GET YOUR SCONNIE ON.

Trains are Awesome offers a younger ferroequinologist's perspective on Amtrak.  He had an opportunity recently to go day tripping on the Morning Hiawatha, er, Borealis, with a day excursion out of Chicago to Columbus, Wisconsin.

Between the new Wisconsin service and a restoration of South Shore Line service the length of the railroad, perhaps it is time for some Performance and Practice reports, indeed.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The prologue this week isn't exactly short, is it?  So it sometimes goes.

If something isn't working, stop doing it.  "The international community is an elite, a clique, even something like a religious sect."  Falsity defines our politics.  By their fruits?  "We are using unqualified midwits and lackwits from the bowels of the Democratic foreign policy intelligentsia instead of legitimately smart people."  Elite anxiety is the root of modernism at its worst.

Speaking of unqualified midwits.  "Biden has had, by most standard measures, a pretty successful presidency. But he’s being blamed for high inflation, the U.S. troops withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza."  What does that success look like?  "Big government is likely to achieve big progress, that incentives are of second-order importance, that the title of a bill need not reflect its contents, and that profits are glorified theft by private business from workers and consumers."  Thus does the decline continue.  Losers in life never accept personal responsibility. Why accept, when you can deflect?  "Better leaders would take responsibility for their errors in addition to asking that others be held accountable for theirs. Unfortunately, we've only got the conveniently selective memories of Trump and Biden."  We're noticing.  "Nowadays the only truly unbelievable conspiracy theory is the one that assures us the people who are running things are honest, and know what they’re doing. "

A self-reinforcing feedback loop deepens.  "One of the strange paradoxes of academia today is that the fierce competition for academic jobs and pressure for university departments to climb up the coveted U.S. News rankings actually stifles innovation and risk-taking within many disciplines."  That hive mind infects other Influential People.  "From the takeover of cities by activists to the unquestioned origins of COVID-19 to the normalization of men competing as women in women's sports, we all sat back and watched once-vaunted pillars of journalism in our country, such as the Times, The Washington Post, NBC and CBS repeatedly telling us there was nothing to see there."  It's not working out well.  "Nost of the recent efforts to undermine constitutional norms, hallowed traditions and customs, and the normal symmetrical application of the law have originated with bicoastal political, media, and academic elites."  Garbage elites, that is.  "While Biden and De Niro keep making this election about Jan. 6 and democracy, voters seem much more concerned about other things, such as affording food and housing for their families."

You can't save democracy by destroying it first.  How many people is Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg speaking for?  "Congrats, Dems. You did it. You dragged me, kicking and screaming, into supporting Trump.  Let’s make America a constitutional republic with the rule of laws, not men, again."

I want better choices.  "After four dour years of continual crises abroad and inflation at home, does sunshine now remind voters of Trump?"  Should it?  "Many libertarians support the Libertarian Party precisely because they do not trust ether Biden or Trump to avoid destroying the country; in fact, some of the most anti-libertarian policies have advanced under both Republican and Democratic administrations, from runaway federal spending to government surveillance to public health tyranny."

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

VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE.

Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker recently correctly qualified the criteria for preferring a presidential candidate over the others.

“I’m not suggesting there aren’t other names on the ballot. I’m suggesting simply that when people go to the ballot box in November, they’re going to see that there are really only two choices because it’s throwing away your vote if you’re a Democrat and you vote for someone else on the ballot other than Joe Biden,” Pritzker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“And I believe that people will see that contrast of values that I’m talking about and understand that they’ve got to vote for Joe Biden if they want to make sure that the United States does not fall into the hands of someone who is frankly a sociopath, that’s been indicted 91 times and as someone who would take this country backward,” he continued.

Pritzker dismissed concerns that third-party candidates, like independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., could end up changing the outcome of November’s presidential election.

The key to that argument is the "if you're a Democrat."  That is, if your preferred bundle of policies has many of the same things the Democrats are offering, your best choice might be to take the Democrats' bundle rather than a Republican bundle with fewer of the things you like, although if Mr Kennedy's bundle comes closer to your preferred bundle than Elizabeth Warren's, er, Joe Biden's, it's your right to vote for Mr Kennedy.  Never mind what Mr Pritzker, and all the other apparatchiki of both major parties tell you.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being on the ballot in Michigan, I think is going to have a little effect on the ultimate result. People understand that there are really only two candidates that have a path to victory in this country and in Michigan. And, of course, that’s Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” he said.

It's only a binary choice as long as voters vote under the belief that other voters are treating the choice as binary.  The way to break that belief in other voters is to vote your conscience.  Never mind that Governor Pritzker scolds and Derek Hunter scoffs.

I would, on occasion, refer to myself as a conservative with libertarian leanings. I can’t do that anymore. That doesn’t mean what it used to, it means simply being a contrarian for its own sake.

I get that the party was never going to get behind Trump, but credit him for showing up to ask. They also passed on Robert Kennedy Jr., which would have been smarter for them. RFK is not a traditional libertarian, but those don’t exist anymore anyway. At least they’d have a candidate with name recognition who agrees with them on a lot of issues — an embrace of the idea that their 80 percent friend is not their 20 percent enemy.

They decided to go in a different direction. They always choose to go in a different direction. They’ll call it “being principled,” but it’s really just being irrelevant. It’s easier to sit on the sidelines and complain about how screwed up things are than it is to get in the fight. That’s not what libertarians do anymore, which, in the sea of issues they have, is their biggest problem.

It might be better for libertarians, or socialists of any stripe, or Free Soilers, should any still exist, to devote their efforts to winning elections for dog-catcher, for the school board, for the city council, and only after demonstrating success locally, to either run candidates for Congress or the presidency.  In fact, the best case against running socialists for Congress or the presidency might be the record they are writing in Chicago and Minneapolis.

TRAINS CHANGING HANDS.

Waukesha-based Kalmbach Media sells railroad and space brands to Tennessee firm.  No, not Outkick or Pajamas Media.

Waukesha-based publisher Kalmbach Media has sold its railroad and space enthusiast brands to Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Firecrown Media for an undisclosed price.

Firecrown is a transportation media provider that publishes content on the aviation, boating and logistics industries. Some of the company’s brands include FLYING, Boating, Yachting, Salt Water Sportsman and FreighWaves.

Firecrown has acquired Kalmbach Media’s Train, Model Railroader, Classic Toy Trains, Garden Railways and Trains.com brands. The acquisition also includes the space enthusiast brand Astronomy, as well as FineScale Modeler, Kalmbach Books and Kalmbach’s digital e-commerce stores.

“We are excited to have a found a new home for these storied and well-respected brands,” said Dan Hickey, chief executive officer of Kalmbach Media. “While these are always difficult decisions, it is great to know that their stewardship moving forward will be under the guidance of a company and leader dedicated and passionate about their continued growth and expansion.”

