-Crisis legislation and regulation tightened up the home financing market. A lot. You can argue that the tightening was justified. You can argue that it went too far. But regardless, restrictions on the ability of individuals to finance a home purchase, or regulations that made it more expensive to do this, shifted the balance away from purchasing towards renting.

Indeed, if the likes of Elizabeth Warren were intellectually consistent (yeah I’m a comedian, I know), they should see the increased presence of Wall Street on Elm Street as a good thing, because it means that their endeavors to prevent another housing “bubble” have worked.

Second, the Financial Crisis took a severe toll on the balance sheets and creditworthiness of many individuals. Although these problems have dissipated, they haven’t disappeared. Combined with the more restrictive access to credit, these creditworthiness/balance sheet effects impede the ability of individuals to capture the high returns of home ownership, and they cannot compete on price with institutional investors who do not face such impediments.

Third–and this is perhaps the most speculative point of all–the Financial Crisis and the follow on Foreclosure Crisis arguably had an impact on the preferences of individuals, especially Millennials and Gen-Zs. Post-Crisis home ownership seemed less like a dream–it had a potential dark side. So many in those cohorts prefer to pay rent and give a high return to institutional investors and deal with the hassles of a landlord rather than buy and face the risk of financial ruin.

Fed policy may also play a role. It clearly has depressed returns on conventional fixed income investments–and has done so by design. That has made institutional investors look at non-traditional investments. But Fed policy alone can’t explain why yields on housing investments apparently haven’t fallen to the level of the low yields on bonds. There must be some other factor impeding the rise of housing prices to reduce the yields that the institutional investors are apparently capturing by buying and renting out single family homes. That brings us back to a search for factors (like those just discussed) that prevent individuals from outbidding institutional investors to capture the stream of returns from housing ownership (and to eliminate the costs that arise when the home occupier is not the owner).

In turn, this means that inquiry into this issue should focus on whether post-Crisis, there are excessive restrictions and costs imposed on individuals looking to finance home purchases. That is, are the post-2008 laws and regulations designed to prevent a recurrence of the housing boom too restrictive?

I don’t have an answer to that question, but again, posing the right question is where you have to start.

My provisional conclusion now is that institutional investors are doing what they do: responding to price signals in order to maximize risk adjusted returns. They are responding to incentives. To evaluate what is going on, it is necessary to evaluate whether those incentives have been distorted by ill-conceived policies.

Of course, these policies were not created in a vacuum. They are the result of a political process that includes lobbying and rent seeking by institutional investors, among others. They have an incentive to harm potential competitors in the housing market. So any inquiry should also focus on whether these institutional investors have helped rig the game against individuals by pressing for the imposition of unwarranted restrictions on home financing. If so, censorious judgment would be warranted.

So is burgeoning institutional ownership of single family housing a 2020s version of Bad Day at Black Rock? A 2020s film noir? I don’t know. But I have the questions and some provisional answers.

The raging debate over the covid lab leak theory reminds me of the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate, with the lab leak theory playing the role of ID and the natural origins theory playing that of Evolution.

There is a huge difference, however. Here we have a strong candidate for the Intelligent Designer: “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, and her team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Madam Shi has both capability and opportunity. She has a long history of engaging in the genetic engineering of viruses, with the specific goal of increasing and evaluating their virulence in humans (“gain of function research”). As her monicker demonstrates, this includes a specialization in modifying viruses found in bats, which even the evolutionists acknowledge is the original source of covid. There is recent evidence that she had (almost certainly uniquely) access to the raw material (bat viruses from a cave 1000+ miles from her lab) that a modern day Dr. Frankenstein could combine with other genetic material to produce covid.

There are reputable scientists who have recently released a paper claiming that covid-19 was created in a lab. I do not have the expertise to evaluate their claims, but I think it is beyond cavil that Shi had the ability to do what they claim.

