CIVILIZATION, LOST.

Derek Thompson asks, "If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?"  My parents were born in the era of Coolidge Prosperity popularly known as the "Roaring Twenties," which perhaps were even better because the likes of William Shirer and George Gershwin thought the times so benighted they lit off for the Continent.  This century has featured what he, with an assist from Sam Peltzman (yes, he of the Peltzman Effect), calls the "Tragic Twenties."

Peltzman’s analysis is not a lonely voice; there is a veritable chorus of gloomy sentiment. This week, the Federal Reserve’s measure of US worker satisfaction fell to its lowest level since the survey began in 2014. One week prior, consumer sentiment had fallen to the lowest level ever recorded in the 70-year history of the University of Michigan economic survey. Once again, the index plunged around 2020 and, like a hiker on the far side of a mountain, continues down step by step. Americans are telling pollsters that they are more depressed about this economy than they were during the depths of the Great Recession or the painful stagflationary years of the 1970s.

His essay continues by suggesting that there's more than a little crying with your mouth full in that response.

But the moral might be more important than the material.

In the last 40 years, Americans have come to expect and prize affordability without even having to think about it. But in the last five years, prices for all sorts of things, including housing, have increased about three times faster than the rate Americans are used to; meanwhile, full employment has put upward pressure on the cost of services. The US public has responded by not only screaming at pollsters about their misery but also by rushing to the polls to vote out every incumbent who failed to do something about the “affordability” crisis of the 2020s. And Americans are not alone.

If civilization advances by expanding the set of things people can do without having to think about it, when that set shrinks, we might be looking at one civilization being lost, or perhaps at the saecular order fracturing.

It’s not just that Americans have lost trust in august, faraway institutions. Their faith in one another has suffered even more dramatic declines. For decades, the General Social Survey has asked Americans the same basic question: “Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?” In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans overwhelmingly agreed that other people are more or less trustworthy. That confidence in strangers has plummeted since 2020, according to Peltzman. The share of respondents who say other people are “fair” has declined by even more than overall happiness.

Those grey swans are circling.

American sadness this decade has been forged by the fact of, and the feeling of, a permanent unrelenting economic crisis, amplified by a uniquely negative news and media environment, and exacerbated by the rise of solitude and the declining centrality of trusted institutions. Inflation has made today’s life harder to afford, while the ambient awareness of other people’s triumphs on social media had made tomorrow’s success feel harder to achieve. The ongoing collapse of confidence in the establishment has made Americans feel unusually adrift and dissatisfied with institutions outside of their control, while the chosen self-isolation of modern life has demolished communal trust, as we increasingly experience other people’s minds through the toxic surreality of our screens rather than through the embodied reality of strangers who are, for the most part, just as nice as we are.

Will that saecular entropy be reversed?  Fourth Turning types say no.  If not, what comes first, ekpyrosis or the return of the twelfth imam, or perhaps Barbarossa's beard winding around the table?

EDUCATION SO INCLUSIVE NOBODY LEARNS ANYTHING.

I'm reusing an old post title and revisiting an old argument.  "I encourage readers to focus on two words: fifth grade. Perhaps, in suggesting that the state universities send the high schools a bill for each credit hour of remedial arithmetic and writing their students racked up, I was not being bold enough."

Conditions have not gotten any better in sixteen years.  Recently, collegians having trouble with 7+2 = x+6, which can be posed as a first grade arithmetic problem by replacing "solve for x" with "fill in the box" came to our attention.  Dear reader, even the house organ for business as usual in higher education was troubled.  "A ‘Steep Decline’ in Students’ Academic Preparation at UC-San Diego Struck a Nerve."

LAKEFRONT LIBERALS' LUXURY BELIEFS.

Our President is contemplating sending National Guard troops to support immigration enforcement efforts in major cities.  It's muddled and authoritarian, according to Matt Bernius at Outside the Beltway.

Separately this week, Trump indicated that he and his team are in the planning process of deploying the National Guard to three cities: Baltimore, Chicago, and New Orleans. The [impetus] (?? — Ed.), according to official comments, was over the issue of crime.

Meanwhile, in those fifteen square miles of privilege surrounded by the Third World, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker has been assuring all and sundry that Chicago is safe and the local authorities can handle it.  John Kass is having none of it.