Firecrown plans to retain all of the editorial and content resources of the former Kalmbach Media brands and to open a new office in Wisconsin to accommodate the teams currently working on them.

With the acquisition, Firecrown plans to invest significantly in Trains’ business editorial coverage, increasing the rail industry’s cadence and depth of coverage.

I cringe at some of that business-speak, and wonder how much further Trains will come to imitate Railway Age.  In addition, that "new office in Wisconsin" might mean the end of 21027 Crossways Circle and the persistence of that "1027" in Kalmbach street addresses.

Trains News Wire adds,

Fuller and other members of the Firecrown staff met with staff members who will be making the transition to the new ownership this afternoon. A 60-day transition period is planned for the magazines and other properties. More information on Firecrown’s plans and what they mean for employees and readers will be forthcoming.

We'll see.  I suspect that print magazines will age out along with the readers who grew up with them.  Whether the online coverage of things that run on rails will flourish also remains to be seen.

THE BUNDLES ARE UNSUSTAINABLY BIG.

At the start of the year, I reviewed two political books, Where Have All the Democrats Gone and Party of the People, written respectively by Democrat and Republican operatives, that came to surprisingly similar conclusions about the assembly of presidential majorities.

Both books raise a common point, which is that popular Federal policies are policies that majorities or large pluralities of voters perceive benefits therefrom: thus Medicare or Social Security, even unto the fiscal cliff these are about to fall off of; thus roads and bridges, even though the latest highly touted bipartisan bill doesn't make good the continued deterioration of the existing roads or bridges; never mind that these areas of mutual interest are areas of wishful thinking, and that people live lives apart from their commutes and their retirements.  Thus the problem: to win elections, particularly at the national level, the Democrats seek to cobble together a coalition of people who oppose the death penalty, whilst favoring abortion, sex change operations, and easy immigration.  The Republicans seek to cobble together a coalition of people who favor the death penalty, whilst opposing abortion, sex change operations, and easy immigration.  For both parties, that cobbling works only up to a point.  A better policy bundle for the Democrats might be more about the kitchen table issues and less about the boutique multiculturalism; but that is also available to Republicans with the right way to take on the social and political status of the degreed Professional Managerial Class.  Thus the broad areas of agreement among those authors: in the view of all three, the electorate is very much up for grabs.  At the presidential level, though, we're drifting toward a rerun of 2020.

As I type this, news is breaking about former president Donald Trump being convicted for falsifying business records, with knock-on effects that are yet to play out.  I fear those effects will only complicate the challenges of those unsustainably big bundles.

EFFICIENCY IS NOT THE ONLY GOAL.

That's long been a Cold Spring Shops theme.

On the one hand, in the political economy of public policy, efficiency is a goal, but not the only goal.  On the other hand, there is a potted version of the Welfare Economics Paradigm that equates market failure with a case for government intervention.  Short form: any failure of a market to allocate resources efficiently produces incentives to harvest the efficiency gains.  That requires adaptation, something that subsumes values and spiritual dimensions as special cases, not as rhetorical trumps.  It also requires more systematic thinking on the part of economists.

Thus, particularly when the scholar's thoughts turn to policy implications, the economist qua economist has to be circumspect.  "One of the first principles we seek to instill in our students is that economics is useful in understanding why people do what they do, but must be used with caution as a way of making public policy."  Neglect that, and risk exposing people to more tyranny and poverty.  Pay attention to that, and your advice might be beneficial to policymakers.

PATHETIC.

Common Dreams contributor Robert Ivie is a walking argument for English professors not getting involved in political economy.  "Whether we like it or not, the 2024 election is a referendum on Joe Biden only insofar as he represents the alternative to authoritarian rule." Some alternative, an angry old man who decides yelling at the electorate on a stage worthy of Leni Riefenstahl and Albert Speer, and who goes around Congress and the Supreme Court on the expediency of the moment.

FAUX AMATEURISM IS DEAD.

That's long been the Cold Spring Shops position on College Sports.  "Big Time College Sports has more to gain than to lose by shedding the fiction of Amateur Sport that having the Ivies or the Horizon League providing that veil of innocence."  Sooner or later pretending that it's not about money when it is about money will catch up with the commissioners.  "College Sports version of railroading, with the UP Conference, the BNSF Conference, the CSX Conference, and the NS Conference running the big tournament with the CN Conference and the CPKC Conference selling wins, I noticed that College Sports, Inc., was a money suck."

WEDNESDAY'S ECONOMICS READING.

"Some Links" posted by Don "Cafe Hayek" Boudreax.  Eclectic and recommended.

FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, AND DEPENDABILITY.

We've heard that tune before.  "I've invoked that trifecta so many times I should apply for a copyright."

I'm fine with Trains contributor Bob Johnston invoking the formula.  "Second Chicago-St. Paul train shows value of frequency, capacity."  Apparently, in the first week of Borealis trips, a lot of residents of the big cities and intermediate towns alike are using that second train for day trips.

Clearly, demand for the train exists, even though the schedules for the Borealis and the Builder are only hours apart. And that demand is not just between the end points. A steady stream of passengers detrained or boarded at the many intermediate stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota. One community that will surely benefit is Wisconsin Dells, where summer boat rides and year-round water parks beckon.

Those schedules worked well enough for the Morning and Afternoon Hiawathas back in the day.  Yes, there are still troubles to be worked out.  How many times do I have to point out that trains can load and unload through multiple doors?

The first westbound trip of Amtrak’s new Borealis wasn’t flawless. A “technical problem” with a credit card reader delayed the café car’s opening. A pesky lock on the platform wheelchair lift’s enclosure at the Sturtevant, Wis., stop contributed to delay, as did the decision to open only one vestibule trap at downtown Milwaukee to let two Horizon carloads of passengers from Chicago vacate the only remaining seats on the train for the many travelers waiting to board there.

Yes, it's better to add more trains to existing routes, rather than to attempt to introduce one new train on some new route.

Can this train serve as a template for future expansion? Not necessarily. Launching Borealis was an easier lift than starting a route from scratch, because stations and route-qualified Amtrak operating crews were already available. It’s also significant CPKC has been a willing host railroad that didn’t require construction of capacity improvements, primarily through Winona, as a condition for more service.

But the Borealis does pose the question: might it be better to add frequencies that would improve utility of an existing route before developing a new one?