Against this we have the evolutionists, who at this stage remind me of the South Park Underpants Gnomes:

1. Bats.
2. ????
3. Covid-19!

Or to use an evolutionary metaphor, they have a huge missing link problem. Despite intense efforts, they have yet to identify the intermediate species between bats deep in a cave and humans in Wuhan. They have hypothesized such a link (or links) and asserted that their hypothesis is truth. This is unscientific. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but unless and until the chain of transmission can be demonstrated, the hypothesis remains only that, and the longer we go without identifying the chain the less likely it is that it ever existed.

In stark contrast, the entire possible causal chain in the lab leak hypothesis is known, and extremely plausible, and there is circumstantial evidence that it indeed operated.

Right now, in my opinion the burden of proof is on the Evolutionists. They have far less evidence on their side than the Intelligent Designers.

I of course use the term “Intelligent Design” sarcastically, but not in the way that you might think (to cast aspersions on the lab leak hypothesis, given the low scientific standing of Intelligent Design Theory). No, the sarcasm relates to what Shi (and other scientists around the world) are designing: these are smart people, but how intelligent is it to create deadly pathogens that can escape into the human population–as even defenders of that research acknowledge is a possibility?

And of course, one of those defenders is none other than Dr. Anthony “The Dervish” Fauci. In 2012 he said thus:

In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic? Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?

Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks. It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature, and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky

What are these supposed benefits? Well, the Underpants Gnomes again come to mind: ???

Supposedly the idea is that we can get ahead of nature by creating deadly things that nature might produce through evolution and create cures in advance.

OK. I’ll bite. Name one cure produced by this type of research. Just one.

I have never seen a defender or advocate of this research point to a single example.

And indeed, it seems wildly implausible that this is very likely at all. What are the odds that nature would produce something so similar to what is produced in the lab by Dr. Shi or anybody else that a hypothetical vaccine for the Frankenstein creation would work on the evolved virus? Look at flu vaccines. They are frequently useless because the specific strains of virus they target happen NOT to be the one that crops up in a given year. Vaccines are not like hand grenades or horseshoes. Close is not good enough. A miss is as good as a mile.

Covid vaccines are very specifically targeted. The hysteria over covid variants is due in large part to concern that a vax that works on one variant won’t work well on other, very closely related ones.

But we are to believe that a vaccine (which again, has never been developed in reality) to treat a lab-created virus will be efficacious against another one that evolved independently?

So maybe GOF research creates the most deadly strain of pathogen, could–in theory–give us a defense against that specific or very closely related strains. But what good is that if other really deadly (if not quite so deadly) pathogens evolve, against which the unicorn vax is useless? And what are the odds that the most deadly pathogen would evolve naturally?

That is, how can (in Fauci’s words) you really “get ahead of the threat”? This is an especially valid question for evolutionists (whose ruling model is one of random variation plus natural selection): what are the odds that a threat that is created in the lab will help deal with a threat that evolves by a random process? Gain of Function seems to presume some sort of viral teleology. Which is to say, that nature acts by intelligent design that mirrors what is done in the lab. Human Intelligent Designers can “get ahead of” nature’s Intelligent Designer.

Ironic, eh?

So, GOF basically means create something really deadly that is unlikely to evolve naturally and which is also unlikely to permit developments of vaccines against what evolves naturally. This means that the odds of GOF research producing something that will protect against naturally occurring pathogens is vanishingly small.

But the risk of a lab leak is real, and non-trivial–as historical experience demonstrates and even Fauci acknowledges.

So how is this risk-reward trade-off intelligent?

This whole line of research seems to represent exactly the kind of scientific hubris that Mary Shelly wrote about two centuries ago. The “get ahead of the threat” rhetoric seems like propaganda intended to gull people into accepting Dr. Frankensteins pursuing their hubristic ambitions.

I am open to persuasion, which would have to take the following form. A rigorous calculation of the probability that a given GOF research effort will make it possible to accelerate meaningfully the development of a vaccine or therapy against a naturally evolved pathogen vs. a calculation of the probability that the pathogen created by this given effort will escape the lab.

Until I see such a demonstration, I will conclude that GOF should be banned, and its Dr. Frankenstein practitioners relegated to other, more benign tasks.