Hey Gov. Pritzker, if Chicago is so safe why not prance around the West and South Sides at night without your phalanx of  armed bodyguards? You might go it alone. But you wouldn’t dare do that. You expect minority women of low-incomes to take the filthy and dangerous CTA at night to and from work. And to vote Democrat, for you. You must think them to be stupid.

Of course you do. They keep voting Democrat. They’re not stupid. Those women are good people. And they don’t deserve the garbage thrown at them by politicians and the press.

Angry? Yeah, I’m angry, with good reason. Because there is another deadly game going on in America, a political game of Russian Roulette that unfortunately is not so obvious.

And who loses? Not the American political class. But some lose. They lose everything.

This game is played by Democrats seeking to maintain power in the mapping and gerrymandering of Congressional Districts. And it has killed many Americans and broken many American families and killed many children.

Yes, often in those districts that keep voting Democrat, in part because no other political party has offered a better value proposition.  Enterprise zones, less restrictive zoning, and no broken windows, anyone?  I mean, stopping crime is one of those eighty-twenty issues, and those fifteen square miles of privilege aren't as safe as they once might have been.

Pedestrians can't walk downtown without being accosted by the homeless and illegal beggars. Kids can't play in the parks without navigating "tent cities" and dodging needles and fentanyl zombies. The Fire Department is responding to out-of-control fires in these encampments at least weekly. The rat and bedbug infestations are rampant and as we mentioned, the buckets of human waste, piles of garbage and discarded gas cylinders make Chicago look and smell like a Third World shithole.

The fact that enforcement is suddenly on the table makes it obvious the polling numbers are massively supportive of what's coming in the next week or so.

There's much more material from assorted keyboard warriors urging additional law enforcement in Chicago, and other major cities.  That is for another post on another day.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Donald Trump Is Not Gonna Bomb Iran. (Never mind.)  We finished the job.

The eternally unpleasant.  "My people don’t fly the American flag. In fact, we hate the flag and what it represents: a deeply flawed nation. And we don’t like the Americans who proudly wave it either. Patriotism has always been for other people, or other generations."  Read it in full, she gave up on the people she thought of as "my people."

Winning.  "Biden is quoted as saying, 'Many of the things I worked so damn hard, that I thought I changed in the country, are changing so rapidly.'  You can almost hear everyone who voted for Trump answering, 'Yes, that’s the point.'"

Political economy is hard.  "Republicans once talked seriously about aligning taxes and spending.  They cared about economic distortion, simplicity, and broadening the tax base.  Now, too many just want the sugar rush of tax cuts without fiscal discipline.  Meanwhile, Democrats want to vastly expand the state and pretend that billionaires alone can foot the bill.  Both sides are wrong.  The math doesn't work, and the morality of the reckless spending is worse."

A lot can happen in three weeks.  The resumption of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes will focus today on the more timely topics.  The mix of pessimistic labels is deliberate.

PUT THE LIBERTARIANS IN CHARGE.

Perhaps, if the Governance by Wise Experts part of the Knowledge System is part of the collapse, which is the simplest interpretation of "public distrust of experts has reached an intensity never seen before," the best way forward might be to put less public trust in experts.  Here's Cold Spring Shops in October, 2016.

Joel Kotkin cautions that a bad Republican-by-courtesy presidential candidate who loses badly does not mean a mandate for more Governance by Wise Experts.  Follow both links, read and understand, and follow additional links if you wish.  Politics is downstream from culture, and it's fifty years since the Consciousness Revolution led to the destruction of presidential politics as it is currently playing out.  The correction might also take fifty years.  But there are rumblings of a correction, if you know where to look.  Thus Mr Kotkin.  "Relative few Americans have much patience with such things as “micro-aggressions,” “safe spaces,” the generally anti-American tone of history instruction whose adherents are largely concentrated in the media and college campuses. Fewer still would endorse the anti-police agitation now sweeping progressive circles."

Yes, dear reader, your Superintendent was among the observers of the political scene resigned to Hillary.  What we had to look forward to in earnest then presented as farce during the Jarrett regency.

Thus, the Fatal Conceit of the latter-day Platonists (the self-styled progressives) is in creating that cadre of Wise Experts who are going to protect the masses from their own foolishness. And if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. I like the idea of limiting and enumerating the powers of government, something that neither major party shows much interest in. That way, there aren't as many things the Wise Experts can screw up, and the opportunities for those in the masses who give in to their sheer foolishness to live at the expense of everyone else are fewer.