With Amtrak having trouble assigning sufficient serviceable stock to protect its existing schedule, sooner or later somebody is going to take a close look at the Hiawatha and Borealis diagrams.  I had an opportunity to watch the turnarounds in Chicago on the second and third days of service.  Wednesday last week, the stock that arrived, about an hour late, on 1340 from St. Paul went out, about twenty minutes late, on the final Hiawatha to Milwaukee.  Thursday, 1340 arrived again about an hour late, and a different rake went to Milwaukee, about twenty minutes late.  I have not yet worked out the rotations by which stock for 336, which used to turn off 333 before 333 became 1333 for St. Paul, lays over in Milwaukee.  The enforced idleness of an entire rake in St. Paul, overnight, when there's plenty of time to add a sleeping car and run an overnight train for and from Chicago, also offers food for future thought.

For now, let us enjoy the opportunity to make day trips along the Mississippi River and through Wisconsin.

THERE'S NO ESCAPING OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

These days, I would be tempted to ask beginning econ students to evaluate the argument "Red Lobster is better off owning its restaurants, because it doesn't have to pay rent."  I've been out of the beginning econ student business for years, but the teaching points involving opportunity costs never end, do they?

TOO BIG TO RIG?

Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball sees Donald Trump taking his campaign into unfavorable territory and offers a prediction.

Future historians, psephologists, and political analysts, searching for the day and time that Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign imploded beyond recovery, are likely to settle on Thursday May 23, 2024, at approximately 7 p.m. It was then that Trump’s surprising rally in Crotona Park in the South Bronx really got underway. I didn’t hear any actual bells tolling, but if you listened carefully you could discern the mournful obligato that signaled the end of Joe Biden’s hopes in New York — and therefore the country.

We'll see.  It's true that 44 years ago the Smart People didn't have much regard for Ronald Reagan.

No Republican has taken New York since Ronald Reagan’s great landslide in 1984. Why then would Trump waste time coming to the South Bronx?

And Ronald Reagan visited the South Bronx in 1980, but not because he had to be in court on Manhattan the next day.  The objective conditions in New York were much worse then.  Let us be grateful that so far the Jarrett regency hasn't built back the objective conditions of the Carter years and called that "better".  What they have done is bad enough.

One brilliant moment occurred when Trump called former City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a black Puerto Rican Democrat, up to the stage. In broken but heartfelt English, Diaz enthusiastically endorsed Trump for president. I didn’t note the exact time, but I’d wager that was the moment that Trump sealed the deal for New York for 2024.

It was a masterly speech. Trump hit all the sore spots: the migrant crime wave, the transsexual insanity, Biden’s economic chaos, the insecurity of American elections. In what is sure to be a major new slogan, Trump reminded the crowd that his victory in 2024 must be “too big to rig.”

It's still too soon to venture predictions, and already the regency's amen corner is chastising Normals for being so ungrateful about those record high stock market indices and those low unemployment rates.  It's what that sort of cheerleading doesn't mention, the cultural issues, the lousy schools, that might decide the election.

BUCKWHEAT, FLUMMOXED.

For years, Cold Spring Shops has been calling attention to the mistake many state-supported or non-selective non-profit colleges and universities were making treating the proprietary for-profit colleges as competitors to be emulated.  Yes, early on, there was the possibility that those institutions were expanding the market to students not well served by existing higher ed.  (That was true as well of the clients of correspondence courses advertised in the old Railroad magazine.)  I quickly noted that emulation became the strategy, all in the name of access, of course, and that only exacerbated the U.S. News problem.  "There's also the possibility that the price premium such universities command reflects a flight to perceived quality: the last thing the land-grants and regional comprehensives and mid-majors ought be doing is emulating the online for-profits."

MARKING OFF.

It's time for a few days away from the internet.  Thank you for looking in.  The next Friday short takes will appear after Memorial Day.  All gave some, some gave all.

THE SECOND TRAIN TO THE CITIES RETURNS.

My attitude toward it has been "I'll believe it when I see it."  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I have seen it.

It was 43 years in the making, but the Chicago-Twin Cities corridor finally has a second Amtrak passenger train.

In ceremonies in Chicago, St. Paul and intermediate points today, Amtrak and state, local, and federal official marked the first run of the Borealis, new daily service between Chicago Union Station and St. Paul Union Depot. It is sponsored by the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

It was Oct. 25, 1981, when Amtrak discontinued the overnight North Star between Chicago and Midway Station in St. Paul due to funding issues (the North Star segment from St. Paul to Duluth lasted until 1985). That left only the Empire Builder on the route over the last 43 years.

The Builder is an overpurposed train, catering to local travellers along Highway 2 as well as recreational travellers for Glacier Park and the Pacific Northwest, and a restoration of the old Chicago - Fargo - Winnipeg corridor is an idea that won't go away.

POLITICS DIVIDES. MAYBE WE OUGHT HAVE LESS OF IT.

Sometimes, the most vicious conflicts are local and involve minor things.

Imagine you're a member of a religious minority that's on the receiving end of a lot of hate, and the local zoning board is giving you a hard time over plans to expand your house of worship. Is it regulators being their nitpicky selves? Are the neighbors weaponizing rules to squeeze out the cars and foot traffic that accompany any successful endeavor? Or could it be hostility directed at your faith? Zoning has been used and abused in all these ways, which underlines the need for reform.

That's Reason's J. D. Tuccille, reporting on a zoning spat in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Is anyone surprised that there will be a lot of peacocking and gnat-straining?  It's likely that local zoning, not being as glamorous as the presidency, draws a lot of individuals with personal power trips to take, and not a lot of scrutiny.

Perhaps an additional problem in Cambridge is that the zoning board is staffed by control freaks willing to let local NIMBY types wield their power against anything that might generate noise, pedestrians, or prosperity. Land use regulation is, all too often, seen by the pathologically bossy as a way to freeze neighborhoods as if they're snapshots in time or to mold them into desired new forms.

Turf them out.  "Everybody wins when people are free to exercise their liberty without seeking permission."

THESE ARE THE RULES YOU MADE.

Common Dreams contributor Stephen Zunes discovers that liberating tolerance is neither liberating nor tolerance.  "While U.S. faculty have long been outspoken on controversial issues, these attacks on academic freedom are the worst in nearly 60 years."

DURABILITY.

Oakland Raider center Jim Otto recently departed this life.

“I watched him bleed,” Raiders linebacker Phil Villapiano said in a 2022 interview. “I mean, every f—ing game. Whatever helmet he had on certainly didn’t work, because it would come down and smash on top of his nose. He’d be bleeding every single game. And players on the other team would be like, ‘What the f— is with this guy?!’”

Years ago, he appeared in one of the major networks' investigation of chronic injuries among professional football players.  Recall, he had to block the likes of Ray Nitschke and Henry Jordan, at least on one occasion.  He was a few years out of sports, living in retirement near Crivitz, Wisconsin, and at the time getting around was a challenge thanks to all sorts of chronic injuries.  It only became more of a challenge.  "Otto had more than 70 surgeries and had his right leg amputated in 2007."  Afterwards, he went to the Arctic Circle: remember, dear reader, that Crivitz is north of the 45th Parallel, and he continued to hunt, which is what people Up Nort' do. R. I. P.

PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES.

It is useful, dear reader, to understand that even people confronting choices ("forced to choose" in bleeding-heart-liberal lingo) that aren't that great still have the opportunity to make choices, and substitutions.

Perhaps the end of the academic year is not the best time to unleash a series of posts on the essential elements of economics, but then, the end of the academic year might be the best time for still-active academicians to write think pieces as procrastination brain clearing whilst grading finals.  So might it be with Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux in "Substitution Effects and Steering-Wheel Daggers."  It's a provocative title, yes, and yet it's a lesson worth repeating.

Substitution effects are more subtle, although hardly difficult to grasp. These effects are those caused by changes in the relative attractiveness of different options. If the price of gummy bears rises while that of M&Ms doesn’t change, candy buyers — including seven-year-olds — will purchase fewer gummy bears and, quite likely, more M&Ms. This change in relative prices causes consumers to substitute out of gummy bears and into M&Ms.

The amount of M&Ms people seek to purchase, therefore, isn’t determined only by people’s incomes; It’s determined also by the ease or difficulty of obtaining other goods and services that are related, in consumers’ minds, to M&Ms. Change the availability of gummy bears and you change consumers’ interest in buying M&Ms even without changing consumers’ income. Likewise, change the popularity of Halloween and you also change the demand for M&Ms.

Most commentary on public policy by competent economists focuses on substitution effects. The reason is not that income effects aren’t real or that economists think these to be less important than substitution effects. The reason is that the general public, including politicians, naturally understand income effects but seem unaware of substitution effects. It’s left to economists to explain the reality of these effects. Tracing out substitution effects is one of the great services performed for the public by competent economists.

That sensitivity to the effects of incentives leads to all sorts of provocative observations.  "The more restrictive is the occupational licensing of electricians, the greater is the incidence of accidental electrocution."  That's a point frequently made by professionals in their advertisements.  Do you really want to fix that garbage disposal yourself?  Do you really want to replace those windows yourself?  Yes, you want those contractors to be competent, and perhaps occupational licensing offers additional protection at the margin, but enough so relative to market competition and word of mouth to distinguish the reputable from the disreputable?

Homeowners and small-businesspeople in strict-requirement states are thus more likely than are their counterparts in states with less-strict requirements to substitute either into do-it-yourself electrical work or into sticking longer with older electrical wiring — and, therefore, raise the risk of accidental electrocutions.

The article goes on to illustrate other substitutions people can make at the margin.  Consider, for instance, why mandating infants be strapped into seats on airplanes leads to more infants killed in traffic accidents.  Or why an Environmental Protection Agency ukase banning new internal combustion cars leads to more upkeep and maintenance of older guzzlers, rather than to those purchases of enclosed golf carts Our Political Masters would like to nudge us to make.

And, as clever as North American driveway mechanics are at keeping older cars working, the knock-on effects of older, less reliable, more polluting cars staying on the road longer might include more pollutants emitted and more motorists killed in crashes.  I mean, it might be that Iranian helicopter mechanics are vetted for their Faith, but their complaints about a helicopter parts embargo might have something to do with it.  And I wouldn't put it past the Jarrett regency to ban the production of aftermarket parts for older automobiles, that is, if they don't opt to force the original equipment manufacturers to keep them in production first. (With technocrats, who knows?)  Not, if you're sensitive to incentives, that either policy will have much effect.  It's always possible to scavenge in wrecking yards.

HIGHER EDUCATION DECONSTRUCTED ITSELF.

Inside Higher Ed's Steven Mintz might have stumbled across ... bourgeois norms.  "College’s hidden curriculum’s essential role in preparing students for life post-graduation."

I've written about that so many times I should come up with a way of trademarking it!  "It took a long time for the academy to align itself so completely with a bundle of bad ideas. It will take a long time for better ideas to overturn the dominant paradigm."

THINGS WERE BETTER BEFORE BIDEN.

In "Trump: Still Too Hot to Handle," Power Line's John Hinderaker quoted a campaign ad a Trump supporting PAC is buying in Georgia.

Trump’s Super PAC is running this ad in rural Georgia counties targeting Black men. pic.twitter.com/mcRMkGsqLN

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 3, 2024

Mr Hinderaker grouses about Democrat-adjacent tech companies quashing populist social media. "Republicans are not allowed to run effective ads, apparently. But if the Democrats think they can make the appeal of ads like this one go away, they are whistling past the graveyard."

Perhaps the best reason to cheer for a Trump victory is for Republicans to find out who in the Permanent Bipartisan Establishment is attempting to run color revolutions on Normal Americans and have them put their talents to work running color revolutions in Iran and China.

DIDN'T EXPECT THAT.

Years ago, the Allis-Chalmers tractor factory in West Allis was switched from the south by Chicago and North Western, with a long spur off their Milwaukee freight bypass, and switched from the north by The Milwaukee Road, whose Air Line brought freight trains from the west directly into the Milwaukee classification yards.  That was also the way Royal American Shows brought their itinerant carnival to the Wisconsin State Fair.

The Air Line is now the Hank Aaron trail for hikers and cyclists, what remains of the Allis-Chalmers factory has become loft buildings, and the other industries between the factory and the North Western long since stopped shipping by rail.

And thus, Union Pacific has closed their end of the Allis-Chalmers connecting line.  Look what had to be fished out first.

The car apparently belongs to Penzey's Spices, one of those companies run by the sort of petty-bourgeois conscience cowboy who would rather sell to the converted.  Their one outlet is near Union Pacific's Butler Yard, across the expressway from, fittingly, Currie Park.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Democrats:  We were the party of loose morals.  Jen Psaki can't help but continue to lie about the situation.

They might be cruising for a bruising.  In the absence of devolution, there's still Donald Trump.  "Is it any surprise that voters have decided to abandon technocratic/bureaucratic governance in the midst of the chaos it has delivered?"  Fool me twice, shame on you.  "Trump’s strength is once again a rebellion against a coalesced liberal elite class that has become far more strident and arrogant in insisting to Americans that they have the nation on the right track while they relentlessly attack Trump to the point of trying to put him in jail."  No, seriously.  "Hold my beer. Watch me vote for him again."  That includes some of the Never Trump types.  “My ‘Never Again’ is trumping my ‘Never Trump’ these days.”

The Higher Learning:  Scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies.  Robustness and replicability are hard to define in economics.  Rules matter only when guardrails are consistently upheld.  Today's universities have gone from being critical institutions to totally adversarial institutions.  The reckoning will come.   To awaken from Wokery is a brutal shock to the brain.  Reality will throw the switch.  "But disappear they will, and free thought will survive them."