Which for all its faults put Donald Trump back in the White House and we could sure use a chronicler like Theodore H. White to tell that story.

YOU MEAN CHARLES SCHULZ GOT IT RIGHT?

The National Institutes of Health, under Anthony Fauci, used beagles in lab experiments.  That got the Militant Normals riled up.  There's a new head of the National Institutes, leading to a rare occurrence of concord between Red State types and PETA.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Jay Bhattacharya announced the closure Monday of the agency’s last beagle laboratory, ending controversial experiments on the NIH campus linked to Dr. Anthony Fauci, RedState reported.

In light of this wonderful news, we spoke to a couple in Virginia who were among the first two people to adopt and rescue Beagles experimented on at the Envigo lab in Virginia, which was featured in a heartbreaking undercover piece from PETA. Warning: it’s not for the faint of heart, seeing how these little pups were tortured.

In the case of full disclosure, these two wonderful people are members of my own family. My sister Vickie Sipes and her husband Danny Sipes both work in Washington, D.C., and live about an hour west of the Capitol.

They talked about their pups' journey from those experimentation labs, to the adoption when they brought home not one but two beagles they named Max and Darby. Also, about the challenges they went through rehabilitating the puppies, and how these two lovable dogs became a wonderful part of their family and found their forever homes.

It took the pups a while to figure out that they would be properly cared for and able to do dog things.  That's in the article.

The end of the story inspires the post title.

"Bringing them out of such a bad situation. It’s one of those things you don’t seek out for that, you're rescuing these puppies,” Vickie said, talking about how much joy they have brought to their family ahead of the three-year adoption anniversary.

“We love them,” Danny added. “They are definitely calming down. Beagles are chill dogs. They are lap dogs. And we’ve noticed them calming down a lot more.”

“Now they love sleeping on their backs,” he added, noting the outward sign they are finally leaving their past where it belongs. “When dogs sleep like that, they have let it go and feel safe.”

Good.  Curse you, Tony Fauci!

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The higher learning.  "These schools helped create this situation in the first place--it was only a few decades ago that state and federal money weren't even a part of their budgets.  They wanted this money, and were confident that their influence with lawmakers would shield them from political influence they didn't like.  They had their cake and ate it too--they railed against America, Americans, and capitalism.  They then deposited huge sums of money from the very governments and taxpayers for whom they professed hate and against whom they trained their students to destroy."

Liberating tolerance, until it's unlawful.  "To be clear, this is not a free-speech issue, it is a conduct issue.  Trespassing is conduct, not speech.  Vandalism is conduct, not speech.  Blocking entrances is conduct, not speech.  Spitting on police is conduct, not speech.  Stopping traffic is conduct, not speech.  Disrupting commencement is conduct, not speech.  Tagging benches with graffiti is conduct, not speech.  Barricading yourself in a building is conduct, not speech.  Taking over a meeting is conduct, not speech.  Attacking someone is conduct, not speech."

Reap what you sow, David Brooks.  "It was those excesses, and others that Brooks has implicitly endorsed for the past four years, that led to the greatest political comeback in American political history, the re-election of Donald Trump.  Now, just three months into the comeback that Brooks unwittingly helped to facilitate, he wants to overturn the election because Trump is doing what he promised.  He wants an uprising?  Sounds like insurrection to me.  Then again, if you think law firms, nonprofits, and civil servants are the cornerstones of Western civilization you have bigger problems than Donald Trump."  Bet on emergence.  "All these government programs that regulate and control, they institutionalize mediocrity at best."

It can play in no other way.  "When outsiders are rude to insiders, it often plays as righteous rebellion against an insolent system.  When insiders are rude to outsiders, it inevitably plays as haughty arrogance.  I know there are many who believe the same applies to Trump and Republicans, now in power and currently making a mess of the economy.  It doesn’t matter.  Americans instinctively understand progressives to forever hold the whip hand in matters of culture, even political culture — which explains far too many of the excuses for Trump’s own behavior now floating around.  Only opponents can break those rules without suffering consequences, not the people who are defending the status quo."

Being mean or telling the truth is indistinguishable to far too many people. Thus:  High School Never Ends—Especially in Washington.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The left made it easy.  "The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a 'meritocratic' caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table."