The Green Transition.  "The modern Left espouses ideas that are not irrational if you start from completely nutso premises."  Something to keep in mind.  "If the goal is to get Americans to use EVs, how does it make sense to raise their cost to consumers?"  It doesn't.  "Americans aren't about to give up our hot water."  It's truly a race to the protectionist bottom.  When central planning misses, it misses.  Fortunately, enumerated powers are real.  "Better to get [an EPA electric truck ukase] law thrown out now than to wait until food become unaffordable because there aren’t enough reliable trucks to deliver it…"

You will all know what a high trust society is when it's gone.  Civilization takes work.

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

THE DEMOCRACY DELUSION.

The major parties' presumptive nominees have agreed to two early debates.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday agreed to hold two campaign debates — the first on June 27 hosted by CNN and the second on Sept. 10 hosted by ABC — setting the stage for their first presidential face-off to play out in just over a month.

The quick agreement on the timetable followed the Democrat’s announcement that he would not participate in fall presidential debates sponsored by the nonpartisan commission that has organized them for more than three decades. Biden’s campaign instead proposed that media outlets directly organize the debates between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees.

The debate is so unusually early on the political calendar that neither Biden nor Trump will have formally accepted his party’s nomination.

We have much to look forward to.

There's that.  There's also the curious thinking out of both camps that each is expecting the other guy to commit a pratfall.

The swiftness with which the matchups came together reflects how each of the two unpopular candidates thinks he can get the better of his opponent in a head-to-head showdown. Trump and his team are convinced the debates will exacerbate voters’ concerns about Biden’s age and competence, while Biden’s team believes Trump’s often-incendiary rhetoric will remind voters of why they voted him out of the White House four years ago.

The presidential debates, always a critical moment on the political calendar, could be particularly important in a year when voters are underwhelmed with their choices and have expressed concerns about the candidates’ advanced ages — Biden is 81 and Trump 77.

I understand playing a hand of Schafkopf for leaster, but a debate?  "Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden believe firmly that if the American people get a look at their opponent on a debate stage they will be less likely to vote for them."  Make of it what you will, dear reader, that neither camp had much regard for the Commission on Presidential Debates.  "The two campaigns had mutual interest in both circumventing the debates commission and excluding Mr. Kennedy."

THE COUNTRY'S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS.

It figures, doesn't it, that if the House Oversight Committee includes Lauren Boebert, Sandy Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, sooner or later you'd get all the decorum of the Mean Girls' Table at Johnson Middle School.

The whole thing together is a work of art. Put it in a time capsule for future generations, or whatever the digital equivalent is. Note the expressions on the faces of the men. pic.twitter.com/lQrjx7PRrR

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 17, 2024

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg offers the Most Trenchant Observation. "Have to wonder what the suffragettes would think."  And one of his commenters Went There!  “The Ghettosberg Address live from the Waffle House of Representatives”.

TRASHING THEIR VALUE PROPOSITION.

I have an idea for a new bar nobody will go to: Bud Light on tap, and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in the magazine rack.  "It's always fun to observe the Wokies being discomfited, and the easiest way to discomfit the Wokies is to undermine them with mockery.  And eye candy."

There was a time, not too long ago, when the swimsuit issue was still fun.

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is a glossy provocation to the Perpetually Aggrieved.

What's the over-under that at least one participant in the semiotics workshop wishes she could be a swimsuit model?

More recently, the semiotics workshop might have become the place to look, particularly for the chubbiest and least feminine participants.

With the predictable outcomes.

Sports Illustrated went woke long ago, and the editor who made it happen has clearly said she was happy to jettison her audience.

"We didn't care. We thought that the right reader would come along with us and the wrong ones we didn't want."

Let's call it the "Bud Light Strategy," in which a company decides they don't like their customers, so they send them packing.

Ultimately, they'll be so inclusive nobody goes there any more.  "As a bankruptcy strategy, it can't be beaten."  And speaking of going there, here's how Pajama's Media's Rick Moran wrapped up.

The swimsuit edition used to display the female body at its most sexually desirable. I guess that's no longer acceptable among some women.

Usually, the ones who aren't sexually desirable at all.

Harsh, Rubens models notwithstanding.

DAVID HENDERSON UNDERSTANDS THE FOLLIES OF MODERN MONETARY THEORY.

Last week, we called attention to Jarrett regency economic advisor Jared Bernstein, demonstrating how little he understood about modern monetary theory.

David Henderson watched the interview, and he caught something instructive.

I’ll ignore interviewer Stephanie Kelton’s statement (at the 0:06 point) that something “begs the question.” Kelton, by the way, is one of the leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory.

Jared says, “The government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money which is why the government definitely prints money and then it lends that money by selling bonds.”

You can tell by watching him that Jared is playing for time while he consults the hard drive in his head. It’s as if he’s saying to himself, “I know the answer; I can get this.”

Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

Curmudgeons understand that "begging the question" is framing it in such a way as to force the answer you want.  It's a common trick among the Woke, referring to a policy as "-phobic" or otherwise deploying a pejorative, the better to elicit agreement.  It's also possible to do that with monetary theory, referring to a policy as "inflationary" when it might not be.  A lot of people have shifted to the "begs the question" locution where "provokes the question" or "prompts the question" or "Can you explain?" are serviceable.

YES, THAT'S GOING TO WIN OVER THOSE NIKKI HALEY VOTERS.

In the continuing Republican primaries, it appears as though she has become the protest candidate of choice.  I'll let psephologists come up with explanations (crossover Democrats? security moms? fed up?) for those votes.

Donald Trump seems content to campaign, and win, without any special appeal to Haley voters, whilst Joe Biden gives lip service to having their votes.  Then he issues a ukase imposing prohibitive tariffs on electric cars from China.  Reason's Eric Boehm sums it up.  "Bad for consumers, bad for American industry, bad for his administration's own environmental goals, and bad for an increasingly irrational executive branch."

THE ETIQUETTE OF BLACK FRIDAY AT THE BIG BOX STORE.

Only it was graduation day at Howard University's College of Nursing and Allied Health.  "A graduation ceremony for nursing students at Howard University in Washington D.C. was canceled right in the middle of the keynote address Thursday as furious parents who were locked out due to capacity issues pounded on the doors and even smashed a window."

It's like a good sea story, "no s***, this really happened."

1 hurt in chaos after Howard University nursing graduation ceremony reaches maximum capacity 📹: @Dream_Girl_MG https://t.co/BEL54p8OVJ pic.twitter.com/v82nASe5b9

— Allison Papson (@AllisonPapson) May 10, 2024

The university and the fire department subsequently got into a spat over whether the ceremony was first cancelled, then rescheduled for another day, because of fire code violations. (No. Somebody in Student Affairs dropped the ball on issuing tickets the way graduations in public buildings have taken place probably since Plato's Academy.)

RAILROADS CONNECT PEOPLE.

A few years ago, Union Pacific sent Big Boy 4014 on a tour of its metals, and ferroequinologist and casual observer alike came to trackside.  To call attention to a unification that no political power could dream of, Canadian Pacific is sending a passenger Hudson, 2816, on what it calls the Final Spike Tour, with the train and assorted exhibits making calls in British, French, and Spanish North America, er, Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

The train called at Davenport, Iowa, Friday last week.

The Final Spike Tour is on its way to Kansas City, where on Friday the combined railroad's new livery will be revealed.  Other calls will be May 28 at Laredo, June 7 at Mexico City, and June 30 at Winnipeg.  No protracted stops have been announced for that June jump back to Winnipeg.

PRACTICE COUNTING YOUR LOSERS.

There's a training version of bridge called "Minibridge" in which the bidding comes after the declaring partnership has been determined.  Seriously.  Here's how it works:

The players count their points (A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1) and announce in turn their point count.

The partnership that together holds the most points will play the hand (in the case where both pairs hold 20 points, the cards should be re-dealt). The partner with the most points of the two will become the declarer.

The declarer's partner becomes the dummy and displays the dummy's cards at once.

Now declarer, with his side's resources known, decides on a suit and a contract. The rules recommend looking for an eight card fit to determine a trump suit, and the art of counting losers to state the contract remains useful.  As in the traditional game with bidding, Three No Trump is game, Four of a major is game, Five of a minor is game, and small and grand slams are as always.  Scoring is different.

There's an opportunity to work on your loser-counting skills at this Minibridge site.  The usual warnings apply, there's that off-side opponent void in the suit that you're trying to cash the ace and king, and sometimes an opponent is long in a suit and capable of running it, thereby yielding even more losers.

Have fun with it.

SHOWCASING THE TALENT.

With graduation season come the guest speakers, and at more than a few universities, the protests.

DeKalb was host to both Northern Illinois University's graduation, and the Mid-American Conference's outdoor track championships for men and women.  Northern Illinois field only a women's team, such are the realities of complying with Title IX on a tight budget, and most of the points they earned were in jumping and throwing events.

Despite all the traffic heading for the west side of campus, and the street closures provided for the competitors to get to their between-events support tents, everybody kept their calm.

The doors have not yet opened at the convocation center.  There was a brisk north wind blowing.  All the friends and relatives congregating there were seated in time for the steel pans to play.  (Can you name any other university where there's a pan arrangement of Land of Hope and Glory?

DOWN BY THE STATION.

Railroads connect people, and there's nothing like a steam locomotive to encourage those connections.

Canadian Pacific's Empress isn't as fast as the F6 and F7 speedsters that used to hustle past Columbus with Hiawathas and the Fast Mail.  And yet, listen to the squeals of delight from children of all ages as the engineer whistles off.

HE DOESN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND HIS OWN POSITION.

Modern Monetary Theory is one of those ideas so crazy only an intellectual would believe it.

The point of collecting taxes is to absorb the excess demand that's being dropped from helicopters, which might be why the Jarrett regency is as bent on imposing net worth taxes as assiduously as it is.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

This is only the start of the pushback.  "America’s normal young men are fed up."  They're done.  "Frat Boy Summer is this year’s backlash against an epidemic of arrogant, entitled women who have been coddled all their lives and think they’re smarter and more important than they really are."  For Miranda Devine's "backlash" substitute "restoring a state of good repair."

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

PAID LACKEYS WITHOUT CHARACTER OR KNOWLEDGE.

What began at Columbia as tragedy in 1968 returns today as farce.

As a Columbia alum (College ’69), participant in that university’s 1968 student rebellion, advocate for academic freedom and free expression rights, and as a Jew, I have followed developments at Columbia over the past few days with great interest.  On Wednesday came the appearance by the co-chairs of the university’s Board of Trustees alongside Columbia’s president at the House Education and Labor Committee’s latest sham “hearing” on allegations of antisemitism on campus, a “set up from the get-go” where, as AAUP President Irene Mulvey puts it in her excellent statement issued today, both academic freedom and the faculty were thrown “under the bus.”  Then yesterday, in a chilling echo of 1968, Columbia called in the NYPD to arrest more than a hundred protesting students at a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

I am appalled!

So it always is with Excessively Earnest People, in this instance retired Cal State historian Hank Reichman: go through the litany of "azzas" and express your outrage.  Read between the lines, dear reader, as he digs into his thesis, and recognize that in the craven behavior of those Ivy presidents is the reality that universities are heavily dependent on the public dime, and satisfying Congress trumps any notions of academic freedom or institutional probity.

GOOD MORNING, CAMPUS JIHADIS.

Stand up to the radical ruffians!  Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg, who has some experience with music and radio, asks, and answers, a good question.  "What music should be on the 'Loop' that people blast at these cretins all night long?"  Yes, there are various settings of the National Anthem on the play-list as well as a few other suggestions.

EVOLUTIONARY STABILITY IS REAL.

From time to time, Cold Spring Shops calls attention to the effects of the sexual revolution and hook-up culture on human unhappiness.  Two observations from a 2011 post structure that argument.  First, "contemporary mating practices and admissions policies might not be evolutionarily stable."  Second, "younger people have different time horizons, and different rates of time preferences."  Those observations tended to rely on opinion columns.  The mini-dissertation below the jump will engage recent Serious Scholarship on those themes.

SOCIALISM SUCKS. LET'S HAVE MORE OF IT.

Salon contributor Kirk Swearingen is hoping to be an English-language correspondent for Brezhnev's Pravda.  "Don't like this economy? OK, just wait for Trump and the GOP to ruin it."

No, seriously, everything is fine.

Last November, I wrote what I thought was a modest commentary about how the Biden economy was doing remarkably well, at least by most standard macroeconomic measures, and much of the corporate media wasn’t reporting about it. Job numbers were historically high, unemployment low and the U.S. had done the best of all G-7 economies in bringing down inflation resulting from the worst pandemic years.

The recent money printing has made a lot of work for government employees and consultants.  Those European countries not named Sweden had Illinois-style lockdowns. The free states reopened sooner and thus had less adjusting to something resembling normal lives likely contributed a lot to those aggregate outcomes.  Then comes a "to be sure" paragraph followed by an exhortation of the toilers to increase milk yields.

I was careful to note that my wife and I, and members of our daughters’ generation, were still feeling economic pain around the cost of food and housing, and that many younger people felt they could not get their lives started due to student debt and high housing prices.