The political bundles are too big.  "Democrats have had conflicting messages. On the one hand, Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and it is everyone’s duty to rally against him. On the other hand, much of the leadership remains committed to pushing the envelope on progressive policies that make it harder to attract the support of the sort of people who voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney but find Trump repugnant. It would seem intuitive that the mere existence of Trump, the most unpopular President ever, as the leader of the opposition would render the only viable alternative—the Democratic Party—popular. But it hasn’t worked out that way."  Well, no, after the way the vanguardists of Hope and Change treated candidates McCain and Romney, there are tables that should be flipped over.

Vacuous pejoratives.  “'Globalism' (a.k.a., free trade) is to those on the political right what 'trickle-down economics' (a.k.a., free markets) is to those on the political left.”  Loose translation: “Somewhere on Earth, buyers and sellers are engaging in voluntary trade and minding their own business AND WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.”

Tear down all the walls to get at the Devil.  "Governmental authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master."  The Devil turns upon you.  "The left, fixated upon uniform outcomes, consistently undervalues the power of voluntary cooperation and cultural persuasion.  Their shortsightedness has delivered into the hands of their opponents the very instruments of coercion they forged, vividly confirming an enduring truth: the power you grant government today will inevitably be wielded tomorrow by your adversaries."

That power was not wielded well during the corona tyranny, was it?  Evergreen.  "The so-called expert class was not particularly expert in this instance, which is to say that the damage it did was predictable and therefore preventable."  Illusions shattered.  "I’m not interested in handing the reins of government over to supposed experts because, well, we saw how that went in 2020. I’m not up for a replay of that particular flavor of stupid."  Stupid leavened by groupthink.  "U.S. policy didn't reflect the scientific evidence."

The semiquincentennial has not been all seashells and balloons.  "Americans who fear a rancorous plod toward America’s 250th birthday should remember: 250 years ago, the nation knew much worse. Then it healed, passed through the furnace of another civil war, then resumed its zigzag but upward path toward a more perfect union. Atkinson’s reminder is that the birth of this nation, like that of a baby, was painful but worth it."

My fellow Americans, the Bears still suck.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

DAVID BROOKS IS RIPE FOR THE MAD-HOUSE.

Last week he wrote a column that triggered Pajamas Media columnist Scott Pinsker.  "In an absolutely cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs column today, David Brooks of The New York Times openly and explicitly called for a mass uprising — and capped it with a coded plea for a communist revolution."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT 2028 ALREADY???

The world is about to get really fair, very fast.  America is done apologizing for its interests.

Buckle in. "If Trump can pull this off, he has an excellent chance of winning the contest of the century."  Destruction is easy.  There are no utopias.  "Overall, we are far better off and stronger than the doomers will tell you."

Politics, on the other hand, can be hard.  "Trump supporters have enjoyed a heady three months of action on DEI, antisemitism, energy, NGOs, deregulation, border control, Hamas, Houthis, and more, but solidifying those changes will require a strong economy, support from friendly nations, and continued Republican control of Congress."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Battle of the Sexes rages on.  "Democratic Party policies, failures, and condescension are what drove young men away."  Barstool conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has convinced many young males that it hates them."  South Park conservatism.  "The Democratic Party has been in thrall to a cultural vibe that is maximally off-putting to young dudes."  Thanks, feminism.  "Suggesting all young men are predators in waiting is destructive."

The Gods of the Copybook Headings limp up to explain it once more.  "When you have women who have been trained not to like men, to consider babies immoral, who get their emotional fix from work and friends, and who feel that they have endless choices...well, a genuine, imperfect man, one who forgets to put the toilet seat down, belches after he drinks a soda, and smells rank after a day of physical labor...doesn’t stand a chance."

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Follow the science.  "The government science that was a lie from start to finish.  The less of that science, the better."  Recognize your limits.  "It is hard, especially for someone in a position of authority, to admit that there is nothing to be done."

Forgive, if you are so inclined, but do not forget.  "It’s fearful to consider how much of our law and Constitution just seemed to evaporate and how swiftly and completely it was replaced with the Absolute Sovereignty of Liberal Professional Class Conventional Thinking, however brain-dead or self-serving."

He's Crazy Bernie for a reason.  “At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when 60 percent of people live paycheck to paycheck, millions of Americans cannot afford higher education, and 40 percent of our nation’s 4th graders and 33 percent of 8th graders read below basic proficiency, it is a national disgrace that the Trump Administration is attempting to illegally abolish the Department of Education and thus, undermine a high-quality education for our students.”  The undermining is made in Washington by bureaucrats.

Good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.  Fallacies aren't made factual through constant repetition.  Get over your preening and moral superiority.  No people can be pushed indefinitely without them pushing back.

Experts have only themselves to blame for the distrust of institutions.  Our expert classes have torpedoed so much of their credibility.  Trust, once lost, is hard to earn back.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE CORONA TYRANNY.

Five years ago, posting this Far Side cartoon from 1984 (!) might have been risky.

March 17 of 2020 was a Tuesday, and the Illinois presidential primary election took place under relatively normal circumstances, although the state was on its way to nearly three years of ineffective corona tyranny.  Citizens had about the right idea how to deal with the Wuhan coronavirus early on; the response by politicians might have had the salutary effect of discrediting Official Action.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE LOCKDOWN SKEPTICS WON.

It's possible that Donald Trump's reluctance to continue the hard corona shutdowns, whether to boost his 2020 electoral chances or on sound policy grounds, contributed to his return to the White House earlier this year.  He named lockdown skeptic Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health.

Yet five years on, at Bhattacharya's confirmation hearing, Democrats were completely mum about his COVID-era research and advocacy.

Not a single Democrat mentioned the Great Barrington Declaration. None bothered to press Bhattacharya on his opposition to once-consensus opinions on lockdowns, masking, and school closures.

Despite having every opportunity and incentive to attack Bhattacharya as a dangerous crank nominee, the minority on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chose not to even mention what were once his most controversial views.

Instead, Democrats almost exclusively focused their questions on the Trump administration's recent pauses of NIH grant and advisory committees and caps on grantees' indirect research spending.

That report, filed by Reason's Christian Britschgi, concentrates on the end of the foolish idea that lockdowns were sound policy.

Bhattacharya himself was unapologetic about his criticism of lockdowns—saying that Florida ended the pandemic with lower all-cause mortality than California, as did Sweden vis-à-vis its neighbors.

Democrats' silence and Republicans' praise is a remarkable touchstone. It's yet more proof that five years on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown skeptics have won the argument.

Critics of lockdowns can publicly express the idea that lockdowns don't work as an uncontroversial matter of fact. Past defenders of lockdowns are now unwilling to back the policies in public, not even in a lockdown skeptic's confirmation hearing for a high-ranking public health position.

It's possible, though, that the Trump administration is changing the nature of sponsored research at the Institutes.

At his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya criticized past NIH leaders for stepping outside their role as scientists to tell people what to do during the pandemic and attempting to silence debate instead of encouraging it.

"The role of scientists is to say these are the risks by giving more data," said Bhattacharya. "Science should be an engine for freedom, knowledge and freedom."

It's a refreshing sentiment and one that would seem to take the most authoritarian COVID-era policies off the table in any future crisis.

Whether his management team will address the fundamental failings of sponsored research is yet to be determined.

FOURTH TURNINGS ARE LIKE THAT.

What Zero Hedge's Jeffrey Tucker describes as "The Most Dramatic Narrative Shift In Modern History" is what one expects when the old saecular order shatters.

It's been a long time in coming.

When voices left, libertarian, and right raise similar objections to an established order, might that order be in trouble?

That voices left, libertarian, and right see different ways to replace that order, suggest troubling times might be ahead.

It's a time when the existing social order loses its legitimacy, it's a Fourth Turning, even if people don't use that terminology.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Buckle up.  "There are a lot of tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet this year."

Pray this is the first.  "The crisis of democratic government then, is actually a crisis of progressive government. People seem to feel that they have been taxed, regulated, bossed around and intimidated by left-of-center politicians for decades — but the results are bad and have been getting worse."  I mean, when Our Intellectual Betters have lost Fareed Zakaria!  "On the other side, if Democrats do not learn some hard lessons from the poor governance in many blue cities and states, they will be seen as defending cultural elites, woke ideology and bloated, inefficient government. That might be a formula for permanent minority status."

Why do we accept government by an invalid?  I don't want to be ruled over by anybody.  What the hell is self-governance anyway if you can't trust the people to figure out this democracy thing themselves?  Normal voters are tired of liberal America’s condescension and elitism.  Democrats spent the year trying to convince people they didn’t realize how good they had it.  The Democratic Party Deserves Its Image as a Party of War.

Biden is a disgrace.  "Everyone in America should be grateful that this man will not serve a second term."  The thoughtless three-hour delay of the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover is simply emblematic of his reign.  Goodbye.  "Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will still be the one-term president responsible for Donald Trump's return to the White House."