I got considerable grief from readers for that one, but I stand by what I wrote about the Biden administration’s active economic moves and a renewed focus on industrial policy to accomplish goals that simply cannot be left to “the marketplace.” Leaving infrastructure work to the marketplace is how America wound up with so many embarrassing airports, shaky bridges and poky, increasingly dangerous trains. There are things we must do together.

When all else fails, deploy a bromide.  Apparently, though, those things we do together do not include coordinating the traffic lights in a two-stoplight town.

The money printing ensures that mortgage rates will remain high, if not at Carter malaise levels, for some time; but this time around there's a lot of friction in the housing market as people who have paid off their houses and could use the capital gains from selling those houses to move elsewhere without borrowing have trouble finding ... new buyers who have to borrow at Bidenomics mortgage rates.  Meanwhile people like Mr Swearingen might be happy the current regime is making noises about taxing those unrealized capital gains.  Be careful what you wish for.

TAKING A VICTORY LAP.

Today is V-E Day, and there is a 48 star flag flying at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, one of several vintage flags raised on suitable days.  The Flag Code notes that older versions of Old Glory may be flown, subject to the provision that tattered and torn flags ought be given honorable retirement.

I found this painting of GIs quaffing a few beers at Hitler's mountain hideout.  Germans and Austrians make some pretty good beers, but the dictator wouldn't touch them.

The troops had particular cause to celebrate the Germans packing it in.  Although ECLIPSE plans envisioned the Western Allies not driving to Berlin, with much of Germany east of the Elbe set for Soviet occupation, the commanders could not shake the possibility of the Nazi leadership plus the most committed of true believers holing up in something called the "Alpine Redoubt," there to conduct a resistance in the best Balkan, or perhaps hillbilly, style.  Those fears were allayed once Germans who surrendered to the Western Allies along the Elbe (rather than take their chances with the Soviets) reported Hitler was still in Berlin.  That famous temper tantrum in Ausfall providing material for those parodies is based on documented events.

Well done, Citizen Soldiers.

THE LAW, IN ITS MAJESTY.

Washington Post columnist Robin Givhan attempts to inject Victim Studies into Anatole France's old observation.

It’s been a long time since a tent was simply a tent. Today, it almost certainly represents an issue, a problem, a population with which society would prefer not to contend.

The tents are unseemly. They need to be. They’re flimsy structures staked on uneven ground surrounded by the stately architecture of the academy, capitalism and power. Their flapping scrims of nylon and plastic clutter up the landscape and serve as a rebuke to the grandiosities of polite society. The tents shame countries, cities and individuals for their failures even when the voices of the activists fall silent, when the chanting stops and the sun sets. The tents are still there.

Most recently, tents have become fundamental to the pro-Palestinian encampments constructed in college yards and on plazas from New York to California. In the nation’s capital, an encampment has taken root on the campus of George Washington University, where a few dozen tents have been pitched on the street and in the courtyard. All of it encompasses a one-block span of downtown Washington over which police officers keep watch with modest interest rather than alarm.

It came to this years ago, when Our Progressive Betters condemned the flophouses in the name of Urban Renewal and emptied the insane asylums in the name of Humanity.  The column offers an amusing interpretation of those developments.

The tents are always telling us something that we don’t want to hear.

The tents of the homeless fill parks, clutter walkways and sprout in the shadow of freeway overpasses. So leaders of western states across the political divide have gone to the Supreme Court to have those tents declared illegal. Under current law, they can’t just summarily clear the tents if those who are living in them have nowhere else to go, if there are no beds at a shelter in their city. Officials in Grants Pass, Ore., don’t want homeless camps on their streets or in their parks. But asking the Supreme Court to allow them to remove the tents doesn’t remove the problem; it doesn’t make a weak social safety net any stronger.

That's what we mostly hear about Californian cities, if without the details of the open sewers and discarded needles, although Denver is trending that way as well.  It's to the tents pitched to Make a Statement that the column focuses upon.

The activists who settled into New York’s Zuccotti Park back in 2011 drew attention to income inequality, joblessness and the outsize political influence of financial firms. Occupy Wall Street spread from Manhattan across the country and around the world. The protesters marched and rallied but mostly what they were remembered for was rolling out their sleeping bags and setting up tented tarps and creating their own little squatters camp in the midst of capitalism’s Emerald City. They were belittled as jealous of the success of others, as anti-capitalist and as vaguely un-American.

In the midst of a city where money is considered the great equalizer, the men and women who slept outside under bright blue tarps through rain, wind and even a nor’easter were an insistent reminder of a society turned ugly and heartless for a cash payout.

No, Robin, encampments have long been a manifestation of guerrilla theater.  Faux shantytowns were props the Concerned Students set up on the quad to call attention to apartheid conditions in South Africa.  The sanctions had their effect, the apartheid conditions ended, and now everyone in South Africa is miserable.  Sometimes, the cardboard box is a prop; it's much more effective on a chilly winter evening to call attention to "the homeless" whilst avoiding any serious conversation about the effects of urban renewal and closing the asylums.

BEYOND EVEN TOM WOLFE'S ABILITY TO PARODY?

During the previous Consciousness Revolution, it was Leonard Bernstein hosting the Black Panthers at some event for the High Society types.

These days, there's the Met Gala, and we're not talking about a baseball team.

The Dacquoise is iced. The warm rhubarb tortes are in the ovens. The guest list has been personally curated by the Vogue Editrix Anna Wintour herself. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the East Side of Central Park in the 80’s, is perfectly lit. The red carpet is rolled out. The theme, “Garden of Time”, is magical. And, oops, it’s “Day of Rage”. Here come the “Free Palestine” hippies. This could get good.

We are not jealous that we are never invited. I think all of the Victory Girls Goddesses would rather get our teeth cleaned than attend the Met Gala to benefit the Costume Institute. We do write about the Gala every year. There is always something that arrives at the corner of High Art and Idiocy. Remember the year that AOC wore that “Tax the Rich” dress? This year, the Costume Institute is debuting “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion” so Garden of Time is an apt theme. Unfortunately, the Upper East Side was double-booked with the Day of Rage. Oops!

It doesn’t look like too many protestors got over to the Met Gala during Red Carpet time. On X (Twitter), actress Patricia Heaton said that there is more police protection for the celebs at the Gala than Jewish students trying to get to class. Ain’t that the truth. Then, Anna Wintour has more pull with the cops than the Jewish students.

No, apparently neither Leonard Bernstein nor Squeaky were available to comp the lot into the event. Victory Girl Toni Williams warns us not to laugh. "We really shouldn’t laugh at these historically ignorant little turds. They are truly dangerous."  She's right, though: radical chic is still with us.  "Every single person who walked that red carpet is responsible for these Day of Rage hippies. Every. Single. Solitary. One. Of. Them. Enjoy the warm rhubarb tarts fools."

SOMETHING TO GET STEAMED UP ABOUT.

Five years ago, Union Pacific sent Big Boy 4014 on a tour of their system to commemorate the sesquicentennial of their Golden Spike, and that steamer continues to visit Union Pacific cities.  There is a return to the Chicago area sometime this year.

Canadian Pacific, er, Canadien Pacifique de Mexico, are calling attention to their recent creation of the first North American railroad with mainline operations in three countries, with what they term the Final Spike Tour.  They put Royal Hudson 2816, Empress (a nod to the names of Canadian Pacific's passenger steamers) back into service and got her certified to run in all three countries.  "We hope that many people will have the opportunity to safely see the beautiful 2816 as the train makes its way from Calgary to Mexico City."

Once upon a time, The Milwaukee Road had the world's fastest Hudsons Baltics, the conventional Class F6 and the streamlined F7.  None of those, let alone the as-fast Class A Milwaukee types, made it into preservation.  That noted, having a Royal Hudson riding those rails through the curves east of the station and making her way to the racetrack is good to see.

Canadian Pacific 2816 “The Empress” chugs through downtown Milwaukee at noon today.

Trains!! pic.twitter.com/EAUEooevET

— Mark Fairbanks 🍅 (@MarkFairbanks) May 6, 2024

Your editorial note for today: I have no objection to someone using "chugging" when the locomotive in question is chugging along.

We'll see what the weather brings for 2816's jump to Iowa Thursday or its Davenport visit Friday.

PLAY THE MARSEILLAISE!

Last fall, Bookworm suggested that the Militant Normals take a cue from Casablanca.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, the next time the leftist shrieking started, it turned out that the conservative speaker came prepared? I imagine the speaker pulling out his or her smartphone, turning the volume on as loudly as possible, sticking it right up to the microphone (also on top volume), and blasting the room with a patriotic song. Even better, those who came to hear the speech would sing along.

He recommended God Bless America.  That works better if you're a Philadelphia Flyers fan of a certain age, or go to baseball games on Sundays.

KHRUSHCHEV'S LEGACY.

From time to time, I've referred to Anatole Shub's An Empire Loses Hope as a useful source anticipating the fractures in the Warsaw Pact and noting the emptiness of the Evil Empire, or as a way of drawing parallels to the incompetence of Our Gerontocracy.  It was all written down, some of it while Ronald Reagan was still hosting Death Valley Days.

Today, let me call your attention to a passage that starts on page 298.

Russian ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean went back to the tsars.  Stalin had asked Roosevelt and Churchill for "trusteeship" of Libya in 1945, and in 1948 had helped Zionists in Palestine overthrow the British mandate and establish the State of Israel.  But when Israel's first ambassador to Moscow, Golda Meir, was greeted enthusiastically by Russian Jews, Stalin turned violently against Israel, and in 1949 he launched the bloody anti-Semitic purge which culminated in 1952 with the grisly Slansky trial in Prague.  Stalin could not, however, develop much enthusiasm for the Arab leaders of the time, who were nearly all traditional Moslems as well as anti-Communist.

It was Khrushchev who discovered the "progressive" Arabs in the form of the Egyptian Colonel, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the radical Ba'ath party in Syria, whom he hoped to utilize against the Middle Eastern states still under Western influence.  But after a number of crises between 1955 and 1958, the area had become relatively peaceful, with United Nations forces stationed on the Egyptian border with Israel.  Khrushchev's attention had turned to Cuba, China, and Berlin.

Brezhnev and his colleagues, however, saw a new chance for a breakthrough in the Middle East, in the form of the radical regime which had taken power in Syria in February 1966.  The Communist party was well represented in the new regime, which seemed dynamic as well as "progressive": that is, it was not only violently anti-Western, but also encouraged a Palestinian guerrilla group, Al Fatah, to launch raids and terrorist actions against Israel.

Three months after the new Syrian regime came to power, Kosygin visited Cairo and persuaded Nasser to sign a military alliance with the "progressives" in Damascus.  By October 1966, Soviet propaganda had begun to charge, at least once a month, that Israel was concentrating troops on the Syrian frontier and planning to overthrow the shaky "progressive" regime in Damascus.

Let's break this down, dear reader.  Stalin could brook no competition from rival socialists, whether their names were Trotsky or Zinoviev or Meir.  Recall that Zionism was originally a form of socialism with Jewish characteristics, and to this day the kibbutzes are collective farms that sort of work, better than their Soviet supposed counterparts or the occasional Millerite or Bishop Hill experiment somewhere in the Anglosphere.  At one time the full name for the Ba'ath party was the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party, although, in the same way that Chinese and Russian Communism broke down in sectarianism, so too did the Syrian and Iraqi parties.  There was also a time between 1958 and 1961 when Egypt and Syria called themselves the United Arab Republic.  There was, predictably, a falling out between Nasser in Egypt and the Ba'athists in Syria.  The Soviet accusations of troops concentrating were not true.  Russian disinformation led to discord, but the outcome of the 1967 "Six Day War" put a damper on Brezhnev's Jubilee celebration, that year being the fiftieth since the Great October Socialist Revolution.

THESE ARE THE RULES THEY MADE.

Remember when California's Maxine Waters told the party faithful it was High Public Service to get in the faces of public officials who held the wrong views?

“If you think we’re rallying now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she warned.

“Already, you have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants,” she continued as the crowd erupted, “who have protesters taking up at their house, who say, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep,’” she continued.

“And so, let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

It's not that the representative's base electors require a lot of prompting to be obnoxious.  "It is the way of the Perpetually Aggrieved to unleash verbal terrorism in order to disrupt any presentation or gathering that calls their tight priors into question."  Nor does it necessarily have to be a high Republican official or a member of the Trump family circle that gets no peace.  "A gaggle of Hamas supporters confronted Gov. Gretchen (GRETCH) Whitmer at her daughter's graduation dinner."

Governor Gretchen Whitmer gets confronted by crazy liberal HAMAS supporters at her daughters graduation dinner.
Your chickens are coming home to roost governor. pic.twitter.com/cxDs56gzZK

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) May 5, 2024

Kurt Schlichter frequently cautions the Angry Left that Militant Normals can play by the new rules. "The pushback is going to be impolite. It’s going to be mean. It’s going to lack decorum. But hey, aren’t those are the new rules, you Hamas-kissing psychopaths? As I’ve said many times before, be careful about the new rules you enact."  That the rage mob came for the Schlachterfrau at her kid's graduation party only makes the story sweeter.

Deconstruct bourgeois norms at your peril.