Practically?  "Practically every terrible idea eating away at America’s soul originated with some academician whose philosophy gelled while writing his PhD dissertation."

Jimmy Carter.  "How far have we declined when the president of the United States can't pay for coffee?"  R.I.P.

Buckwheat.  "She did not even lie well. Check out the blinking and the stuttering and stammering. She is not, and will never be, a smidgen good at her job."  Democrats are sort of cute when they’re out of power.

A city by the sea does not have enough water.  The Democrats for which Californians have cast votes for decades have failed you.  Anybody wondering why “America First” helped get Mr. Trump elected?

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes resumes.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

I can't wait for this election to be over.  People are tired of the bullshit.  And the bullying.  And the argumentum ad Hitlerum.  "Like the massive overuse of the charge of 'racist' during the Obama years, the 'fascist' label has lost its power to do damage."  And of Flibbertigibbet.  “Somehow believing that accusing Donald Trump of being a fascist is a winning closing argument – nothing could be further from the truth. They’re in real trouble and they know it.”  And her political agenda.  “We’re left with the consequences of these failed, progressive policies.”  It's not hard to see why.  "She is what she always was: an incompetent, dull-witted woman who achieved her success through horizontal negotiations and pretty privilege."  Her panic is palpable.  "Kamala is turning out to be the starburst firework that ends the show for DEI and she’s in real trouble out on a stage she cannot climb down from."

The progressive moment is well and truly over.  None too soon.  "The Gore campaign failed to win enough votes in 2000, and the Clinton campaign failed in 2016. It is not the fault of those progressives who refused to support them."  Perhaps we can have a different sort of Friday short takes in another week.  "I don’t know who is going to win this election, but at the end of the day, I would rather be on the side of authentic rabble, then the arrogant establishment."  The only response to nonsense from Democrats is laughter.  Democrats don't have a sense of humor.  This week's meme suggested itself.

By next week we'll see how well that commentary held up.  The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

THE POSITIVE CASE FOR TRUMP.

Alex Hinton, who is a senior anthropologist at the Newark campus of Rutgers, offers it.

I have been examining toxic polarization – and ways to stop it. Many efforts to reduce people’s polarized views begin with an injunction: Listen and understand.

To this end, I have attended Trump rallies, populist and nonpartisan events and meetings where Democrats and Republicans connect and talk. Along the way, I have spoken with Trump supporters ranging from the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, faithful to moderate “hold the nose and vote for him” conservatives.

And indeed, many on the left fail to understand who Trump voters are and how they vary. Trump’s base cannot simply be dismissed as racist “deplorables”, as Hillary Clinton famously said in 2016, or as country bumpkins in red MAGA hats. Trump voters trend older, white, rural, religious and less educated. But they include others outside those demographic groups.

Many people have thoughtful reasons for voting for Trump.

He's engaging in the same sort of ethnography Brad Todd and Salena Zito offered in The Great Revolt.  That book disaggregates voters more finely.  Professor Hinton suggests five essential elements contribute to a Trump vote, with his list being an enumeration rather than a ranking.

1.  Media distortion.
2.  Bread on the table, money in the bank.
3.  A border invasion.
4.  A proven record.
5.  The MAGA bull in a china shop.

That is, the Professional-Managerial Class has failed, and voters might be willing to forgive Mr Trump for the troubles during the corona shutdowns, as he trusted the very Professional Managerial types who were treated with even more respect at the beginning of the presidency that followed.

We'll see in about six weeks how it turns out.  Pay attention to your state legislatures and school boards.

TIM WALZ, CORONA TYRANT.

Reason's Robby Soave calls attention.  "The Minnesota governor actually defended the state's disastrous nursing home policies."  His article opens with a bit of spin.

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz was a moderate Democrat when he served in the House of Representatives but veered left during his two terms as governor. He referred to socialism as synonymous with neighborliness, pursued an extremely progressive governing agenda, and earned an F from the Cato Institute on fiscal policy.

Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz's coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.

Nikita Sergeyevich represented a median voter district near the Iowa border, and during at least part of his Congressional service, his party was the minority.

Under such circumstances, it is no Botox off Nancy Pelosi's nose if he votes his constituents' wishes on votes the Democrats stand to lose, or if she has whipped sufficient votes from her caucus that he goes his own way.